How Spatial Tech Will Change Your Reality Forever

Is the Metaverse dead? Why is #OpenAI building jewelry? What happens when AI becomes more emotionally present than people? Today on Digital Disruption, we’re joined by CEO of Future Dynamics and author, Cathy Hackl. Cathy is a globally recognized tech and gaming executive, futurist, and keynote speaker specializing in spatial computing, AI, virtual worlds, and gaming platform strategy. She is the co-CEO of Future Dynamics, a spatial computing and AI solutions firm, and a top LinkedIn tech voice. Known as the “Godmother of the Metaverse,” she created the Tech Intimacy Scale and is currently researching the intersection of AI, love, and relationships. Cathy has held leadership roles at Amazon Web Services, Magic Leap, and HTC VIVE, and has guided major brands like Nike, Walmart, Ralph Lauren, Louis Vuitton, and Clinique through their emerging tech and gaming strategies. She has spoken at events hosted by Harvard Business School, MIT, CES, SXSW, and the World Economic Forum. Named one of Ad Age’s Leading Women of 2023 and featured on Forbes Latam’s cover for its 100 Most Powerful Women issue, Hackl is also listed among Vogue Business's 100 Innovators. She hosts Adweek’s TechMagic podcast and contributes to Vogue Singapore. In 2022, she made history as the first human to ring the NASDAQ opening bell both physically and in avatar form on live TV. Cathy Hackl sits down with Geoff Nielson for an honest conversation about where technology is headed and what’s really happening with spatial computing, AI hardware, and the future of human connection. Cathy unpacks the evolution of the metaverse and why she believes we’re moving toward something bigger: the spatial web. She shares her first-hand experience with Google Beam, a revolutionary 3D communication technology that doesn’t require a headset. This episode dives into OpenAI’s push into hardware, why it’s a data play, and what that means for your privacy. Emotional technologies like Apple Vision Pro and what they mean for memory, grief, and connection, and the future of dating and relationships in a world filled with AI agents and romantic chatbots. In this episode: 0:00 Intro 1:00 Is the Metaverse dead or just renamed? 3:00 Google Beam: 3D communication without a headset 5:00 The Apple moment: reaching for a virtual object 7:00 Dating, job interviews & presence in 3D 9:00 Will this replace video calls? 11:00 Apple vision pro 13:00 Memory preservation & future family photos 15:00 OpenAI’s hardware push 17:00 AI Agents and who controls your data 20:00 From ChatGPT to therapy bots 22:00 Emotional manipulation, mental health & ai advice 24:00 Who owns the virtual air around you? 27:00 Virtual real estate, annotations & air rights 30:00 The battle for our senses 35:00 Tech that arrived too early 37:00 Why dating in 2D doesn’t work in a 3D world 39:00 Spatial computing in creative industries 41:00 Where tech meets intimacy, memory & legacy 44:00 The real use case: Human connection 47:00 The future of emotional presence and what’s at stake 49:00 Getting It Right Matters Connect with Cathy: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathyhackl/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cathyhackl/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HacklCathy Visit our website: https://www.infotech.com/ Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InfoTechRG

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Geoff Nielson?

  Hey, everyone. I'm super excited to be sitting down with Kathy Hackel. She has a reputation as the godmother of the metaverse and for being a leading thinker anywhere technology is coming out of traditional devices like phones and entering our physical reality, or even creating a whole new one. What's cool about Kathy is that she has a behind-the-curtain view of some of the most cutting-edge tech being developed around the world. Look, I'll be honest. I'm a big metaverse skeptic myself and have actually gotten on stage to tell thousands of leaders that I think the whole thing is BS. I have to get this off my chest. I think that the metaverse is bullshit.

• 0:35Geoff Nielson?

  I want to ask her if I'm getting something wrong or I'm just looking in the wrong place. I want to know when and how emerging technologies are going to enter our lives and our workplaces and what we need to do to be ready. Let's find out.

• 0:52Geoff Nielson?

  Hey, Kathy. Thanks so much for joining today. I wanted to jump right in and ask a little bit about, you know, this area of space that we traditionally call spatial computing, the metaverse, extended reality. It feels like it's kind of growing and changing these days. And there's been certainly some exciting announcements in this space in the last handful of days and weeks. Has the way you think about it changed? And, you know, what's kind of most exciting to you right now?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's an ever-evolving space. It's interesting because a lot of people come to me and say, "The metaverse is dead," right? As someone known in tech circles as the godmother of the metaverse, I get that all the time. And I'm like, "Well, the metaverse wasn't really here yet. People are building towards it, so you can't kill something that doesn't exist." It's more the hype, right? The hype that really died off. What has changed for me, I think, is some things haven't changed. I think a lot of what I've learned throughout the years working at companies like HTC Vive, which did VR headsets, and Magic Leap, which did, you know, one of the earliest spatial computing computers out there. And I've got one right behind me for anyone watching on video. What I learned in those companies has not changed,

• 2:01Speaker 01

  which is the convergence of physical and virtual that we're kind of gearing towards. That has not changed. I think maybe it's the way it's being created or developed or the importance of AI in enabling that future. I think that has definitely been accelerated. Or it was something that I thought about, but obviously, over the last two years, has become the number one topic. So I think that's evolved. I will say the term metaverse, even for me, has changed in the sense that I feel like some people are maybe moving away from the term metaverse in some ways to spatial web. More of that spatialized web, a web, you know, that expands into the physical world. And I know we're going to talk more about this.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  I think I'm seeing more people, not more people, but more people starting to say, okay, maybe, maybe the term isn't metaverse. And maybe it's spatial web, just like the information superhighway wasn't the right word. Right? We use internet or web now. So, um, so I think that there is that kind of maybe those changes happening and kind of how we talk about this potential future state.

• 3:03Geoff Nielson?

  Cool. So let's maybe talk about some of the emerging technologies that have been announced recently. I'm thinking about things like, you know, Google Beam, like XR, like, I don't know if it's actually pronounced I O or E O. I guess I should have read up on that, but, what are those like? Can you maybe quickly just walk us through what each of those technologies is and, and, you know, your excitement level and, you know, kind of outlook for each of them?

• 3:29Speaker 01

  So with Google Beam, which used to be called Google's Project Starlight, um, I actually got a demo of it a couple of years ago. And to explain to people, and I'm going to try to explain to folks in words what it is, right? It is pretty much a system where you, uh, where you're able to kind of have a communications with someone that's not with you in the same place, but you see them in 3D and in volumetric form. But there's no headset, right? There's no headset. Um, it's, it's through AI and through cameras. So my experience was I walked into a room and I sat behind a table and in front of me is this like this screen of sorts. And I guess there's multiple cameras and everything, but all of a sudden that someone else sits across from me in this virtual screen of sorts.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  But it's not a flat screen in the sense that I'm actually able to see depth. I mean, I'm actually able to see them in 3D. Which, which takes your brain and your eyes a second to kind of, whoa, okay, I'm not wearing a headset. I'm seeing this person in 3D. And there is an AI component of how they're doing this. But you have this experience and I think the biggest thing for me is it felt like Star Trek, like something like from Star Trek, right? It felt kind of like, wow. We're really enabling this type of communication. What impressed me the most, Jeff, was that when I had that, um, Google Beam now, I guess, demo. Is how how how realistic things looked, right? Um, I could almost see their pores, which was impressive to me like it was really great definition.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  And then they had an apple and I remember them extending the apple towards me. And my initial reaction as a human is I would want to grab the apple. Of course, I can't because it's virtual. Um, but that kind of that kind of was the moment for me that I said, this is powerful technology and whether it whether whether it's something that, you know, we have in our homes or whether it's something that's enabled through different devices. Or you might have people using a Google Beam and headsets at the same time. I don't know what it's going to look like. It looked to me like the one of the ways that we're going to we're going to communicate as humans in the future. So that's for Google Beam. Um, you asked me also, do you want to do you want to talk about some of the headsets and some of the other things?

• 5:38Geoff Nielson?

  Well, let's let's just while we're on Google Beam.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:40Geoff Nielson?

  Because I don't want to lose track of it. How how much in your mind is this kind of a tech demo? And it'll stay a tech demo versus do you think there's actually, you know, commercial applications here? Is the, I guess, the hardware infrastructure going to be viable for people to have these things? You know, in their homes or in their offices?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Well, maybe potentially if it's smaller, it is still, I mean, the the demo that I got is still a pretty big setup. Right?

• 6:04Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  So I don't want to think it's small. It could be very useful, um, I think for like fashion brands. For example, this is where my mind went when I saw it was, you know, the apple. But then I was like, my gosh, if I am buying jewelry or I'm buying something where I want to see the texture, I want to see it up close. And maybe let's say, let's say I'm in Hong Kong and the jewel I want to buy is in, you know, in Mexico, let's say hypothetically, this is going to be a way to kind of have that communication in a better way. Or if I am a designer and I am dressing a star uh, and I want to show them some of these, you know, dresses in a much more 3D immersive way. So I think that we might have these devices in certain places. I don't know if it's going to be in every home, at least for the time being, but we might have them um, in different places.

• 6:46Speaker 01

  I could even see people setting up and and this is my mind going to a lot of the current research I'm doing on AI technology and the future of human relationships. I could even imagine people setting up maybe like dating salons where they have some of these and you might be able to meet people and meet them in 3D in that virtual form before you actually meet them in person because they might not be there or, you know, so I don't know. It was very, to me, it was very powerful to see someone in 3D in that form, in such a in such a clear form in front of me without a headset on.

• 7:17Geoff Nielson?

  That's so cool and I love it. It sounds promising in the sense that you can just rattle off potential use cases. And that's, you know, that's always an interesting barrier, an interesting kind of pressure test for a new technology. Is it, you know, something where you can say, okay, you could use it for X, Y, Z or, you know, and I'll dunk on the metaverse for a minute. But I feel like there was a, there was a time with the metaverse where it's just like, no, trust us, it's going to be good. But we can't exactly explain how you're going to use it.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, I think as humans, we are, we live in a 3D world, right? We do not live in a flat world. It's all 3D and we're volumetric. So my premise has always been like, for example, with the dating example, it's like we date in 3D. Like a lot of it is text and a lot of, but like at the end of the day, you would date a human, at least for now. And they're in 3D, so why not date in 3D, those sorts of things. So I'm really, I'm really interested in kind of looking at that. My mind also went to like job interviews. Cause you know, so many decisions are made on a flat Zoom video of whether you hire someone or not, if you're not meeting them in person. I feel like this could add a level of, of potential to see someone's personality come through or see how do they, you know?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  There was a part of me that thought, okay, this could be really interesting for job interviews as well. And making a better decision about who someone is, you know, in a more 3D form than just a 2D Zoom call, so.

• 8:42Geoff Nielson?

  Right. Well, and it, it strikes me as the type of thing where if we're anywhere near being able to send any number of these out. It starts with, okay, there's special salons or there's special, you know, places you go that have them and people get a feel for them. And as the economics change, they, you know, first enter the enterprise and then maybe they enter, they enter the home. And there's a whole, you know, kind of five to 10 year, maybe even more timeline of how we integrate these into our lives.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I don't think it will be just one device. I think we'll have multiple devices that we go in between, depending on what we want to do, right? But I think that this, this, whatever this is laying the seeds for is part of that future, future human to human communication state.

• 9:24Geoff Nielson?

  Right. And, and you know, I have to ask you because you used this face to face. Was there any part of you that experienced it and thought like, "Well, why would I ever take another call on my phone again? Like, why would I ever go back to the..." Like, is there a world, if the technology enables it, where it actually, you know, almost fully replaces what we're doing now?

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yes, and especially when it comes to emotion and family and people you care about. That's one of the moments where I said, "Okay, this has potential in that sense." And I think that's where a device like Google Beam or devices like some of these newer headsets that are coming could really be important, right? Which is memory preservation or the idea and the concept of presence, of being with someone in kind of the same place, even if you can't be in the same place. I thought that was very powerful.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  There's a lot of thinking I'm doing right now and a talk I'm working on, which is called "The Future of the Family Photo", right? So, anyone listening here, I want you to think about 10 years in the future, 2035. What does your family portrait or your family photo look like? Right? Does it include potentially a hologram of a deceased loved one that might not be with us? Is that possible? The technology's already here, right? Does it include a robot, right? I think of the Jetsons. The Jetsons always had Rosie. In any picture of the family, Rosie was always there. So, my mind extends and pushes into that of like memory preservation. And this comes, I guess, from that Google Beam experience, but also from Apple Vision Pro and some of the devices I've used,

• 10:56Speaker 01

  where you're able to relive memories. Like, I shoot a lot of, like, let's say, spatial video, which is video that has 3D and depth on my iPhone. And then I am able to watch it in my Apple Vision Pro. So, like, I've watched my kids or I've done videos with my dad, who's 80, for example, and I relive them. And there's an emotion that comes through that is very special. So, I think that there is something there. And I think products eventually do take off, not for technology's sake, but because they allow us to feel something. And the example I give everyone is Facebook. Like, my parents and a bigger part of the market didn't enter Facebook until they weren't like going there because they needed to see pictures of their grandkids, right?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  So, I think that there is something here that has to pull at our heartstrings to make some of this technology fully mass-market.

• 11:49Geoff Nielson?

  That's really, really interesting and I hadn't really thought about it. But I'm by no means like a big like AR or VR guy. But in my own experience, the time I messed with it the most was I had years and years ago. I don't remember what it was called, like Google Cardboard or something.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:05Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, yeah. And I remember the thing, the memory is emotional. That I remember I could take pictures of like my parents' house and put it on and like you're there, right? And it captures that moment in time. And so it's really interesting that you bring that up as kind of like the use case. Because I totally buy that and I see that being the way that we, you know, again, the stress test for where this technology will work or not work.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  And I think especially with AI becoming, coming more at the forefront and everyone talk about humanoid robots and dating AIs and all that stuff. I think human will have a premium and I think some of these technologies will allow us to have that, you know, that human experience that we all so crave or most of us do. So, so yeah, I think that there is two different forces happening at the same time here.

• 12:53Geoff Nielson?

  You mentioned briefly Vision Pro and Vision Pro, I don't know if this is just my feed or my sphere, but I feel like there's been backlash is probably too strong a word, but I feel like I've heard some news stories or some propagated stories of just all people are asking for refunds or it hasn't really panned out the way people thought. You know, where are we in the life cycle of Vision Pro? Was it, you know, always just meant to be a tech demo and it, you know, it's gotten as far as it's gonna go? Where does that product go from here?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Well, I think it goes further, but I will tell you this. I do believe that as a product, this was not a consumer product. This was a developer's kit. Let's be very clear. Granted, they made a huge, you know, splash from a consumer standpoint, but you know, was it a consumer product? No, not really. I mean, I'm a developer. I use a device to create things. It's, there's still friction in being able to create things for the Vision Pro. It's not something everyone's gonna be doing, at least not right now. So definitely would say that. And I don't think that they, you know, I don't think they, they had like, I don't think they expected to sell billions, like billions of these. I think. That they, you know, it was just kind of a very, very Apple marketing push to prime the market. I think personally, that's what they were trying to do, prime the market, test the market, bring something innovative out because, you know,

• 14:10Speaker 01

  what else can we do to our phones? What other cameras can we add to it? So, so I do think, you know, as we look towards the future and potentially newer products that Apple might bring to the market, we're going to see different versions. You know, I'm not saying it'll be the Apple Vision Pro 2 or something, but I think we will see bigger, like different versions. At the end of the day, what all these devices are trying to do is replace the mobile phone or give us an option that might be more immersive than the mobile phone, right? So, yeah, so it's, I don't think Apple Vision Pro 1 is it, right? But it seeded the market, it seeded the narrative, and it started kind of that path, that path towards this newer 3D spatial video, spatial audio format.

• 14:53Geoff Nielson?

  Right. So, so speaking of, of new devices, what, what is OpenAI up to right now? You know, they've, they've got this partnership that they announced. I'll be honest, I don't fully get it. Like, I get, I get that they want to expand into hardware or into the physical world, but I don't, I don't really get it. Like, can you shed some light on, on what's going on over there and how you see it kind of playing out?

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I don't have any insider information, so first of all, but I'll tell you what I've noticed. So I've been tracking this for almost two years. So, one of the first times I heard Sam Altman talk about the future of the smartphone or hardware, really, a hardware conversation, was Wall Street Tech Live 2023. That's as early as I heard him talk about hardware, and it stuck with me, and I was like, oh, let me, let me hear this. So, then earlier, earlier in 2025, there was news that they had filed patents for smart jewelry, for smart glasses, VR headsets, a whole bunch of different things, right? And I wrote a lot of articles in Forbes and also for the World Economic Forum about how the hardware is critical for the development of the newer models. And whoever owns the hardware owns the data that is going to train the newer models.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  What I mean by that is that this is strategic play. This is not just about hardware, right? Right now, what you have are, is generative AI, large language models that are trained on language, right? Whether it's video, whether it's audio, whatever it is, right? But it's mostly created on, it's mostly trained on audio and things that already exist, that have already been created, right? In order for us to go from generative AI into agentic AI and then into physical AI, which is kind of the curb that Jensen Huang from Nvidia shows us every time he does a keynote. In order for us to get there, you are going to need new architectures and new models. And some of those new models are, for example, vision-action models. So models that are scanning the world, the physical world, constantly in real time,

• 16:47Speaker 01

  creating a virtual version of the world, like a mesh of the virtual world, that is going to allow these devices to understand the world, put content in front of us. It's going to allow more robots to navigate the world, more autonomous vehicles. There's this whole other component. So whoever owns the hardware is going to be able to kind of own the data or have access to the data to train these newer models. So this is a vision towards the future. And the only way that OpenAI can eventually compete with an Apple or a Meta or any of these is if they have a hardware play. And I think a lot of people miss that. Like, they don't understand that this is a hardware play in that sense. And the moats, the mode around the software, the mode around the LLM per se that we use today, is getting smaller by the day, right?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  So where are the bigger opportunities? Where are going to be the larger modes? Will be in hardware, because hardware is hard. That's the saying of anyone that works in hardware, we all know that. The hardware is going to determine how some of these newer models go, how they're trained, the data they have access to, and then who gets to put content in front of you, all these sorts of things, right? So whoever owns the hardware is going to have an upper hand. That's why Meta, for example, is in their hardware era. So I hope that, I hope Jeff, I hope that that made sense. I know it makes sense to you.

• 17:58Geoff Nielson?

  No, it does. It does, but I want to dig into it a little bit more.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:02Geoff Nielson?

  Because you answered, you answered half of the question, which is the half of like, what's in it for OpenAI? What's in it for Sam? I get what's in it for Sam, I get what's in it for OpenAI, I get the competitive part. But what's in it for me? What's in it for you? Like, I understand why they want to be in hardware. Why should I get their device? Why is consumers, should we be excited about this?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  I don't know if we should be excited about this or not. I don't know what's in it for us. What was in it for us with social connection? But you know, obviously that turned out to be a totally different thing. Our data, you know, we became the product kind of thing. So I don't know. I don't know what's in it for us. The only thing I can imagine here is a couple of things. I would say the fact that we're starting to all use AI so much on a constant basis that maybe that human, that human technology collaboration that we're building becomes something that we have to, that we do every day. And then it's going to be easier to do it in some other type of hardware, right? I don't always want to be talking to my, my phone or to my computer. It's some other device that I can talk to that can give you more information in real time about the physical world.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  So what could be in it for us would be faster access to AI. AI that understands and sees the world and becomes a lot more useful to us. That's potentially what could be, you know, an incentive to consumers. There's a whole question about privacy, right? Is there even privacy? Like, I'm a guinea pig for all these devices. I've got my iris scanned by, I don't know how many devices, like to me, like I, or my hand, like my face scanned by so much facial recognition. Like, there's a part of me that feels like, I mean, I've given, in my perspective, because I am a guinea pig and I try all these devices. I feel like maybe I've given up a lot of my privacy already. It doesn't mean everyone should, right? But, but there is that question, like what is in it for, for the consumer?

• 19:51Speaker 01

  I'm not sure yet. I'm not sure what exactly, other than potentially being able to, you know, being able to, to do certain things. I do think that if, if Alexa, and this is the joke, if robots, you know, if Alexa can do my laundry and Alexa can, you know, do my dishes, then maybe it is something that I want in my house.

• 20:09Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah. Well, and it's such, and I swear I didn't plan this, but it's such an interesting, you know, it's such an interesting comparison with, you know, Google Beam, which we just talked about. Because this, this is a technology where there's an emotional reaction and it's so present. And we're rattling off use cases. And then, you know, we switched to, we switched to OpenAI and we're like, I don't know, I don't know. It's like, it's good for Sam, like, but I don't know what we'll use it for. So it's, it's very interesting to have these completely different ends of the, of the spectrum here.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  I'll give you a comment here that I think is very important, very relevant. The data that has been coming out is that a lot of people are using LLMs like ChatGPT, for example, for Advice? Maybe companionship? A lot of people are using it to get advice for dating. Some people are dating the AI. You know, but what people forget here is that you, at the end of the day, especially if you're seeking it for therapy, which is concerning to me. You are talking to a corporation. You are not talking to a friend. Right? This is a corporation that owns the LLM and the LLM is programmed to agree with you. Unless you ask it not to, you know, unless you're like, set the parameter that you want it to be, you know, contradiction and stuff.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  And that's what I think people forget. It's like, you're not talking to a friend here. What you're talking to here is a corporation, a general purpose large language model. Right? And I think people lose that. So your question is, I think, very relevant at this moment in time where so many people are going to it for advice.

• 21:40Geoff Nielson?

  I was actually talking to a friend about this over dinner the other day, which is, you know, first of all, I'm a huge advocate of of mental health. I'm a huge advocate of people getting therapy and getting support. And what my friend said is, is when she talks to a therapist, you know, it it's confidential, but it's not a completely closed system because the therapist has notes, you know, on their computer in a notebook. But that that's the extent of it, right? Like, someone could break into their office or into their system and hack that. When you start moving that to like, okay, now I'm talking, now now Google has access to that. Now OpenAI has access to that and they're like, almost explicitly, I would say, using that to train their systems. Like, what does that mean?

• 22:22Geoff Nielson?

  And what is the potential downside for you as an individual there?

• 22:28Speaker 01

  All of it is data, right? It's data. It's the data you're putting in there. If the if if the LLM knows that you have broken up with John and you're really sad, like, it starts to be like, okay, you know, maybe you'll start getting ads for match.com. I mean, this is all about selling data, right? And what information are they going to get from you? And then when you add AI agents into it, that's the next level. I mean, if your AI agent knows that you're sad because you broke up or you, you know, or something like that, like, is it going to start? Is it going to start shopping for things to make you feel better that you might not need, like Wally's type of situation, right? I don't need the slurpee, but it makes me feel good. So so I think that there is this added layer that worries me.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  When we're putting so much information, personal information into these devices, well, not devices, into these LLMs, right? When there is no HIPAA, there's no, like, there's nothing regulating this, right? And I went to Esther Perel's Sessions Live and there was a big conversation around AI. It was mostly therapists and coaches. And that was the big, the big question is like, our, our patients are all going to ChatGPT for advice. We don't get to see it. We don't necessarily think that everything it's saying is the right course of action. They're finding value in it. How do you merge those? How do you come, how do you, how do you marry those two so that there is ethics? And privacy in some ways when it comes to mental health? But also that people get access to something, you know, when they might not be able to afford a therapist.

• 23:54Speaker 01

  So it's, it's kind of like, I mean, someone's got to come up with a really good solution here at some point that allows for both.

• 24:00Geoff Nielson?

  Well, and, you know, not, not to try and get the silver bullet answer, but I mean, do you, do you have some overarching guidance that you give to people around how they should and shouldn't be using generative AI?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, when it comes to, when it comes to that personal advice part, like if it's for business, you, every corporation should have, you know, should have their own bylines on how to use it, et cetera, what you can and can't input, right? I think for a personal perspective, it's just like what I tell my kids is that when you're doing social or you're doing photos, nothing gets erased. Just because you think someone deleted it, no, this is going to live on forever. If you, you know, potentially, right? Just because it's snap disappears, doesn't really disappear. So the same concept, you are talking to a corporation. What you are sharing, you know, you have to be very mindful of what it is that you're sharing. It has memory. If you don't want it to remember, this is something you have to change, right? Cause it'll continue remembering. So thinking through that, I think my biggest advice for some people, at least the one that I'm using personally,

• 24:58Speaker 01

  and this I'm just going to get personal here, is as someone that is recently divorced and dating, is I ask the men that I'm seeing to not use AI in our conversations. So the AI pledge, what I call an AI pledge, because a lot of people out there in the dating world are using AI to craft these really romantic, you know, like talk about love bombing, love bombing 3.0 using AI. So I feel like that's something a lot of people are starting to talk about is not offloading your difficult conversations to an AI. Yeah, you can use an AI to kind of help you try to decipher how to say something, but don't give me only generated things. And I've found already friends, for example, that were reaching out to me for advice. I'm like, oh, my

• 25:40Speaker 01

  gosh, Johnny sent me this. What do you think he said? And I literally said, look, it's got M dashes everywhere. What human uses an M dash to text your boo? I'm like, this is my big hunch here is that they use chat GPT. And then they went back and looked at the other texts, like messages. And I was like, hate to break it to you, but if it does feel to me that they're using chat GPT, because I don't, I don't know anyone that knows where to find the M dash on their phone when they're texting.

• 26:06Geoff Nielson?

  That's I, by the way, I love the M dash text. I was just a test, rather, I was, I was just laughing at that. And well, and it's, and it's interesting because it can do, as you were saying with your friend, like it can do a pretty good job at creating that content. But at some point, you're going to meet the guy and they're not going to be able to hold up their end of the bargain, right? And you're like, oh, I actually.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  You don't sound like Shakespeare. Your prose and how you talk in real life are definitely not the same. Um, you know, and I'm already seeing this. I'll give you Jeff. I know we're going down a different tangent, but this was interesting to me, very, very concerning. I was talking to my teenage daughter, and she was talking about her friends who were meeting, you know, their, their kids are dating on Roblox and kids are, you know, um, instead of passing a note in the hallway, those things are done on Snapchat now, right? So there's all these things. And she was telling me about her friend who was dating someone. And it turns out the kid was younger than he said he was. So she was in high school, he was in middle school. She found out she was, he was in middle school. Um, but then she was like, but I don't want to break up with him because you write to me these really beautiful messages.

• 27:09Geoff Nielson?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  And then she shows my daughter the messages. And of course, being my daughter, she's like, I think that might be AI. So then my daughter shows it to me and I'm like deciphering and I'm like, no, there's no way, you know, a middle school boy, no matter how good he is, is writing this level of prose on a constant basis. And yeah, and in fact, this kid was using chat GPT. So, I mean, there's already a lot happening with teenage girls being manipulated. I'm concerned.

• 27:36Geoff Nielson?

  Oh, my gosh. Yeah, that's like equal parts funny and terrifying there. Yeah, yeah, and sad as well.

• 27:44Geoff Nielson?

  You know, let's maybe zoom out in terms of just technology in general. We talked about a few particular use cases, but you know, just in general, when we think about how some of these technologies are starting to intersect, we're thinking about AI, we're thinking of Internet of Things, we're talking about extended reality, robotics, all that good stuff. Where are kind of the pockets right now that are most exciting to you or do you see the most promise?

• 28:06Speaker 01

  There's several. I would say when it comes to emerging technologies, I would say there's four for me that I'm really interested in. And I'm actually doing some work with Nokia as their futurist in residence. So there's four things that I'm really interested in. Obviously, on the component of AI is the concept of expanding AI into the physical world that we talked about. I actually just spent about a week, a little over a week in Japan. And I actually got to spend a lot of time with some of the, some of the nations in Japan, some of Japan's leading roboticists, like Professor Ishiguro, which a lot of people know he has like a humanoid robot that looks just like him. He's at the forefront of humanoid robots and kind of having conversations with him of why people would adopt these, where is this going?

• 28:52Speaker 01

  I spent time with another brilliant roboticist who's working on creating extra fingers and limbs for humans, right? Which sounds weird, but once he shows you what he's doing, you're like, wow, okay, this could be really interesting for the future of work. So really trying to think through like, what is the purpose of a humanoid robot? Right? Especially in a country like Japan, where you have an aging population, right? Eventually, they're not going to have enough young people to kind of help. Like, there's a whole bunch of things. There's a lot of loneliness as well. So thinking through that and seeing kind of the good and the bad there, especially, I think culturally, though, in Japan, from a religious standpoint, I would say, from a spirituality standpoint.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  They do, um, there are, um, concepts that they have about inanimate beings having a soul, where we might call a soul in, in English. You know, whether it is a statue of Buddha, or whether it's an object or a puppet. Like, that for them is very, very, uh, very ingrained in the, in culturally. So, um, so for them, robots have always been around and they've already accepted robots, not necessarily as a soul, but as beings that might have, maybe not sentience. But there, there's a different perspective, whereas we in the Western world see robots and we think Terminator most of the time. I think in, in parts like Japan, the perspective is different. So I would say definitely humanoid robots, I'm finding that fascinating.

• 30:14Geoff Nielson?

  Sorry, just, just before we leave humanoid robots, you said, I, I just want to zoom into something because you used the phrase when we think about the purpose of humanoid robots. Can, can we unpack that for a second? Like, in your mind, what is the purpose of humanoid robots? Like, what are the, you know, the best emerging use cases?

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Well, I think there's several, right? There, there's several short-term ones, which could be, uh, long-term care for the elderly when there is a need, uh, when there is a, you know, a, when there's not enough people to maybe come and help. So that was something that was obviously talked about. Definitely, there's also conversations about humanoid robots for, um, at work. I don't know if humanoid robot is the right form for certain work. You know, if it's a factory, it doesn't have to be a humanoid robot. Why does it have to be in two legs? Uh, there's a whole conversation there on that. So, so yeah, I think that there's uses. There are some uses that are kind of more edgy. Uh, I don't necessarily want to go there, but those are definitely being explored in Japan. Uh, read into that what you may, um, you know.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  So, so there are different uses. There was an interesting part of what Professor Ishiguro was presenting at the expo. So I was there at the world expo and he curated a whole pavilion called the future of life. And in it, there was like thinking maybe a hundred years into the future and how you might be able to kind of offload, uh, your consciousness eventually into humanoid robot. That's obviously not something we can do right now, but there are plenty of startups or companies thinking through how that might be possible in the future. So, you know, I don't necessarily want to be, uh, offload my, you know, my consciousness into a humanoid robot, but it could be a potential future. It's ahead of us. So, um, so I would say those are some of the things that, that I'm, that definitely I'm seeing, right?

• 31:57Speaker 01

  And then there's also that idea and the concept of, um, la- labor at home, like, you know, help, house help, all those sorts of things.

• 32:03Geoff Nielson?

  Rosie from the Jets.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Rosie, pretty much Rosie from the Jets.

• 32:06Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  So, which I wouldn't mind having a Rosie from the Jets at home, to be honest, but.

• 32:10Geoff Nielson?

  Cool. Uh, so sorry, I, I interrupted you there. Uh, what are the last two, uh, cases?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  Um, uh, no, I think that that's kind of it for, for humanoid robots for right now, what I.

• 32:19Geoff Nielson?

  Right, sorry, beyond the humanoid robot.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Oh, beyond that, um, I would say I'm really interested as well. Uh, well, spatial computing, that's kind of my background. That's where I come from. I'm excited to see that convergence of physical and virtual of being able, and when I say that, I mean, being able to see digital content in front of you. So making that virtual layer that we engage with on our phones kind of visible in front of you. Right? So eventually being able to navigate the world with some type of wearable or device or whatever it becomes that allows me to see this digital content in front of me. So annotations, wayfinding, um, you know, holograms, all these sorts of things in front of me. Uh, I, I find that really interesting. Um, so it's when the world becomes the canvas, the physical world becomes the canvas, but also becomes real estate, which is very scary.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  Um, there's, uh, someone asked me the other day, what keeps you up at night from a work perspective? Uh, and I said, it does not keep anyone else up at night or very few people in the world, but it's the concept of virtual air rights. Who owns the air around you? Who owns what's in front of you, where you can see it and with an ear shut? Because with these devices, come again, once again, you're like, why would we use these? Right? There's going to be things that are going to be put in front of you with an eyesight. You're going to hear things. So who owns that? Who regulates that? Right? I'm talking to governments right now about that concept of virtual air rights. Once we have these, you know, once AI is in the world, um, you have to start to create these sanctuaries where nothing is allowed to be put in front of you. So,

• 33:45Speaker 01

  so that is a, that's a promising in one way, because I think there's going to be a lot of things that get unlocked, like virtual fashion, like ways to express ourselves, um, being able to, you know, be present in different places at the same time. Like, I think there's going to be a lot of stuff that's unlocked there. Um, but also there's this other component of like potential things that could go really wrong that we need to get ahead of really soon. So that's what I would say. And then I'm really interested in space technology. That's where I've been kind of spending a little bit of time over the last couple of years, uh, doing some really interesting projects in that space, but thinking through, you know, How does space commerce take off? What does it mean? You know, just thinking through that. Those are areas that I'm focused on as well.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Where I'm learning, where I'm kind of becoming more knowledgeable, and I think a lot of people should be, is quantum. Not just quantum computing, but quantum sensing and quantum communications, which Nokia is actually doing really interesting work in. So, you know, I'm not an expert by any means. I do not claim to be. But it's a place where I'm spending more and more time educating myself on what it means. So, so don't ask me for any expert advice on this one, because I'm still very much a pupil.

• 34:53Geoff Nielson?

  Got it. Got it. We'll steer clear of quantum for today. So maybe, maybe coming back to spatial computing, though, because this is one, Kathy, that's been, to me, there's been a pattern, which is, we've had, and I apologize because I'm about to use a baseball analogy, and I hate baseball analogies, but it feels like we've had an awful lot of, like, at-bats.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:14Geoff Nielson?

  For spatial computing, like, every year, some, you know, whether it's Google, or Snapchat, or Microsoft, there's a new VR, there's a new AR, and, oh, this is the one. You know, there's a press tour, it's so exciting, the form factor is different, something's different, and, you know, swing and a miss, right? Or maybe that's unfair, but it hasn't taken off in any sort of, like, consumer-good way. Why is that? Like, what are these organizations getting wrong? And has anything changed in the past few years where you expect the trajectory to actually, you know, tighten, where we're actually going to, you know, we're going to make contact there and something's going to take off? Or do you expect to see in the next five to 10 years, just, you know, another dozen

• 35:57Geoff Nielson?

  of these devices that are interesting, but don't hit the mark?

• 36:00Speaker 01

  I think there's so much money now invested in what is going to replace the mobile phone, that it's not up to us. It's whatever Silicon Valley decides to bring us, which is good and bad, in some ways, you know? So I don't know if we have, I don't know. I do agree with you. I think there's been so much hype and so many hits and misses. Oh, this is the year. This is the year. I feel like every year is the year of XR, and every year I hear, like, VR is dead. Like, I feel like I hear that every single, and I've been in this industry almost a decade, like, more than a decade now. So, every year is the same thing. I would say those are some of the things. I think it's a form factor issue. I think it's the optics are not there yet. You know, what what the meta glasses do do, they bend light, so you can actually eventually have your holograms in front of you. That's really hard to do. Very few people can do that with optics right now.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  So those true holographic glasses that we that are promised, like that's further into the future. Right now. The cost is gonna be expensive. The form factor is not there. It's got to look really stylish. For us to eventually want to wear this on our faces or, you know, wear a device on us all the time. So I would think I think that I think one of the biggest issues here. That is, there's two issues here, I would say, is. The fact that in order for a lot of these devices to be out there in the wild, running at the same time. You have to have connectivity that currently does not exist. Right? 5G is not going to cut it. It's gonna be 6G, 6G plus, or you're gonna need something else. So I think that that is something that most people are not thinking about. It's like if you really are gonna have. Whatever device we end up using.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Millions of them, people wearing them on the edge, like we're talking about like edge, we talk about computing, you're talking about. You know, connectivity and levels we've never seen, so.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  So yeah, that's that's an issue. If you don't have enough. Connectivity, you're not gonna be able to power all these devices, you know, at the same time. Right? We all have our phones and we're able to navigate the world. Because there's, you know, 5G bases and there's all these sorts of things. So. I think that there's really interesting work there being done with what's called radio access networks. And putting AI compute in 5G bases to try to bring that closer to the user. But it's early days, right? So I don't think we're gonna see that connectivity till, you know, maybe five years from now. So that's one. And I would say the other question and one that I pose myself is the data centers, right? Everyone talks about data centers, data centers when it comes to AI. If you are truly going into agentic AI and then physical AI.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  What these data centers are gonna be able to do is power that future state and power these devices. Right? And at the end of the day. We are gonna need a lot of data, which requires a lot of data centers. And that requires a lot of energy. So there is that push-pull of like, do we really want this? Right? So I would say those are some of the things I would say, but yeah, it's a form factor issue. It's a fact that, you know, the devices, you have to have a problem that you need to solve. Right? Instead of like, oh, I'm finding, I'm trying, yeah. Like, what is the problem this solves for me at this point? Nothing, really.

• 38:58Geoff Nielson?

  And that's, that's exactly what I'm caught up on because, you know, you asked this question, which I think is what a lot of the Silicon Valley firms are asking, which is what's going to replace the mobile phone? And to me, like, that is such a non, like, consumer-facing question. That's such like a business question. It's like, how do we make more money? Like, how do, like, how do we, yeah, solution in search of a problem? Like, and to me, I'm gonna rant here for a second, and maybe I'm totally wrong.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, but things do. This is interesting.

• 39:26Geoff Nielson?

  Like, to me, like, Steve Jobs never approached it like, you know, I need something to replace the iMac, therefore I'm gonna create the iPhone. It's more about like, what could we unlock by people having, you know, all the power of a computer in the palm of their hands? Because you have to start thinking about the use case, the killer app. And I just, to me, so much of what we've seen is, is missing that. And coming back to it again, like, that's why I'm sort of excited about, you know, the Google Beam stuff, but I don't know, that, that's the test I use when I look at some of these things is like, what, why should I, as a consumer, be excited versus just like, you know, and I, I work with an awful lot of tech geeks and they're like, the tech is

• 40:08Geoff Nielson?

  exciting to them, but like, come on, are you ever gonna get to scale just because the tech itself is exciting?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I fall into those groups, right? I speak in a silo, like, I'm surrounded by tech people and we usually are speaking in silos, I'm like, oh my gosh, the field of view, who cares? I don't think the consumer cares about the field of view, right? What's the problem that's solving for them? So I will say that, I, I do think there is a level of hope, because it is Johnny Ive, who's being brought into OpenAI with his startup company and building something. So I think there is some level of hope of like, oh, it might be a great UX and a great experience, right? So we'll have to see, I mean, I, I have no insider information, I don't know what he's building, right? So we'll have to see, we'll have to see there. We've got, you know, obviously, companies like Humane and Rabid that presented ideas and concepts on what could replace the mobile phone, and they failed, right? So I'm not sure.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  I, I will say, from an anthropological perspective, let's say this, and a technologically, technological history perspective, there is a documentary that I think should be required watching for anyone in tech. It's called General Magic. I'm not sure if you watched it. General Magic. So right, it came, okay, this documentary came out right around the time that Magic Leap had their massive layoff. I was one of the people at Magic Leap that got laid off. And this documentary called General Magic comes out that has nothing to do with Magic Leap. But it is about a company that had the idea and the concept of the smartphone before anyone else did. And it failed. It raised a lot of money. It ended up failing. But a lot of the

• 41:40Speaker 01

  people that worked at General Magic went on to Apple and were part of the core team that created the smartphone. Right? So it is that early beginning of something that was not solving a problem for anyone. But eventually, the basis of what was created did become the smartphone. So I recommend it to anyone. General Magic. It is a fantastic watch when it comes to tech.

• 42:02Geoff Nielson?

  Cool. No, I'll check that out. I wanted to ask you, you're, I sense you're kind of an optimist when it comes to this stuff. You're always excited about the next thing. Tech is exciting to you. I want to flip that on its head a little bit. Is there anything right now that you're seeing in tech that you think is BS? Or that you think is like way overhyped?

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Hmm, that is way overhyped. Gosh, what am I a skeptic on? That's the good question. I remain so positive, like, I feel like I need to remain positive for my kids. In some ways, I'm like all a tech optimist. I'm not a tech, I'm not utopian. Okay, I'm not utopian in that sense. It's not all popcorn and unicorns. I'm more protopian, which is like, you know, technology in society, working together for the betterment of society. So what am I, I don't know, I mean, maybe this is what I'll say, is I do think that in the current state of general large language models and generative AI, it is incredible technology. AI will disrupt the world. I don't know if just LLMs are going to disrupt the world. I think it's a bigger conversation about computer vision and a lot of

• 43:05Speaker 01

  different parts of AI, not just LLMs. So I do see some of the valuations that baffle me, that make me feel like, is how is this sustainable in the long term? So that's one. I think that we, people are raising towards data center construction at a really fast speed, without thinking about the, you know, the climate aspect of it, of you can't just continue building all these data centers. Find other solutions on the way to power these things. So I would say those things. I am concerned about some of the things that I'm seeing with replacing

• 43:42Speaker 01

  Human connection with robots or AI that worries me immensely. You know, I still, yeah, like, there, there's actually a survey that was done recently. It said that a lot of Gen Z would marry an AI. You know, sample data, whatever, like, there's bias there, of course. Like, I don't think all of Gen Z would say that, or like, half of them would say that.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  But, but still, like, things like that concern me, concern me when it comes to like, if we lose what truly makes us human, like, what does this mean at the end of the day? There's also a race, I think, to using AI agents on a constant basis. I'll give you, and I'll go back to the dating example, because it's obviously where I'm spending a lot of the time thinking through how to disrupt the sector. Is like, if my AI agent is dating your AI agent, and we actually meet in the physical world, but there's no connection, like, you know, or I don't like how you smell, like, something like that, right? If it's a biometric thing, and I meet you, my agent says you're perfect for me, but then I meet you and it's just like, I think there's something that we still, we still to this day cannot offload to technology. Right? We might one day. Right? But I think right now, there's still an element to humanity.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  So maybe, maybe there is a premium to being human, right? I, I heard Gary Vaynerchuk the other day saying that in the future, we're going to pay people to walk with us, like, to go take a walk with us. And that stuck with me. It's, it, it, it, it stung to think about that that's something we're going to do in the future, but potentially, because there is going to be a premium on human connection.

• 45:09Geoff Nielson?

  Interesting.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:10Geoff Nielson?

  The, the, the, the dating piece is really interesting, and I'll come back to it for a second. I mean, and, and, look, I, I was fortunate enough, I'll use the word fortunate, to have found a partner before, like, the age of, like, the dating apps. But I feel like anyone I talk to right now, like, has only negative things to say about, like, online dating. And even the same apps, and I, I'm, yeah, we, we all know what the apps are, but even the same apps that 10 years ago, I feel like had a better reputation. I don't know if they've changed or expectations have changed, but, you know, it, it, it feels right for disruption, doesn't it? Like, is that your experience?

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So as a, you know, as a student of life and as someone that wants to disrupt that sector, I'm spending an insane amount of time looking at it, right? What works? You know, this is the thing, and I go back to this, like, if we as humans date in 3D, why are we still dating in 2D in these apps? Like, I'm making a judgment on a picture, like, hmm, is that what really happens? I mean, you make a judgment in person, but there at least there's a volumetric component of it, and it's all your senses involved in, you know, judging the person in front of you, right? I'm seeing several things. I'm seeing a revival of in-person. So a lot more speed dating, a lot more social happy hours for singles. Like, I'm seeing a lot of that. Running clubs are hot, right, for meeting people. There's kind of this resurgence in that in-person, which I think is great, because that's how people used to meet.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  But on the other side, I see my kids, who are Gen Alpha, starting to date. You know, they're starting their dating journeys at the same time as I'm going back into the, you know, into the field. So it's interesting to watch how they're dating and how they're dating in gaming spaces, right? How they're using social media, like Snapchat and things to date, all these sorts of things. I personally believe that the solution to solving, you know, the swipe fatigue is not more swipes. I think it's about interactivity and presence. Because when you're able to do an activity, like a joint experience with someone, you learn something about them, right? And you can make a better judgment as to, is this the right partner for me, or no? So one of the things that I was proposing is creating more gaming and dating startups,

• 47:19Speaker 01

  especially when you talk about Gen Alpha growing up and starting to date. If they can go into these apps and, yes, see the profile and stuff like that, but maybe go and do a virtual bowling date before they meet in the physical world, virtual cooking, a virtual escape room, kind of having that experience where they're actually engaging with someone in a 3D form and kind of doing an experience together. I think that will give you a more informed decision than five pictures, right? And a profile that was created with AI, so.

• 47:43Geoff Nielson?

  Well, and I really like that, and, you know, the idea of, like, Gaming, dating, I really like. Like, I like the idea that dating doesn't have to take center stage, that it's connected to something else. And in some ways, like, that's like the original form. Like, you know, the old fashioned form of dating is, you know, you meet people when you're, you know, going out with friends or dancing or whatever. But I guess that like, the part that concerns me, and I know I'm not alone here, is that, you know, if you're Tinder, and I'll pick on Tinder, it can be any of them, it feels like you have a perverse incentive to actually keep people on your platform and not help them find a partner and get off of it, right? And so if it only exists, and it has a financial incentive to keep you in this swiping pattern, like, isn't that less healthy than, oh, we

• 48:28Geoff Nielson?

  happened to meet because we were playing, you know, Minecraft or whatever, and we have this shared hobby where I was able to meet someone like-minded?

• 48:38Speaker 01

  There's the missed opportunity, is that, let's say you match with someone in this app through this, through the gaming aspect, right? Why not, after you match and you start creating your relationship, can you start creating kind of like, almost like, an album of your relationship, a virtual, like, a virtual timeline of your relationship? I think there's ways to be able to use this technology for good and for increasing intimacy. So one thing that I'm launching is called the Tech Intimacy Scale, on how to use technology to make your relationships better. I'm starting with dating, but then eventually it's going to be parenting, and eventually it's going to be at work, right? Because I do think that, right now, you cannot divorce technology from your day to day, right? And yes, you can use it to make your relationships better, or you can make it down to level one, where

• 49:19Speaker 01

  it's like isolation, or you're like, completely, you know, using technology instead of engaging with humans. So I think that there's going to be a variation. I think what a lot of these app companies, and the ones that I'm talking to, I'm like, it's not about adding more AI. It's not about that. At the end of the day, what people are craving is connection, and presence, and being seen. And if you add more AI, and have your AI agent, and my AI agent, I don't feel seen, right? So I think that there needs to be a level of gaming. Let's be honest, everyone's playing games on these apps, right? So why don't we play the right type of game? You know, and add these types of experiences. And then why don't you, why don't you transition when some, when a couple meets, starting to create that, that kind of like virtual, you know, virtual photo album of sorts.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Let's call it that. I'm still, I'm still working through that, what that means, but ways to kind of incentivize that relationship. But it doesn't have to be like meet someone on the app and get off the app. It could be meet someone on the app and then how do you grow that? You know, and use the tools, the technology allows you to have to make your relationship better. So, so yeah, it's something that I'm spending a lot of time thinking through and something that I'm going to be kind of like launching pretty soon because I feel strongly about this because I'm living through it and because I'm seeing my kids starting to go into this world.

• 50:32Geoff Nielson?

  I, I, I, I love that. And, and to me, it ties together so much of what we've talked about today, which is that human connection and intimacy, like these are the reasons that technology is there at all at the end of the day. And it feels like if you get that right, there's so much to be gained for, you know, for individuals, for people. And if you get that wrong, then, you know, who care, you know? We either end up in a, you know, in a state of apathy or, you know, worse off than we were before. So I, I, I love that message for, you know, individuals or even for, you know, technology leaders listening to this. Kathy, I wanted to say thank you so much for joining today. This has been super insightful and I really appreciated our conversation.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Thank you. I love being here. And yeah, I'm glad we took some turns that we weren't expecting, but I think it's, it's going to be useful to folks out there.

• 51:19Geoff Nielson?

  Absolutely.