Jun 17, 2021

Sly Lee talks to Dan and Lee about his work around VR and AR. We discuss how humans are emerging into the future, moving past SaaS, Mobile Apps, and Fintech and towards the human connection. We explore Sly's thoughts around Science fiction being just reality ahead of schedule and if 42 is really the answer to life the universe and everything.

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TRANSCRIPT For this episode of The AI in Education Podcast
Series: 4
Episode: 7

This transcript was auto-generated. If you spot any important errors, do feel free to email the podcast hosts for corrections.

Okay. So, thanks uh thanks for joining us on this podcast and we're really excited. Today we have uh Sly Lee from Emerge IO joining us. Now, Sly, I don't even know where to begin. We're trying to paint the picture of your uh your experience and the work you do. So, I'm going to pull out a couple of things that just stand out for me. Uh you're a Forbes 30 under 30 recipient in 2018. You're advisor to the hydrris. We're going to talk more about that. Uh the world you're participating world economic forum for global future councils for AR and VR and and what you're doing at emerge.io is just simply uh there's only one word for it. It's groundbreaking. You know, it's kind of really doing something that I've never heard of or seen before. So, welcome to the podcast, Sly Le.
Thank you so much, Lee and Dan. It's a pleasure for me to be here today.
Look, it it's a pleasure for us. You got to uh really really take out is on a new journey. But I guess what I wanted to start with because the connection to you, Sly, is through one of our previous um interviewees, Michaela Jade, who I know you know because she introduced us to you. So why don't we just start there? How how did you and Michaela Jay come to cross paths?
Yeah, Michaela and I met at a World Economic Forum event in Dubai uh two years ago before the pandemic because we both sit on this council for it's called the Global Futures Council which sounds really futuristic for for AR and are. But it's a lot of fun. What it really is is this very interdisciplinary team of uh people around the world that are in academia and industry um that are in research and you know with products in market as well just spread across the entire swath of people working on ARVR technology and coming together and really asking some hard questions and seeing how we can push the industry forward and also what are some considerations that we should be thinking about that maybe not everyone is thinking about um on the race to just develop the tech as fast as possible. And so we met there and we really actually bonded pretty deeply on apart from the our council working that we both were park rangers.
That's right.
Starting out she was a park ranger you know in Australia and I was a park ranger a scientific ranger in in Machai in Hawaii years ago. It was my first and only official job actually and so we bonded over over the those those days and
obviously the work that she's doing and really bringing, you know, these cultural stories and the aunties, as they call them, um,
into and in and the stories and capturing the stories and displaying them and and these experiences using ARVR is really fantastic. It's it's actually one of the the best examples I've seen of really telling human stories and humanizing um the tech.
That's um look, it's amazing. I I agree with what you're saying, Michaela's work is is amazing and I think what we really want to talk a bit about is sort of that humanizing a technology um the growth of AIV. I'd love to get into that as we talk more but I guess a really good place to start would be maybe if you can talk to us a bit about what is emerge io what led to its creation and kind of what was the the moment that that got you down that path and and then we can talk a bit about actually what it is that you're building.
Yeah, sure. I'm happy to do that and it's and it's just emerged. You don't have to you don't have to mention the IO part.
Cool. emerge.com was taken. So we we had to take emerge.io as our website. But um got it.
The name actually stems from the desire to really elevate ourselves past our current limitations as humans to emerge out of our you know where we currently um uh are and what we're doing and what we're capable of doing um to something greater. And I met my two co-founders Isaac Castro Mauricio Tran at this Google and NASA funded program in 2015 in the Bay Area in the US. And that was a very freeing experience for me because we were tasked with creating companies that would just have a really really big social impact in the world. They said a billion people in 10 years was was the exact metrics that we were supposed to hit.
Um and when you're asked a question that big, it really forces you to think past, you know, what you could develop and and monetize very quickly, past, you know, um SAS, past a mobile app. not that there there's anything wrong with those things past you know a fintech um website and so what we found that we were very passionate in even though Ezek from Spain is from Ecuador I'm from the US my parents immigrants from Singapore was this human connection this relationships that we care very deeply about people that we care very deeply about that we cannot physically connect with because of distance and I think there's something there with the immigrant journey the fact that all three of us are immigrants, first generation. We're just really far apart from people that we care about.
Yeah.
And you know, this was this was six years ago. This is before all of the issues with with fake news and social media and um we felt that technology was really not working for us and was really driving us apart. And we said, could we create the next paradigm for human connection? And that was a very audacious statement, but it did all the metrics for our incubator. And when we said, what would be the next uh stepwise change in in human connection. We thought that it would be when we were able to incorporate our sense of touch. I think I have a very controversial perhaps view in the ARVR industry is in that I do not think that ARVR in its current form or manifestation will be a stepwise change. I don't think it'll be a paradigm shift. I think it's incremental and I actually I would argue that if it would have been a paradigm shift, we would have already seen that. You can buy an Oculus Rift for $299 now and it's fantastic. So an Oculus Quest 2 Um,
but yet we've not seen kind of the massive adoption. Yeah, you have one in front of you, Le, so do I. Um, and I think that's because we underestimate the power and need for a sense of touch is just so human. And so that was the vision that we set as emerge. And I think a lot of people that might see our website might misconrue the actual goal being very different than what you might perceive. Because this dream I'm telling you of overcoming distance and time to feel present and connected, it's not We're not the first ones to think of this. It's it's been conceptualized 60 70 years ago at least. But the way we're approaching it is very different. We think we think that the people that have attempted this in the past have run into a lot of uh very insurmountable challenges because people have been asking the wrong question. I think it's really important to understand the question you're asking, especially, you know, as as the focus of this podcast is on education. You got to ask the right question. And I'm a huge fan of sci-fi. There's a lot that can be learned about sci-fi. One of our former one of our late advisor said me said sci-fi is just reality ahead of schedule.
One of my favorite sci-fi books.
That is awesome.
It's so true. It's so true. It's just reality ahead of schedule.
And um just like in the book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the answer to the life, the universe, and everything is 42. And that really confounded the scientist that asked the question because they said that doesn't even make sense. What? And you know, the purist said that's the qu that's the answer to the question you asked. You you should clarify your question. And so in our scenario, people the question that people have been asking in the past with regard to the sense of touch has been how do you replicate reality? How do you feel fabric? How do you feel a sword? How do you feel a bullet or a punch in the face? And this field is called haptics. And I have an aversion to the word haptics because not there's there's anything wrong with haptic companies or haptic research. It just is a very different question. Um and the question that we've been asking is how do you use touch to convey emotion. How do you use touch combined with visuals and audio to convey emotion? Touch conveys information. And actually, I would just say that the the the history of human communication is about trans transmitting information. You know, from the, you know, pre-Telegraph times to the first landline to the video phone to now ARVR, you're transmitting information. And the most complex type of information that we're interested in transmitting is people's emotions. And If you think about it, it's actually very difficult for us to do even in the real world. And that's that's pretty key because we're not trying to replace the real world experience. We're just trying to augment it or enhance it when you just can't be with someone that you deeply care about. So the vision that I often paint of imagine reaching across the table right now and holding the hand of your grandmother. That is powerful because of all of the past experience that brings. It's powerful because of the the bond that you have with your grandmother and the time that you've spent together and what that emot connection means it's not that we're so interested in replicating her exact texture of her skin, but it's about you understanding how she feels today and then you also transmitting how you're feeling today to her. Is she feeling anxious? Is she feeling happy? Is she feeling sad? She feeling lonely like what is she feeling today? And a lot of the issues that we have today in society with just loneliness or social wellness stems from that lack of understanding. So the goal of emerge is to overcome distance and time to build a new paradigm for human connection to build your ritual and you have it and we're hopeful that now um that we can build that.
Wow. That well that that's that sounds fantastic and you know it you know it it I suppose it's really inspiring and and really taking it to that next level because when I'm thinking of all of the interactions you know you you both mentioned then about Oculus and you know I've got a hollow lens at home here and and you can see the edges where it's getting better. You know the the latest version of Oculus for example is phenomenal fidelity in picking things up and being able to move virtual objects, but there's no haptics, right? So, so tell us a bit more about that that technology and that journey you've been on because and and what actually, you know, the emerge does. How does that how does that try to narrow that gap?
Yeah, it's actually quite a hard challenge to to explain what emerge does.
I've been the videos online and I've le and I have been blown away. So, so on the podcast, this is going to be phenomenal. Good luck. Thank you. And and I was going to say it's actually even harder once you remove another sense. So now we're just going to use audio to try to describe what
Absolutely.
often I find I find challenged it's almost like explaining a rainbow to a blind person that's never never had vision before. It's quite difficult but but I'll attempt it anyway. Um what Emerge actually does, we have a physical device that creates the sense of touch midair using sound energy and We're able to shape and sculpt that sound energy above and actually around the device to make you feel sensations that are mapped onto a visual component. We really like augmented reality, even non-wearable augmented reality scenarios, but right now we're limited to to sort of VR, these kind of headmounted displays, HMDs, if you will.
And what it feels like is if you've ever gone to a concert, probably pre-COVID, and you stood front row on, you know, in front of the stage and you felt the energy from that speaker. We can leverage that mechanical energy wave that sound is, but it's just much higher precision and much higher fidelity on the order of millimeters instead of you feeling it across your whole body and sort of this diffuse pattern. We can just really channel that and it it's due to the very complex algorithms that our brilliant team of physicists have created over the last six years. And the beauty of of using a technology like this is that it's a non-wearable form factor. You do not have to wear anything on your hands or your body for it to work. So, it's very intuitive. We've tested this with, you know, kids, you know, under five years old up to people in their 80s. Actually, literally, I just tested it. I just brought a system home to my grandma in Mississippi this past week and she's 84 and she tried it instantly. There was no there's no learning curve. And that's the beauty of having a form factor like this where it's just a device that sits on a table and it does the work for you and you don't have to have any um coaching or training before beforehand.
Wow.
So, so, so if I can kind of even as you explain it and as I watch the videos, I'm still going, "Yeah, okay." But kind of how does that work? So, if I kind of put it into context of an an experience I might want to seek out in a virtual environment. I still got my Oculus headset. I'm in a virtual world. I see a a virtualized experience. That might be a person kind of in your case, maybe a person that you want to interact with. And then the device that you've built generates a soundwave that makes me feel a particular touch. or experience from them. So, as you said, might be the hand touching, but it could be if I was playing a video game, the punch to the face. I might feel a sound wave that gives me a feeling of someone kind of touching my face at that moment that's linked up. Is that kind of when you talk about the the physical experience of it? It's it's that sort of intimate connection of a a virtual experience connected to a physical uh manifestation of that experience.
There there is this feedback loop to where our device is constantly communicating with headset or whatever visual display you happen to be using. So at the moment that you should feel something, you do and then all of our call it feelings library is able to create the appropriate sensation on what you're feeling because that's another aspect of it. Now I would say that we're very focused on the whole, you know, design by the 8020 rule. We are really focusing on the user's hands because you interact with the world mostly through your hands, not all the time. Um, and so we are very focused on the handtohand interaction. focused on games in which you can use your hands which are a lot of them. Um puzzles, things that you can do with your friends and family. Um and the concept of the real time, that's what makes it magical. Um there's actually two things that that are really key to make that make our our product experience really magical. Number one is that it's social inherently. We we've spent a lot of time and we really elevate and completely focus on the social experience, the multi-user experience if you use gaming parliament.
And the is that it's real time. Um, real-time communication is just so powerful. We believe um it's what you do in the real world. If you're at a party, you're hanging out with your friends and family, it's what we're doing now. And there's a place for non-realtime or asynchronous experiences. But for sure, the the killer use case is this synchronous real-time experience where you're able to hang out with someone, interact through touch, play games, solve a puzzle, and just be with what we call your inner circle. And that's actually probably maybe a third pillar that we've really design the product around. Whereas a lot of these companies in the metaverse, I'm big fans of Roblox and Minecraft and and Fortnite as as many people are. Um, there's not been a really good solution for people that you deeply care about. You know, those those companies I just mentioned are are really great at the whole MMO style gameplay. Connect with a massive community, connect with anyone in the world, really connect with random people
and meet new friends, which is which is great. And I have met friends on those various platforms. But what about those times where you want to connect with someone that you really deeply care about that you're invested in. We use this word bonds a lot at emerge because bonds are different than being present. You can be present with a stranger, but bonds these are pe these are relationships that you've established over many decades oftentimes and you've invested a lot in and you will invest anything to keep those bonds strong. And when we think about the concept of the inner circle, this is actually backed up by a lot of a lot of research um done by many scientists over over the last many dec There's this one book that I just finished reading called Together by the current US surgeon general V.C Murthy and he cites that in the real world we spend a whopping 60% of our time and energy hanging out and um keeping those relationships of what he calls our inner circle. Often only five people and max of 15. And so when we read that book sort of concurrently as we've been building uh our our user experience called Emerge Home. We were just pretty delighted in that everything's sort of lighting up now towards uh what we're building.
I got to ask you because it's um you know you talked about you started this journey I think you said five years ago or thereabouts um pre you know pre-COVID pre- a world that we live in today and you were dealing with issues as as you said as an immigrant yourself uh and having family in other parts of the world but co's clearly had a you know major impact on the way we all connect and communicate and I'm kind of keen to get your thoughts on what's starting to emerge as this new world order of you know that we that that remote connection is as good as real connection. We do all our calls through video calls. We don't kind of think about working in the office anymore. Kind of given where you're you're working in the technology area you're experiencing. What's your thoughts on kind of the world that seems to be emerging out of COVID now and the way we think about personal and human connection? I'm guessing you might have a pretty strong viewpoint on what's important and what's not. I think for sure that um it's pretty well established by most people looking at the space and sort of this future of work specifically and sort of return to uh a society where we're able to actually leave our homes and um and go about our our lives that we used to before co that and that there will be no return to reality pre-COVID sort of this
new way of living and doing work and hang out and and having experiences. We've seen that for sure. in our our specific vertical and the use case that we've been targeting and that um there is this fantastic return to the physical world and I just went and visited my grandma last week and we all got back vaccinated and it was it was amazing experience and there's nothing that can replace that I don't think and we're not trying to either but I do think and I've seen many people have seen this willingness to adopt a new new technologies and adopt new behaviors to just supplement um that inerson experience I think that it is actually needed if we're going to solve some of these really big issues that we're seeing around loneliness and disconnection.
There's a stat that came out I think even before the pandemic I think it's just gone up since that 60% of baby boomers 70% of millennials 80% of Gen Zers feel lonely and I think a lot of that is the lack of connection with their inner circles but also just being able to hang out and see other people.
Some of this I think will be solved with the return to um society as people get vaccinated in certain parts of the world, definitely not all parts of the world as we all know. Um with it really raveraging India now, which is very sad, but I think that technology does play a role in the ability to augment some of these I think are considered secondary impacts of the pandemic um that do plague a lot of us.
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, but it was because I what prompted me to think about it was as you were just talking then is, you know, I got kids. I got 14-year-old and 11-y old and they play Fortnite and play Roblox and play Minecraft. And to a certain degree, and actually Valerant and some other ones now, but to a certain degree, like my kids, I think you use the phrase that we kind of evolve in our mechanisms for interaction and and to them that is how they interact. They the digital interaction for them is so normal and so natural and so much and akin to physically meeting someone. Whereas, you know, for people maybe of my generation or others, it's kind of it's different and it's not the same. But as you say, But we we are seem to be evolving as a society where digital interactions like the ones you're building and others, you know, that kind of blending of the two are almost normalized and are just as acceptable as any other form of communication. I guess that's kind of where you're seeing things. Yeah,
the uh Yeah, I think that's a really good point on on especially younger people feeling that normalized experience of meeting people online and just hanging out online. What we've seen when in building our product is pretty interesting in that we've been able to redefine some of these social norms. So I think some of the social norms that you're talking about come naturally with maybe the younger generation and specifically with the sense of touch we have encountered some challenges when we you know at first we tried to do all the normal things that you would think about okay let's do a virtual high five let's do a keyboard etc let's do the kind of things you would naturally think about but it it kind of fell flat it was sort of disappointing and I think that's because Once again, we were trying to recreate reality just like many people before us had tried to do. But once we reframed the question and said, how do we just use this in a way to convey emotion and and create new UXUI standards? That's where it got really interesting. And we're starting to see that actually within our user base already where the social norms are being rewritten in in VR specifically, just where we're focused on on currently just because there are a very large number of concurrent users in VR. Um whereas things that might be seen as weird or even taboo in the real world, such as holding hands, right, in public are actually like very common place in VR. And I just started noticing that within my own circles and and people that I game with. And I think that's because I think I I think part of it is this sense of this connection that is sort of seeping into this into this um you know, use case and platform. And people have a channel now to express that emotion and and people are just willing to try something new and not afraid to look where the social norms are being rewritten and so by reimagining the sense of touch and a new language of touch it can I think it there's a lot of potential there
yeah no this you know this is phenomenal and it really is taking our entire thought process of that humanity humane aspect I suppose to the next level um and and the the effect of technology on humanity is you know really driving that in in a lot of your stories so sly thanks for sharing that one interesting thing when you mention the feed back loop earlier where you said about the way that you know you were adding to that feedback loop. One thing I'd be interested in as well cuz as you were explaining say about your 80-year-old grandparent and I'm thinking about my family and things you know and and you also mentioned about the emotions and transferring those you know that I've used myself with kids um you know the emotional APIs you know the AI cognitive services elements of of obviously in my context the Microsoft platform but there's plenty out there. I was wondering how you know If you if I was say touching the hand of my mom who who's in the UK for example and then the feedback loop of possibly adding in or your thought process on adding in digital emotions into that handshake or holding that person's hand so you can feel or know if they're anxious or you know how how what are your thoughts on that digital translation into the physical in terms of some of the artificial things you've got like cognitive services.
Yeah, that word translation is probably a really good one to think about when we say creating new language of touch. We it's not just, you know, all fluff anymore. We actually have built a few experiences that actually have realized that translation of what you expect to feel and then how does it make you feel whenever you do reach out and feel it.
Um, some of what we've we've done is borrowed once again from sci-fi movies. Like I'm a huge Star Wars fan. Um, and imagine feeling the force. Imagine that concept of feeling someone's force. Maybe each person has their own force signature. And maybe the closer your hands get to one another, you can actually feel that sensation. Maybe it changes depending on how they're feeling that day. Maybe we get that that data from biometric data, you know, from their their smart arch or what have you or from other some other source of um,
you know, input. And so we're pretty early in that regard, but we've we've started building some of those use cases and just testing them like see does it make sense. And um we have been surprised that um there is something there that people are willing to reimagine the social contract of just something as simple as a handshake and instead the ability to share energy with one another and feel that sensation. And I think we're still early yet, but there's a lot of great research like David Eagleman has done in the past of your body and your mind's ability to map certain data points or certain sensations to certain types of information and emotions. And so that's where we're ultimately going emerge home.
Wow.
What you know what what fascinates me Dan and S listening to you is you're talking about things that in general conversations most people kind of go I don't like how do you even think of that? It doesn't make sense. It doesn't we don't do that. That's not how it works. But you're just thinking beyond what is how we experience things today. And I love the fact that you are kind of just not being constrained by you know fact that you know today HMD headsets are kind of limited in terms of things like field of view and so on. So, you know, it's not really fully immersive, but we'll get there. And I kind of is that the viewpoint you have when you look at technologies like VR and MR and AR, XR and and other technologies, they have the touch things, the the the emotional APIs. You kind of believe it'll get there in time. It'll it'll to your sci-fi energy. We're just we're just playing catch-up to where to reality where reality is heading towards for us.
Yeah, timing is actually is veryant. important especially for a startup like like us who who do not have
infinite budgets. Um and I think that has been something that to be honest we were previously quite unsure of when we started building merge in 2015 you know that was if you if you remember that wave of VR and AR it was it was really hyped up. Yeah. We we really were cautious and we never you know I think in that time you could put the word VR in any company name and you get funded but we never we never did because we just didn't believe in the hype and we knew knew that it was going to take a little while. Um, and so I think two things that we knew needed to happen for us to be successful that were sort of out of our hands is number one, um, people people's willingness to adopt technology that the ARVR technology is in mass market specifically consumer because that's where we're passionate about creating a new paradigm for human connection.
Yeah.
You know that we can use in our own home and the second was that are people then uh how do they perceive the product that we're building and will that be is a nice to have or a need to have the sense of touch specifically in human connection. I think we definitely uh had a we benefit from a silver lining of the pandemic in that it really elevated that that as a critical need whereas people just we've been locked in our homes now for you know a year and a half and so I think we've been very lucky that the timing is right for our specific product.
Our strategy had been to date to build a lot of the core technology to just make it work. So there was a lot of the there were a lot of technological challenges for us to get here and then our goal was to just try to understand timing and when would make sense to launch um when's the launch date? Tell us tell the listeners when's the launch date? We all excited.
The I am I am excited about launching our product now that we've been essentially called into the market now. I mean last year during the pandemic as you might imagine we just got few we we were just uh overloaded with requests on all of our social platforms for a consumer product. And that surprised us to be honest because um we didn't have a lot of marketing out there. Even our our current website's a little bit outdated. And so the soonest I can I can mention about when we'll launch something is that um very soon our website will be updated. And if you follow our website emerge.io um you can sign up because we believe in uh building community and engaging our community and we will be starting to put efforts to build that community really really soon um ahead of when we actually launch the product.
Fantastic.
It's very exciting to see. Yeah, I look uh I for one I mean I'm you know I'm playing with VR and myself I enjoy it. I think it's a really transformative experience and it has come so far in the last five years. So I'm really excited to see how technology like yours is going to just further that whole experience to create that immersivity that kind of that depth of experience that you get emotion you get from that. uh from that technology. But I have to ask you as well because I'm conscious of time, but I'm also really interested because you talk about the AR VR piece and how important that's been for the development of the emerge platform, but you're also involved in the hydros work the which if I if I've understood that one, maybe I get you to explain it, but this idea that how do we bring the oceans to life at those that can't see them so that you can care about them and have a sense of investment in the future of the oceans? Is is do you want is that like a a good analogy or do you want to correct me and tell me what it really is all that.
Yeah, I'm happy to talk about the hydra a little bit. So, um this was actually work that I had been doing while a park ranger in my park ranger days. Um
really seeing part of my job was to monitor underwater assets like coral reefs and fish and benthic ecosystems. And we had very primitive tools to do that. I I literally went underwater with a measuring tape. We had like a set of measuring tapes and we would just go under want to measure like
the length of a coral branch or some or the and trying to measure the complexity of the bottom of the ocean. And it just kind of flabbergasted me and I had always been really passionate around photography. And around 2013 2014 is when um Autodesk had put out this 3D capture software and photoggramometry really started getting big again. And um I was lucky enough to be part of a project that 3D map and the underwater USS Arizona battleship in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. And that project used lighter sonar photoggramometry. And when I was invited to be a part of that, um, it just really opened my eyes up to the potential of some of these technologies that I had not been up until then exposed to. And then I just was so fascinated with the space where I I took some of it even further past the project to really bring it into my field which was around coral reefs. And that's where the hydrris was born. Once we created I would say like probably the world's first very high res resolution 3D model of a coral. That's when we got funding from Autodesk from Carl Bass directly from his office was really excited about what we were doing. The former CEO of Autodesk. That's where some of these other tech companies started to get involved like Lenovo and Google as well. And the mission of the hydrris is we have this tagline we call open access oceans and it was conceived at the time where you know open data sets um and open sourcing was really um really big and I think still is. And we just wanted to really replicate that underwater because I would say from a conceptual perspective, the ability to understand what's going on underwater is even more confined because of the physical limitations of being underwater. And at the time, our our competitor, if you will, um was Google Street View because they had this $2 million, you know, underwater torpedo camera that they would go and do this massive like awesome work, you know, capturing the entire reef. But we had the opposite approach of we wanted to democra that ability and give people the power, especially citizen scientists, to map their own reefs in their backyard. And so that's why we were really obsessed with single camera point source, you know, methodologies. And we we just developed it and worked with a bunch of different organizations and universities around the world to develop it and for them to continue it. The the work now has evolved after I stepped down and and hired our fantastic CEO, Dr. Erica Wolsey there. She's a Nat Geo explorer the the world's first natural geographic virtual explorer um and just very decorated as a as a diver as a researcher um has continued the efforts and evolved it much farther than I could have um on my own which I'm I feel very proud of and now the work has continued through the Smithsonian's digitization program they've worked with them to digitize their their coral um artifacts they've created an award-winning VR film called Immerse they've done over 1 million virtual dives with that with that title and now they're also leading virtual they're leading research with the virtual human interaction lab at Stanford and so I've been really excited to see that work continue and we talked about timing earlier I think we were too early honestly in 2014 2013 some of the models that we were creating were a billion polygons and there was no viewer that could even handle that we tried to push it into VR but there was no headset at that time that could that that could actually display that now is actually the perfect time for the hydrris and the work that they're doing there. So, I'm really proud of everything that's happening there.
It's it's an amazing area. And the reason I ask is I mean we here at Microsoft and and you know my role in particular, we have a a really big focus on AI for sustainability and how does technology impact some of the planetary scale challenges we have whether it be about biodiversity, sustainability, environmental management, and then you know some of the human and healthcare issues as well. So, it's just amazing to see that you're kind of bringing those two two ideas together and and creating something and and you know, leveraging your skills and your capabilities. I I guess I know we kind of we probably need to start think about wrapping up, but I want to get back to a little bit back to emerge emerge emerge not emerge.io and um and kind of where you want to go with this. So, I'm thinking about kind of where do you see the next the next 10 years of of human and technology evolution? How are we going to start growing together as devices? And I say that in that kind of, you know, air quotes way because I I feel like what you're doing is you're building this kind of I won't say the singularity but this idea that technology and humans can work in coexistence. I'd love to get your thoughts on what's happening in the next 10 years and and what should we be uh excited about uh a company like Emerge Building.
That's a really great question Lee. Um and that that coexistence concept and also it's pretty it's pretty pretty funny that that you mentioned the singularity as well um in that I met my co-founders at this program called Singularity University.
I think that humans have always coexisted with technology and we we've had to use technology to survive and evolve. Um you if you just think back to when we were just roaming the landscape and eating and surviving and hunting, I do think that the design of technology needs to be very carefully considered in that maybe 10 years ago, we had this mindset just as a society just progress as fast as possible. And I think we've seen a lot of the ramifications negatively that happens when you just move fast and break things too quickly
um without thinking about how that impacts people and especially um people that are less fortunate that might have less access to resources as well. Um you've seen that now with you know fake news and and AIS that are being built that are very prejudice one way. the other but I am also an optimist in that um I think for us to solve a lot of these challenges that we've that we've created for ourselves mostly we we will need to use technology
and design it very carefully um especially in this field of AR VR AI um there I think hold the most challenges from an ethics perspective and that's that's a subject that was my favorite subject growing up and it still is
and just how we build the technologies and when we think about access as well. I think it definitely starts with with access and um I am hopeful that on about specifically the mission that we're that we're building at emerge and what the next 10 years looks like in terms of connecting people. We I think a lot we share the same mission as a lot of companies to be honest. If you think about connecting people that could easily be the mission of you know a telecom company for I think it is you know for most of them
but
true
and and social media companies um but we really hope that 10 years from now we're able to deliver a lot of the promise of human connection and those bonds and just kind of get out of the way. I think the best technologies just sort of get out of the way. This
phrase of ambient computing I think was coined I don't remember how long maybe a decade ago. I think that has a lot of relevance still today when we think about Does this provide the maximum value for the for the person using it? And my hope is that 10 years from now, you're able to think of someone that you really deeply care about. They appear in front of you visually in some hologram form, not with a headset.
Yep.
And the moment you see them and you hear them and you reach out to connect with them, you're able to feel that human connection, that handtohand connection. And we are able to be a critical part of that. Obviously, I think that to get to that sort of non holographic you know projector you know display scenario a lot of techn technological you know hurdles will have to be overcome but I think it's not impossible anymore I think there's been a lot of breakthroughs in that in that field specifically of holography obviously we we've solved a big portion of that that future scenario I just I just mentioned you know with the technology that enables you to feel physically feel a hologram
and I think that it's going to take a lot of people working together to make that happen. So I am really excited to see a lot of these larger companies like Microsoft sort of uh playing nice and having this sort of interoperability initiatives that I've seen across some of the other companies like Amazon we talked to recently as well.
So this is this is phenomenal. This again is has you know it's taken us on this cerebral journey across your thought process your connections that real deep humanistic element to to the technology you're producing and and the fact that this is a reality and we're on the edge there. Um so Sly, thank you for the the the kind of insights into the projects you're doing specifically emerge. That sounds phenomenal, you know, and I can't wait to kind of see that when it lands. What what should our listeners do to kind of get on that journey with you? You mentioned the community. What are the things that you want them to do? What can they do to kind of get involved or or kind of be part of that community? And what do you want them to do? What do your takeaways be? Yeah, check out our website emerge.io. I think by the time this podcast airs, we will have already relaunched it and we are very passionate about community and the we will be elevating the first uh users of our of our product and really building that community um starting out and so they'll be the first ones to get access to the device, access to the product. Um and we're we're excited to work together with with a lot of these uh this initial community to build out the experience. So, thanks so much, Lean. I appreciate it. No,
it's it's like a real pleasure for us to hear what you're doing and it's very inspirational. Um, keep doing what you're doing. SL's amazing and um we'll be signing up to your website and keeping a close eye and looking out for that launch.
Maybe you can check back in in another podcast soon to see how it's going.
Absolutely. Let's do it.
Love it. Thank you so much.
Thanks, y'all.