>> Narrator: From San Francisco, it's The Cube. Covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017, brought to you by Samsung. (upbeat music) >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. Live here, in San Francisco, for day two. We're winding down day two of two days of wall to wall coverage, The Cube's exclusive coverage of Samsung Developer Conference. I'm John Furrier the founder, co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media (mumbles) the Cube our next guest Larry Cutler, co-founder and CTO of Baobab Studios. >> You got it right. >> And you're co-founder and CEO Maureen Fan was at our Grace Hopper event. >> Larry: Yes. >> Well thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> So you guys are doing great. Love the story-telling, gaming, tech culture coming together here at Samsung. >> Yep. >> And seeing the future. The future, if you connect the dots, is augmented reality voice-activated, headphones that can be hacked and programmed and customized. You guys are doing some interesting things, you've got some good awards. Take a minute to talk about your studios. What are you guys doing, what's the aha moment for you guys. What should people know? >> So we at Baobab Studios, we're reinventing animated storytelling using VR. And so what we've, our aha moment was feeling that you could completely immerse yourself in the world in VR. And when we started thinking about well what is so special about an animated film, it's really about transporting you to faraway worlds, and making those worlds so real that you could like reach out and touch them. And then if you think about VR, that's kind of the same thing, where VR's promise is being able to transport you to incredible places and to make you really feel like you're in those worlds and you're part of those worlds. >> And to relax and chill a little bit too. >> Well relax and chill as well. >> Or entertainment or to be thrilled. >> So in our case we wanted to take all the experience that we have telling stories at places like Pixar and Dreamworks and apply that into this new medium. And so we found that VR is an incredibly powerful medium, and it really is one that's unlike film and unlike games. So, you're talking about bringing together the expertise of people from films, and people from games. That's critical to what we're doing, and yet at the same time, the experience is something that's totally different. >> Yeah we were commenting with some of our guys in our office how Twitch was experimenting with using the comments to drive the game behavior. You start to see new kinds of game systems develop around the storytelling as more of a behavioral dynamic, not the boring game I figured out, or the multi-player game with my same friends, or whatever that's going on, you're seeing a whole new level of creativity going on, one. Two, the other question is how much does it cost to make these things, 'cause Dreamworks and these guys are spending a lot of dough to do animation. >> Larry: Yes. >> I mean it's not cheap, so how do you guys crack the code on keeping it low, not low-budget, but low-cost and also intelligent is that the secret sauce? >> Yes well that's certainly super important for us. You know we're a start-up company, so obviously we need to be able to have a pipeline that if we run efficiently and you know for us, I think what we've done is we've brought together some of the best people, you know. So we've hired our friends, we've hired people who are really experts in the field, and we're really creating a next-generation VR platform so that we can actually create these animated experiences, be able to experiment in this space. You know, sort of try out different techniques and storytelling methodologies and at the same time do it in a way that we can, you know, sort of experiment as much as possible. >> John: Talk about some of the awards you guys had, I mean, you guys done some things. Share some of the accolades you've gotten. >> Yes, so, I mean what's amazing is that we started with our first piece of content Invasion!, and we premiered it last year in April at Tribecca Film Festival, and it's really gone on to, first of all, from a consumer standpoint, it's one of the most popular downloaded pieces of content on all the VR platforms, and at the same time it's been shown at a number of different film festivals, and it recently won an Emmy, so we're very excited about that, and, you know, what we realize is that audiences just fell in love with this bunny character Chloe. So Invasion! is this story about two aliens that try to take over Earth, and they're thwarted not by humans with powerful weapons, but by cute little woodland creatures. In the first episode in Invasion! they're thwarted by this cute little bunny Chloe, and what happens is that at the very beginning of the piece, Chloe like hops up to you, and if you look down you're a little bunny in the scene, you've got bunny legs, you can hop around. And audiences, you know, the viewer just reacted in ways that you would never do in a film, like people are waving at Chloe, a lot of people reach out and try to pet Chloe, a lot of people mimic what Chloe's doing, and in short people are just treating Chloe as if she's real. And it made us realize that there's something really powerful here that is really worth kind of leaning in and digging deeper into. >> And what was the next step after that, so you went what you went, some development, was it the game, was it the character development? How do you double-down on them, I'm just kind of curious on thinking about how the, on the thinking behind it. >> It was really interesting because we, in Invasion! we were kind of the first to make you a character in the story, but at the time there really weren't hand controllers, or any of the devices so that you could actually really have sort of a more like increased role in the story. And so at the same time, people really felt that they were front and center, and they felt this sense of protecting Chloe from the aliens 'cause you're placed right in the center of the story. And so with Asteroids! when we started, we just wanted to dive deeper into that idea of you playing an active role in the story. And so in Asteroids! we focused on the two alien characters Mac and Cheez and their relationship, and you're a helper robot on the ship, so you have. >> So how do I get involved and get these stories, do I have to have a VR kit? So I don't have, I haven't bought anything yet VR-wise, so for me, how do I engage with you guys, what do I do? Do I buy Oculus Rift, or certain headsets? >> So our stuff is meant to be available for everyone. We really want to have as many people be able to see our content as possible. And so first of all, if you have a VR headset of any type, our, Invasion! is available on all those platforms, so that's the high-end headsets like the Rift and Vive, the PlayStation VR for Sony, as well as if you have a mobile phone like a Samsung phone, you can plug it into your VR. At the same time, we also have a Baobab Cardboard app, so you don't even need to have VR to see our product. So you just get an IOS or Android app, a Baobab app. >> So I'm in the market to buy a headset, I'm not price sensitive, what should I buy? What would you recommend? (Larry chuckling) >> Well there really are so many options, so you know obviously at the high >> John: What would you get? >> Well at the highest end, you know, getting a Rift or Vive really gives you the full VR experience because it's really tracking your position and orientation so you can actually walk around a space, the characters can react to you in believable ways, and it's all happening in real time. And on the other hand, the Sony PlayStation VR's are really affordable if you've got a Sony Playstation, you just buy the PSVR headset, you plug it right in and you're ready to go. I'm really excited looking forward to a world where you're not tethered to your computer, and so it's really exciting to see these stand-alone headsets that are going to come out that basically there's no tethering to a computer and yet you have that same inside-out tracking so that >> And this is the Samsung vision, right? The Samsung vision is to use their displays. >> Yes, exactly. See right now what you have, which is, which is already really exciting, is you take your Samsung phone, you plug it into a Gear VR, and the one thing that's missing is that you're not able to track both the position and orientation of where you are, and so the next generation headsets are going to have that. And the experiences will be much higher feeling. >> Alright cool, so then I, I'll actually download all of this stuff. So as the CTO of the venture, your job is to kind of look over the landscape. You have to have the 20 mile stare of the future, not screw it up, but you've got to win the present. >> Larry: Yes, we're all about being able to deliver in the present and look forward to the future. >> And that's the key, and you have that unique skill as an entrepreneur. What are you guys doing now technically and with the product, what are some of the key things that people should know about, because I mean I look at the CG and the animation world, and you see the Moore's law kind of coming that way, right, so you go wow, as someone with a live video, I would love to have a bunny and the cube set right here, right? So we see a future where I want to immerse myself with characters, not just stickers. >> We of course see that as well, so you know, obviously. >> John: Is expensive I mean it must be, 'cause in the old days what, you had the artists, monster storage, tons of compute, what's it like now? >> Well we're a really small start-up company, so we are not a, you know, 300 person organization that is producing a full animated film. We're a small team of artists and engineers working together in the same way that we had that same excitement in the early days. I started my career at Pixar in some of their earlier films, and it was that same >> John: Power work stations, you had that high-end gear. >> Yeah so it was that same excitement in those early days, like we just had to figure out like how are we going to actually create this shot, how are we going to like, you know, build this character, how are we going to like finish this on time. And we have that same exact excitement in the office. >> When were you at Pixar, were you there for the Toy Story kind of thing? >> Yeah, so I worked on the Toy Story films, and A Bug's Life and Monster's Inc., and then I went over to Dreamworks and headed up all of their character technologies on their various films. >> Okay so you guys do anything different than those guys, or are you guys more focused more simple? >> Yeah, I mean what's interesting is that this is really a new medium and it's a new skill set, because what's happened is that you are part of the world, and for us the thing that's most exciting is that by you being a character, first of all, the other characters are not just able to have, you know, sort of high-quality animation, but they're able to react to you, and so there's there A. a number of technical innovations that you need to overcome so that we can have that same high-quality character performance that I would expect from a Pixar or Dreamworks film happening, running in real time at 90 frames a second on my headset, and at the same time also be able to have those characters react to you and respond to what you're doing. And you know, so we've scratched the surface on that. So one of the things that's really interesting is how two people will actually have all these subconscious communication cues, you know, whether it's eye contact or whether it's two lovers sitting across the table and mirroring each other's behavior, that's the type of thing that we can add into our animation. And at the same time, we have stories where depending on what you do, whether you choose to participate or not, that actually affects the outcome, and affects the way that characters respond to you. And so having much smarter character performances is certainly one area that I think is really exciting. >> And that's going to be interesting for you guys because you have some structured ways to do that, and then some unstructured ways to do it with community data, machine learning, and then you can use bots in a way to help you get data, but you almost could have character developments be dynamic. >> You definitely could, and you know for us I think the thing that is always the biggest point that we come back to is story. And so on one hand we want to tell one story that's really told well, not ten different stories, and on another hand, because you're part of that story, depending on what you do, that's actually going to affect how the characters respond to you, and that could be in a really nuanced way, and so, you know, building up AI systems, and building up the smarts so that you can actually have that type of response, and yet still feel like these characters are alive and breathing. >> Well the Chloe example on Invasion! is great example, you'd love to have that automated, so when you see those magical moments, the story could evolve, you can kind of give it that programmable policy-based taping. (John laughing) >> Yeah exactly so you know, so this is the type of thing. >> We're geeking out here on the set, Larry, great to have you on, super informative content, and I love the world you're in, I think the world's changing, I think you're going to see some interesting dynamics coming, you certainly have the historical view, Pixar and Dreamworks, old school, if you call that old school. >> That's right. >> Now the new school's coming in, certainly AR looks good too. >> Yeah, we're really excited about AR as well. When we think about stories, you know, VR is about transporting you to a different world and having a story take place there. AR is about the characters being alive in your world, both are really exciting. >> Have you seen the Magic Leap demo? >> Larry: Yes, yeah. >> What's it like, can you tell us? >> I'm not allowed to tell. >> John: Is it good? >> Yes, yeah. >> So it's worth half of another half a billion, oh I can't wait. >> That I can't say, you know. I can't comment on their business, but. >> It's a freaking award chest. >> I think there's a lot of exciting things you know, AR. >> They must have a killer demo, I want to find out, I want to see this demo. Magic Leap, I want to to see your demo. All seriousness, great to have you on, and certainly come down to our Cube studios. I want to follow your story, I think you guys are on the cutting edge of a new user experience that's going to bring computer animation, computer graphics, into a new persona as a storytelling, so congratulations. Larry Cutler, how do you say the. >> Baobab. >> Baobab, B-A-O-B-A-B Studios in Redwood City, California. It's the Cube live coverage from Samsung Developer Conference, I'm John Furrier, more after this short break. (peppy music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Samsung Developer Conference 2017. Brought to you by Samsung. (electronic music) >> Welcome back everyone. Here live in San Francisco, Mascone West. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage live video here at Samsung Developer Conference, #SDC2017. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconANGLE Media and co-host of theCUBE. My next guest is Dean Takahashi, who is the lead writer for GamesBeat for VentureBeat big blog covering business and innovation technology. Obviously, been a journalist and writer covering mobile and mobile gaming for a long time. Legend in the Silicon Valley community. Dean, great to see you. >> Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the kind intro. >> People who follow you know, you've been out there in the front line looking at the evolution of gaming obviously, from gaming and then obviously mobile gaming hit a thing. Then gen 2, gen 3. I don't know what generation we're on, but certainly Samsung is converging. That's their message here. Trying to keep these smart things, the cloud message a little bit of an IOT. Feels like an enterprise show a little bit. But, at the end of the day, it's the consumer connection. >> It's all coming together now >> It's all coming together. What's your rapport? What are you seeing? What are you reporting on? >> Well, I cover everything from the smallest startups, including the small game companies. I try to pay attention to Silicon Valley in general. And then the big companies as well. So, the relationships pertain to developers, who are on the small side to the platform owners on the big side. And, I see a really big war going on among all the platform owners. They're trying to get the hearts and minds of those developers. They're trying to bring in, trying to do what Samsung is doing. Which is integrate a lot of different things onto their platform. And, we'll see how much sort of openness is sort of left at the end of this. Or how much of a commons there is across the whole tech landscape, or the whole game industry. And I don't know who's going to win, who's going to own it all. But, everybody's trying. >> It's a war. Platform wars immediately. The device here, my new Samsung 8 is nice. It's got a big screen. It's gameable. Mobile gaming obviously hot. But again, the platform wars are interesting. Now they have the living room, they've got the kitchen, the smart family hub. All this stuff they're talking about. They had the smart TV for a while. The question that I have is, developers don't want hassles. They want the distribution and all the goodness of the big vendor, but one of the things Samsung seems to be trying to create is this unified fabric of breaking down the stovepipes within their company. Problem is, developers won't tolerate different API documentation. This is an issue we've heard from developers here in theCUBE is how does Samsung do that? Because that'll really be, that's the kryptonite for developers. That'll keep the super developers away. >> Yeah. Like the announcement they had here about the Internet of Things and trying to sort of integrate three different standards down into one is the kind of move that you have to make or you have to seek. Some of these come in through acquisitions but, yeah. The developers don't want to mess around with the multiple APIs. >> It's interesting. We cover, as you know, we cover a lot of the enterprise and the emerging tech with SiliconANGLE and theCUBE, and we see the enterprise is clear, right? DevOps, the cloud native, the Linux foundation. Those worlds are exploding. Open source is exploding. And then you got companies like Intel, which cares about field programmable gate arrays and 5G. Enabling that end to end. And then you've got the consumer companies whether it's Ali Baba or Samsung or a Google or an Apple, really caring about the device side. So, everything is kind of coming into the middle where cloud is the engine, right. So, the interesting thing I'd love to get your perspective on, Are developers sensitive to the fact that they can have more compu because augmented reality, even virtual reality. We've had one VIP influencer here on theCUBE say VR is done. 1.0 is done. But we learn from it. It didn't really hunt. It didn't really go off the shelves. But augmented reality is hotter, because it's more realistic. Drones are using augmented industrial IOT. >> Augmented reality has a nice launch pad, right. It's got a long runway off of smartphones. You create your app for smartphones and eventually it's going to run on all these other new things that come out, like the glasses. Once those are established, that's great. But in the meantime, the apps and developers can sort of make this living on the smartphone. >> So it's not a big bad like a Google Glass where it just kind of crashes and burns >> Yeah. >> Kind of thing. So they can get some beach head with mobile. >> Yeah. >> So the question for you is how vet the signal from noise on companies. Obviously you look for the ones that have more of a pragmatic business model. Get in on mobile gaming. Obviously Google is on stage with Android. So you're starting to see more openness with APIs. Differentiating from Apple, ecosystem, which it is what it is. How do you see companies differentiating and being real? >> Signal from noise, you do look at everything from who their alliances are with, to how many people, do they have enough people to get the job done? Do they have the funding? It's sort of figuring out whether the team has experience at what they're doing. So, a lot of the basics of journalism. Just finding out facts about a company. >> So, Magic Leap. Have you dug into those guys? I saw the funding news yesterday. Another $500 Million. >> Yeah. >> I haven't seen the product. I haven't seen the demo. I'm not covering gaming like you are. But you have seen their demo. Have you? >> I haven't seen their demo. >> I think a half, a half a million dollars more. That's a war chest. >> Yeah. They're out in Florida. So they're a bit far from me. They are very lucky to have convinced someone to give them some additional money. When they've burned through a billion dollars plus already so, $1.4 billion >> Insane. And nothing to show for it. >> $500 million more, yeah. And they're very ambitious and that's good but, >> It better be good. >> They almost seem like they were trying to say we're going to accelerate and beat Moore's Law. We're going to do something impossible, put these things into little glasses and it's going to be amazing. It's going to be like, so you can't distinguish augmented reality from reality, right? And surprise, surprise, you can't really rush Moore's Law. >> And by the way that's, I'm surprised they're not in Silicon Valley because it seems like that's a go big or go home strategy. Certainly, a billion dollars they've burned through, another half a billion. No one can do that. It's hard to do. So, back down to the more pragmatic ecosystem, you're seeing Samsung here. I like their approach. I think that it's a good strategy. They didn't overplay their hand at the show on talking about where the data resides. That was one thing I'm still not seeing but maybe they're going to bring that out later. Maybe it's not ready yet. The cloud, I didn't really see the cloud story there as much. I don't know what that means. So, those are open discussion points for me. But, certainly leveraging the device, leveraging the distribution is what they're offering. But then they made a comment here on theCUBE, "We're open." What does that mean? I mean Android's obviously got a benefit of being open. But what does open mean to you and how do you see that? >> I think that, you could argue that for smart things where it's connecting to something like an Invidia Shield. And you can use the remote control on an Invidia Shield to change your lighting, or something like that. So, it's sort of overlapping circles of certain, you know, I don't know if that's open. But it works. If you deliver something that works, your consumers, you know, it's relatively open. >> Yeah. And the glam is obviously electronics. Consumer electronics base. You've got a little bit of the IOT. I find this fascinating story of the IOT because people are things too. I mean, you're walking around with the phones. We have the fashion tech happening. And obviously gaming. Alright, what's the big surprise for you here at the show. Give me some positive review. What you liked about it, and what critical analysis, where they need to improve. What are some of your thoughts? >> I think there is always sort of that challenge for a big company like this that has a worldwide consumer base. How much do they want to cater to or appeal to the hardcore crowd? So, say like gaming and non-gamers is a good example of that. And they're not really trying to get everybody in gaming onto their platform or onto their side. They're saying that they're welcome. They can come. We've built this as an all-purpose sort of platform. And, they're not going out to invest in a lot of the game companies. They didn't put money into Magic Leap. They're not sort of trying to pull people in and >> They're not giving the hard sell. >> Yeah. The challenge then is that other companies are. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo of course are doing it. But Amazon, Google, even Apple to some degree is embracing a lot of gamers on the game platforms. Making their platforms fairly friendly. So, I think Samsung needs to decide whether it's going to step up in that space. Other territories, yeah. It's on a very good march, I think. To continuously come out with new tech that gets widely adopted. They're doing well in VR. But I think, it almost seems like they've embraced 360 video a lot more than they have on the game side. >> We'd certainly love to get those 360 cameras here. Apple versus Samsung. Obviously, World Wide Developer Conference is legendary. Samsung 4th year now doing this event. Compare, close, getting there, leveling up? >> Well, I think Apple's event was underwhelming in a lot of ways as far as just what they announced. And say even the performance of the phones. It doesn't really, it's kind of flatish compared to the performance of Samsung phones. I think Samsung has maybe a broader following and broader base. And they have the potential to draw >> And Android's global appeal >> draw more >> is pretty interesting. >> Yeah, draw more developers over who might find it easier. >> Interesting to see the psychographic profile of developer makeup from Apple and Samsung. Dean, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Dean Takahashi here inside theCUBE. Lead writer for GamesBeat, part of VentureBeat blog in Silicon Valley. Check them out, VentureBeat.com. Of course you've got siliconangle.com and thecube.net. That's our content there. This is theCUBE live coverage from Samsung Developer Conference. I'm John Furrier, right back with more after the short break. >> And also plug our GamesBeat conference. >> GamesBeat conference. >> GamesBeat Summit in April. April 9th and 10th in Berkeley. >> Yep, get the plug in. GamesBeat Conference in April. Check it out. Dean co-chairs the committee for getting the great content. Hardcore gamers, thought leaders. Check out GamesBeat Summit in April. Of course, this is theCUBE live coverage here in San Francisco. More after this short break. (electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's the Cube covering South by Southwest 2017. Brought to you by Intel. Now, here's John Furrier. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're live here in the Cube coverage of South by Southwest. We're at the Intel AI Lounge, hashtag Intel AI. And the theme is AI for social good. So if you really support that, go in Twitter and use the hashtag Intel AI and support our cause. I'm John Furrier with Silicon Angle, I'm here with Robert Scoble, @Scobalizer. Just announcing this week the new formation of his new company, the Transformation Group. I've known Robert for over 12 years now. Influencer, futurist. You've been out and about with the virtual reality, augmented reality, you're wearing the products. >> Yup. >> You've been all over the world, you were just at Mobile World Con, we've been following you. You are the canary in the coalmine poking at all the new technology. >> Well, the next five years, you're going to see some mind blowing things. In fact, just the next year, I predict that this thing is going to turn into a three ounce pair of glasses that's going to put virtual stuff on top of the world. So think about coming back to South by Southwest, you're wearing a couple pairs of glasses, and you are going to see blue lines on the floor taking you to your next meeting or TV screens up here so I can watch the Cube while I walk around the streets here. It's going to be a lot of crazy stuff. >> So, we've been on our opening segment, we talked about it, we just had a segment on social good around volunteering, but what the theme is coming out is this counter culture where there's now this humanization aspect they called the consumerization of IT in the past. But in the global world, the human involvement now has these emersion experiences with technology, and now is colliding with impacting lives. >> Well, absolutely true. >> This is a Microsoft HoloLens first of all. And HoloLens puts virtual stuff on top of the real world. But at home, I have an HTC Vibe, and I have an Oculus Rift for VR, and VR is that immersive media. This is augmented reality or what we call mixed reality, where the images are put on top of the world. So I can see something pop off of you. In fact, last year at South by, I met a guy who started a company called iFluence, he showed me a pair of glasses and you look at a bottle like this and a little menu pops off the side of a bottle, tells you how much it is, tells you what's in the bottle, and lets you buy new versions of this bottle, like a case of it and have it shipped to my house all with my eyes. That's coming out from Google next year. >> So the big thing on the immersion the AR, you look at what's going on at societal impact. What are the things that you see? Obviously, we've been seeing at Mobile World Congress before Peelers came out, autonomous vehicles is game changing, smart cities, median entertainment, the world that we know close to our world, and then smart home. >> Oh yeah. >> Smart home's been around for years, but autonomous vehicles truly is a societal change. >> Yes. >> The car is a data center now. It's got experiences. And there's three new startups you should pay attention to, in the new cars that are coming in the next 18 months. Quanergy is one. They make a new kind of light R, a new sensor. In fact, there's sensors here that are sensing the world as I walk around and seeing all the surfaces. The car works the same way. It has to see ahead to know that there's a kid in front of your car, the car needs to stop, right. And Quanergy is making a focusable semiconductor light R, that's going to be one to watch. And then there's a new kind of brain, a new kind AI coming, and DeepScale is the one that I'm watching. The DeepScale brain uses a new third company called Luminar Technologies, which is making a new kind of 3D map of the world. So think about going down the street. This new map is going to know every pot hole, every piece of paint, every bridge on the street, and it's going to, the brain, the AI, is going to compare the virtual map to the real map, to the real world and see if there's anything new, like a kid crossing across the street. Then the car needs to do something and make a new decision. So 3D startups are going to really change the car. But the reason I'm so focused on mixed reality, is mixed reality is the user interface for the self-driving car, for the smart city, for the internet of things, the fields in your farm or what not, and for your robot, and for your drone. You're going to have drones that are going to know this space, and you can fly it right, I've seen drones already in the R & D labs at Intel. You can fly them straight at the wall, it'll stop an inch from the wall because it knows where the wall is. >> 'Cause it's got the software, it's got the sensors, the internet of things. We are putting out a new research report at Wikibound called IOT and P, Internet Things and People. And this is the key point. I want to get your thoughts on this because you nailed a bunch of things, and I want you to define for the folks watching what you mean by mixed reality because this is not augmented reality. >> Well it is. >> John: You're talking about mixed reality. >> It is augmented reality, it's just-- >> John: But why mixed reality? >> We came up with the new term called mixed reality because on our, we have augmented reality on phones. But the augmented reality you have on phones like the Pokemon's we've been talking about. They're not locked to the world. So when I'm wearing this, there's actually a shark right here on this table, and it's locked on the table, and I can walk around that shark. And it seems like it's sitting here just like this bottle of water is sitting on the table. This is mind blowing. And now we can actually change the table itself and make it something else. Because every pixel in this space is going to be mapped by these new sensors on it. >> So, let's take that to the next level. You had mentioned earlier in your talk just now about user interface to cars. You didn't say in user interface to cars, you didn't say just smart, you kind of implied, I think you meant it's interface to all the environments. >> Robert: Yes. >> Can you expand on what your thoughts on that? >> You're going to be wearing glasses that look like yours in about a year, much smaller than this. This is too dorky and too big for an average consumer to wear around right, but if they're three ounces and they look something like what you're wearing right now. >> Some nice Ray Bans, yup. >> And they're coming. I've seen them in the R & D labs. They're coming from a variety of different companies. Google, Facebook, Loomis, Magic Leap, all sorts of different companies are coming with these lightweight small glasses. You're going to wear them around and it's going to lay interface elements on everything. So think about my watch. Why if I do this gesture, why do I have to look at a little tiny screen right here? Why isn't the whole screen of my calendar pop up right here? They could do that, that's a gesture. This computer in here can sense that I'm doing a gesture and can put a new user interface on top of that. Now, I've seen tractors that have sensors in them. Now, using a glass like this, it shows me what the pumps are doing in the tractor on the glasses. I can walk around a factory floor and see the sensors in the pipes on the factory floor and see the sensors in my electric motors on the factory. All with a one pair of glasses. >> So this is why the Intel AI thing interests me, this whole theme. Because what you just described requires data. So one, you need to have the data available. >> Robert: Yes. >> The data's got to be a frictionless, it can't be locked in some schema as they say in the database world. It's got to be free to be addressed by software. >> Yes. >> You need software that understands what that is. And then you need horsepower, compute power, chips to make it all happen. >> Yeah, think about a new kind of TV that's coming soon. I'm going to look at TV like this one, a physical TV. But it's too small and it's in the wrong angle. So I can just grab the image off the TV and virtually move it over here. And I'll see it, nobody else will see it. But I can put that TV screen right here, so I can watch my TV the way I want to watch it. >> Alright so this is all sci-fi great stuff, which actually-- >> It's not sci-fi, it's here already. You just don't have it. I have it (laughs). >> Well, you can see it's kind of dorky, but I'm not going to say you're a dork 'cause I know you. To mainstream America, mainstream world, it's a bit sci-fi but people are grokking this now. Certainly the younger generation that are digital native all are coming in post-9/11, they understand that this is a native world to them, and they take to it like a fish to water. >> Yes. >> Us old guys, but we are the software guys, we're the tech guys. So continue to the mainstream America, what has to happen in your mind to mainstream this stuff? Obviously self driving cars is coming. It's in fleets first, and then cars. >> We have to take people on a journey away from computing like this or computing like this to computing on glasses. So how do we do that? Well, you have to show deep utility. And these glasses show that. Wearing a HoloLens, I see aliens coming out of the walls. Blowing holes in this physical wall. >> John: Like right now? >> Yeah. >> What are you smoking (laughs)? >> Nothing yet. And then I can shoot them with my fingers because the virtual things are mixing with the real world. It's a mind blowing experience. >> So do you see this being programmed by users or being a library of stuff? >> Some are going to be programmed by users like Minecraft is today on a phone or on a tablet. Most of it is going to be built by developers. So there's a huge opportunity coming for developers. >> Talk about the developer angle, because that's huge. We're seeing massive changes in the developer ecosystems. Certainly, open source is going to be around for awhile. But which friends do you see in open source, I mean, I'm sorry, in the developer community, with this new overlay of 5G connectivity, all this amazing cloud technology? >> There's a new 3D mapping and it's a slam based map. So think about this space, this physical space. These sensors that are on the front of these new kinds of glasses that are coming out are going to sense the world in a new way and put it into a new kind of database, one that we can put programmatic information into. So think about me walking around a shopping mall. I walk in the front door of a shopping mall, I cross geo fence in that shopping mall. And the glasses then show me information about the shopping mall 'cause it knows it's in the shopping mall. And then I say, hey Intel, can you show me, or Siri, or Alexa, or Cortana, or whoever you're talking to. >> Mostly powered by Intel (laughs). >> Most of it is powered by Intel 'cause Intel's in all the data centers and all these glasses. In fact, Intel is the manufacturer of the new kind of controller that's inside this new HoloLens. And when I ask it, I can say, hey, where's the blue jeans in this shopping mall? And all of a sudden, three new pairs of blue jeans will appear in the air, virtual blue jeans, and it'll say this one's a Guess, this one's a Levi's, this one's a whatever. And I'll say, oh I want the Levi's 501, and I'll click on it, and a blue line will appear on the floor taking me right to the product. You know, the shopping mall companies already have the data. They already know where the jeans are in the shopping mall and these glasses are going to take you right to it. >> Robert, so AI is the theme, it's hot, but AI, I mean I love AI, don't get me wrong. AI is a mental model in my mind for people to kind of figure out that this futuristic world's here and it's moving fast. But machine learning is a big part of what AI is becoming. >> Yes. >> So machine learning is becoming automated. >> Well it's becoming a lot faster. >> Faster and available. >> Because it use to take 70,000 images of something like a bottle to train the system that this is a bottle versus a can, bottle versus can. And the scientists have figured out how to make it two images now. So all I need is two images of something new to train the system that we have a bottle versus a can. >> And also the fact that computes available. There's more and more faster processors that this stuff can get crunched, the data can be crunched. >> Absolutely, but it's the data that trains these things. So let's talk about the bleeding edge of AI. I've seen AIs coming out of Israel that are just mind blowing. They take a 3D image of this table, they separate everything into an object. So this is an object. It's separate from the table that it's on. And it then lets me do AI look-ups on the object. So this is a Roxanne bottle of water. The 3D sensor can see the logo in this bottle of water, can look to the cloud, find all sorts of information about the manufacturer here, what the product is, all sorts of stuff. It might even pull down a CAD drawing like the computer that you're on. Pull down a CAD drawing, overlay it on top of the real product, and now we can put videos on the back of your Macintosh or something like that. You can do mind blowing stuff coming soon. That's one angle. Let's talk about medical. In Israel, I went to the AI manufacturers. They're training the MRI machines to recognize cancers. So you're going to be lying in an MRI machine and it's going to tell the people around the machine whether you have cancer or not and which cancer. And it's already faster than the doctor, cheaper than the doctor, and obviously doesn't need a doctor. And that's going to lead into a whole discussion-- >> The Christopher thing. These are societal problems by the way. The policy is the issue, not the technology. How do you deal with the ethical issues around gene sequencing and gene editing? >> That's a whole other thing. I'm just recognizing whether you have cancer on this example. But now we need to talk about jobs. How do we make new jobs in massive quantities. Because we're going to decimate a lot of peoples' jobs with these new technologies, so we need to talk about that, probably on a future Cube. But I think mixed reality is going to create millions of jobs because think about this bottle. In the future, I'm going to be wearing a pair of glasses and Skrillex is going to jump out of the bottle, on to the table, and give a performance, and then jump back into the bottle. That's only four years away according to the guy who's running a new startup called 8i. He's making a new volumetric camera, it's a camera 40 or 50 cameras around-- >> If you don't like Skrillex, Martin Garrix can come on. >> Whatever you want. Remember, this media's going to be personalized to your liking. Spotify is already doing that. Do you listen to Spotify? >> John: Yeah, of course. >> Do you listen to the discovery weekly feature on that? >> No. >> You should. It's magical. It brings you the best music based on what you've already listened and it's personalized. So your discovery weekly on your phone is different than the discovery weekly on my phone. And that's run by AI. >> So these are new collaborative filters. This is all about software? >> Yeah. Software and a little bit of hardware. Because you still need to sense the world in a new way. You're going to get new watches this year that have many more sensors that are looking in your veins for whether you have high blood pressure, whether you're a in shape for running. By the way, you're going to have an artificial coach when you go running in the morning, running next to you, just like when you see Mark Zuckerberg. He can afford to pay a real coach, I can't. So he has a real coach running with him every morning and saying hey, we're going to do some interval training today, we're going to do some sprints to get your cardio up. Well, now the glasses are going to do that for you. It's going to say, let's do some intervals today and you're going to wear the watch that's going to sense your blood pressure and your heart rate and the artificial coach running next you. And that's only two years away. >> Of course, great stuff. Robert Scoble, we have to close the segment. Quickly, how has South by changed in ten years? >> Well, 20, I've been coming for 20 years. I've been coming since it was 500 people and now it's 50,000, 70,000 people, it's crazy. >> How has it changed this year? What's going on this year? >> This is the VR year. Every year we have a year right. There was the Twitter year, there was the Foursquare year. This is the VR year, so if you're over at Capital Factory, you're going to see dozens of VR experiences. In fact, my co-author's playing the Mummy right now. I had to come on your show, I got the short straw (laughs). Sit in the sun instead of playing some cool stuff. But there's VR all over the place. Next year is going to be the mixed reality year, and this is a predictor of the next year that's coming. >> Alright, Robert Scoble, futurist right here on the Cube. Also, congratulations on your new company. You're going out on your own, Transformation Group. >> Yeah, we're helping out brands figure out this mixed reality world. >> Congratulations of course. As always, it is a transformational time in the history of our world and certainly the computer industry is going to a whole other level that we haven't seen before. And this is going to be exciting. Thanks for spending the time with us. It's the Cube here live at South by Southwest special Cube coverage, sponsored by Intel. And the hashtag is Intel AI. If you like it, tweet us at Twitter. We'll be happy to talk to you online. I'm John Furrier. More after this short break. (electronic music)