Tag: XR

Flipping The Script On XR & AI

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I can be a contrarian at times and, as such, something dawned on me about the immediate future of XR and AI technology. I’m beginning to believe that Her-like AI technology (digital personal assistants) will be a far bigger service industry than any of us can possibility imagine at the moment.

Instead of a trillion dollar industry, it might be the thing that spawns a few trillion dollar industries.

I say this because I just don’t know if people really want to wear any sort of shit on their face. So, in the near term, it could be that XR technology will sound great on paper but, in reality, no one will actually do anything with it because of vanity.

This, in turn, leads me to the following scenario — rather than a Apple Vision Pro, what if you had a tiny black dot video camera you wore on your forehead over an eye combined with a earpiece that let you communicate with a Her-type digital personal assistant.

The camera would serve as the “eye” of your Her. As such, all the hard work would be done by your Her. Rather than YOU seeing the XR technology, your Her would. Her, in turn would tell you in your ear what she saw.

This kind of squares the circle, at least in the near term. I suppose once XR headsets look more like glasses as opposed to birth control devices then XR will begin to live up to its ages-old promise.

What To Make Of XR

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I continue to struggle with the idea that there is any real-world use cause for Virtual Reality. But some combination of AI and Augmented Reality makes a lot of sense.

Just imagine how AI and AR could fix simple social issues like remembering someone’s name at a dinner party. And Apple’s Vision Pro is the first XR headset that actually looks somewhat sexxy.

Now, this is the point where I wonder where my Mindcap is. We’re rushing towards having the technology to read our minds digitally. It would be pretty cool if we could just shave our heads, put on a Mindcap full of electrodes and totally skip having to wear any sort of goggles of visors in the first place.

But that’s a ways down the road, I’m afraid.

It definitely seems as though XR in the guise of AI and AR could really, really revolutionize our lives in a pretty profound manner. Too bad we’re going to probably have to make the existential choice of autocracy or civil war / revolution first starting in late 2024, early 2025 before the cool stuff like XR is widely adopted.