>> Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE! Covering IBM Think 2019, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to intermittently sunny San Francisco, this is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We're here at day four at IBM Think. My name is Dave Vellante. I am here with Stu Miniman. John Furrier is also here. Wall to wall coverage Stu. The second Think, first big show really of the year at Moscone. The new Moscone, Armando Ortiz is here. He is the vice president and partner from Mobile & Extended Reality Leader at IBM iX. An interesting part of IBM that you may not know about. Armando, welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Thanks for having me. >> So tell us a little bit about iX. >> So IBM iX is a part of IBM services. We focus on user experiences, whether it's a consumer experience or an employee experience. And the we look at user experience it really kind of sticks together and allow you to unlock the value of all the technology investments that companies are making. >> So, you guys are not making headsets, or are you? >> No we don't make hardware, we just put hardware to work. >> So talk a little bit about the sort of state of whether its augmented reality or extended reality. Lay out the terminology for us if you would. >> Sure, sure. As part of the role I have I lead our mobile practice as well as the extended reality practice and this kind of all related together. We use the term extended reality to kind of encompass all of the different technologies along that spectrum from augmented reality to mixed reality to virtual reality. Of course there are a lot of technologies whether it's the glasses on your face like the wearables or it's in your hand as a lot of mobile platforms today like Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore allow you to have AR experienced within your mobile apps. >> Yeah, I wonder if you can expand a little bit on that? We're all ready for the role out of 5G and that's going, holds the promise at least for a lot more band width and a lot more applications and that's one of the lynch pins we understand kind of make your world more of a reality. When do we see that role out? What devices are going to happen? You got a preview of the next iPhone for us? >> I certainly don't have a preview of the next iPhone, even though I do lead the Apple partnership for us in North America, the Apple IBM partnership. When you look at 5G, obviously some of the use cases for extended reality in enterprise are around field services and 5G will have an amazing impact on the ability. Not only because of the band width but also the low latency that you have for 5G. So we're excited to see that role out in the different markets around the world and you know the pilots and things that are starting this year. There are going to be a lot of great devices and I think for handsets all the way to the wearables. It'll really allow us to put more use cases on these devices. >> Can you walk us through some of those use cases? Any specific customer examples you have that may make our audience understand a little bit more what's really available today. Sure, I mean in the XR space or in the extended reality space there's a lot that we learned through what we've done in mobile for years. I mean, even our Apple partnership for the past five years and things we've done across the 16 industries we work on. But the initial sort of wave one use cases that we're really seeing today kind of follow along these categories of work related use cases that are like in field services, training related use cases that go all the way from virtual reality immersive training like teaching someone how to do something in a dangerous situation where you want to simulate that. All the way to on the job sort of training and step-by-step guidance that you can get with AR. Step one attach the cable here. Step two, check this over here. Those kind of use cases and then into use cases related to shopping and retail. If you look at what augmented reality is going to do for shopping and retail allow people to assess sort of fit and purpose of something they want to buy. Does it fit in my home? Does it fit in my life? And then also even in the stores as people in retail sort of navigate a store they can use AR to help understand. Add all that metadata to the in store experience that we're gotten used to in our online experiences. And the last broad category we sort of call it share ideas or sharing of ideas, which kind of expands the game from collaboration to even having AR brochures and augmented realty tools to help people understand a product or a service that you're offering. Imagine that we can just kind of expand a piece of equipment here on the table, walk through it and help understand how that piece of equipment is going to help your business. >> You're giving me flashbacks. I remember IBM had a huge initiative in like Second Life and it was like come build an island and we're going to do recruiting and things like that. So, tell us why this generation is, going to be better for business and not have everyone put some money in and have it stolen by you know. >> Not as goofy. >> It's funny you should ask that, the Second Life topic actually came up with someone I was speaking to yesterday. It's come up before. I think there is a significant difference between what Second Life was trying to be and what extended reality is going to be and it already is. I mean when you look at extended reality today, I think one important thing to think about this is not future tech, this is not some sort of dream of sort of Ready Player One type of situation. But more, it's looking at real enterprise use cases that are already driving a value; time savings on inspections, productivity enhancements for people assembling, consistency and increase safety. All the key performance indicators and value drivers we have for mobile. So there's a real path to business value and the uses are much clearer than it might have been in the days of Second Life. >> Less mistakes, less rework. Armando, what kind of infrastructure would a consumer need? You gave the example of retail for instance, what kind of infrastructure would I need? Am I just, is it just my mobile home? Am I going to wear headsets, what does that look like? >> So when we talk about extended reality, we tend to keep one foot in today and one foot in the future cause its changing so fast. When you talk about retail there is a sale associate side of things that might be helping you decide an automotive. Maybe you're looking at configuring a car right in front of you or in a retail store maybe you're looking to look at a piece of furniture or something that's not on the show room floor. Now those experiences can start today with tablets and iPhones and other devices. But we see also as well devices that people be wearing wearables that are available today and that trend moving that glass kind of from your hand to your face is going to be something that is really going to be accelerated. >> So, this is maybe how a piece of clothing will fit or what a couch might look like in a particular room, is that right? >> Yeah. >> And you would envision that people will purchase this infrastructure for a variety of uses. Not only to see how things look but maybe there's gaming. So it's a multi-use kind of environment or not necessarily? Is it more specialized to use it? >> No absolutely, it's important, it's a good thing that you brought up sort of gaming as well. Because, obviously we all know that gaming has been kind of at the fore front for virtual reality but when you look at gaming and entertainment those are also going to include many use cases. When we look at the enterprise side we're kind of focused on those other wave one use cases. But I also expect in the sort of share ideas category I spoke of marketing and sales activities will also include AR experienced to help people understand the product or service that you're positioning. >> What's the state of adoption? We always joke about google glass. Remember the movie The Jerk with the Opti-Grab and the guy was cross-eyed? So that didn't take off but what's the state of hardware and hardware adoption today? >> So I think what's unique about this technology and what's happening now, the technology we already all have in our hands on our mobile phones is already there and that's where you're going to see it happen first. I think the numbers by next year are like 3.4 billion phones will have an AR capability so the technology is already with us. The next sort of technology set that we're talking about is getting to the wearables and of course we see things today in the VR space that's much more available in the consumer side, things like the oculus go. In the enterprise space you also have headsets from many manufacturers that maybe grew up doing things in the military that are now more commercially available. Things like someone trying to repair something that needs to be hand free. We're seeing those technologies readily available in the enterprise. >> Tell about how AI fits into this new world? >> That's a great question. If you think about it its really kind of a really great combination. You take XR, extended reality, so whether its AR or VR and you add AI to it you can kind of give AI the ability to kind of enter the 3D space. So as you think about AI solutions that we had in the mobile world where you might be using AI to solve a problem, diagnose a problem, visual diagnostics, acoustic detection AI can kind of give sort of super powers to an employee. At the same time we see that the experiences that we have in the extended reality space get really enhanced because you now have the ability to democratize expertize with AI. You take all of the expertize of your organization and that one technician whose only been there for 10 days now has the power of your entire collective knowledge. >> What about privacy? Anytime you hear some of these and I think about you can have wearables out there, there is concern about you know with facial recognition is going to be everywhere my privacy is going to be invaded. What's IBM positioning? Where does that fit in this whole environment? >> Of course we take privacy very seriously. When we talk about our AI and Watson you know your data is your data. If you look at some of the things, I mean, you'll make decisions, enterprises will make decisions on the same way they do with mobile devices. Is it okay to have a camera in this environment? And if I do have a camera in this environment, what's my cloud strategy and where am I going to host this data to make sure that I have not just privacy but also IP concerns, considered? All of the same things we've learned in the mobile world are going to apply to this and it'll get even a little more important as you think of the different types of sensors that are required to make these experiences happen. >> I wonder if you could help us understand about the pre-requisites to do things like technician actually trouble shooting a problem. Many of us have seen, we put on the glasses you walk around a show floor and you look at a new system or something and its really very cool. You can look inside and inspect the different layers. What has to be done, I'm inferring from what you're saying that a technician would be able to inspect live, real time a device and identify problems on that device. So what has be done? It has to be instrumented? It has to have cameras installed? What does the infrastructure build out look like? >> Sure, when you look at. Lets take the technician scenario for a moment and unpack that. When you look at that there are a couple of things that are already happening like a lot of major pieces of equipment are instrumented. So you have the internet of things data, sort of the data streams coming off of that. How do you make that available to that technician in the moment, sort of the vital signs of that piece of equipment that you might be operating on? So, having all that information like temperature and all the things from an IOT perspective, that's one angle of it. The other side of it really is when you think of failure of equipment usually at some point there's a situation that technician may not have encountered before but maybe someone else has. Maybe you've already had a bunch of closed tickets on that three years ago. So having all that information available and using cognitive processing to kind of navigate that unstructured data, that will let you navigate that. Voice will be part of this interface as well. I think voice is an important part because you're going to be hands free and you're going to be having a dialogue with Watson, let's say to help diagnose a problem. >> How about healthcare? It's not something we've really talked about a lot. Just in terms of applications, whether its for the operating room of the future, remote guidance from doctor, training. Do you see those kind of use cases emerging? >> Yeah absolutely, all the way from training through execution of surgery and other things. This is where the 5G topic really comes into play because low latency is really required if you're talking about surgery and things like that. >> Give me a few minutes. >> You get that round trip of that signal going back and forth. I think when you think about the VR side of things for training is immensely powerful. The AR side for during execution of procedures will also be powerful as well and it comes back to that general theme od democratizing expertize. One expert that's physically on this part of the world can serve many people that need their services around the world. >> It sounds like there are a lot of uncertainties in terms of how this is going to evolve. First of all od the a fair statement? Given that, not withstanding that can you give us a sense of expectations for how it will evolve and the adoption levels that you expect over the next two to five years. >> Five years is a long horizon for this technology. >> Too long, too long perhaps so what's more fair, 18 months? >> Lets talk more immediate. I think when you look at, there may be some uncertainty in terms of which use cases will drive the most value but there are already many use cases that companies are probably sharing information out. Like some companies, especially inspection use cases, you know there is a company that published 96% savings on time because really you are using AR to document. Okay inspect this point, this point, this point, this point. Assembly use cases, diagnostics with AI and AR are working together. All of these are already happening, so what I think is going to happen is enterprises are going to be able to more and more easily justify the spend to make these investments because the RY is rapid. Just like the RY in mobile was rapid for enterprise, the RY in XR will be extremely rapid. >> Armando for people who didn't come to IBM Think, give them a little taste of what they missed from an iX stand point. Some of the conversations that you've been having. >> Yeah, when we look at, I mean iX across the IBM Think we've had a lot of conversations and a lot of sessions around how experience is really driving the business value and also around marketing technologies and marketing services and all of the things that relate to experience on the consumer side and the employee side. We're really enjoyed some great show casing of our client stories and the works we've done. Everything from mobile to commerce to marketing platforms to sales floors across everything we do in the IBM services part that we're in. >> How long has this been around? >> IBM iX? >> Yeah. >> IBM iX has been a part of IBM originally since the 96 Olympics in Atlanta. I've been with IBM about 25 years and this space is kind of like really evolved in terms of the position of user experience and design. IBM has become really a design focused company and you look at enterprise design thinking in everything we do so this is really a part of our business that's really become focal point as companies start thinking more about design. >> Wow, it's been a long time but it's certainly not mature but it's a revenue generating business obviously. >> Yeah and a very high growth part of the company. >> Awesome, well Armando thanks so much for sharing this part of IBM that's not well known. Really exciting futures and I really appreciate you coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you very much, I appreciate being here. >> Alright, keep it right there everyone. Stu and I will be back. Day four, IBM Think, we're at Moscone. Stop by, we're at Moscone North. I'm Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman and John Furrier is here. We'll be right back, you're watching theCUBE. (techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering VMWorld 2017. Brought to you by VMWare and its ecosystem partners. (bright music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman with the Cube, here with my guest host, Justin Warren. Happy to have a returning Cube alum, but in a different role then we had. It's been a few years. Tal Klein, who is the author of The Punch Escrow. >> Au-tor, please. No, I'm just kidding. (laughing) Tal, thanks so much for joining us. It's great for you to be able to find time to hang out with the tech geeks rather than all the Hollywood people that you've been with recently. (laughing) >> You guys are more interesting. (laughing) >> Well thank you for saying that. So last time we interviewed you, you were working for a sizable tech company. You were talking about things like, you know, virtualization, everything like that. Your Twitter handle's VirtualTal. So how does a guy like that become not only an author but an author that's been optioned for a movie, which those of us that, you know, are geeks and everything are looking at, as a matter of fact, Pac Elsiger this morning said, "we are seeing science fiction become science fact." >> That's right. >> Stu: So tell us a little of the journey. >> Yeah, cool, I hope you read the book. (laughing) I don't know, the journey is really about marketing, right? Cause a lot of times when we talk about virtual, like, in fact last time I was on the Cube, we were talking about the idea that desktops could be virtual. Cause back then it was still this, you know, almost hypothetical notion, like could desktops be virtual, and so today, you know, so much of our life is virtual. So much of the things that we do are not actually direct. I was watching this great video by Apple's new augmented reality product, where you sit in the restaurant and you look at it with your iPad, and it's your plate, and you can just shift the menu items, and you see the menu items on your plate in the context of the restaurant and your seat and the person you're sitting across from. So I think the future is now. >> Yeah, it reminds of, you know, the movie Wall-E, the animated one. We're all going to be sitting in chairs with our devices or Ready Player One, you know, very popular sci-fi book that's being done by Speilberg, I believe. >> Yes, yeah, very exciting. >> Tell us a little bit about your book, you know, we talked, when I was younger and used to read a lot of sci-fi, it was like, what stuff had they done 50 years ago that now's reality, and what stuff had they predicted, like, you know, we're going to go away from currency and go digital currency, and it's like we're almost there. But we still don't have flying cars. >> Yeah, we're, I mean, the main problem with flying cars is that we need pilots. And I think actually we're very close to flying cars, cause once we have self-driving vehicles and we no longer need to worry about it being a person behind the joystick, then we're in really good shape. That's really the issue, you know, the problem with flying cars is that we are so incompetent at driving and or flying. That's not our core competency, so let's just put things that do understand how to make those things happen and eliminate us from the equation. >> Everything is a people problem. >> Yeah, so when I wrote the book, Punch Escrow, Punch Escrow, (laughing) when I wrote the book, I really thought about all the things that I read growing up in science fiction, you know, things like teleportation, things like nanotechnology, things like digital currency, you know, how do we make those, how do we present those in a viable way that doesn't seem too science fictiony. Like one of the things I really get when people read the book is it feels really near-future, even though it's set like 100 plus years in the future, all the concepts in it feel very pragmatic or within reach, you know? >> Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting, we look at, you know, what things happen in a couple of years and what things take a long time. So artificial intelligence, machine learning, it's not like these are new concepts, you know? I read a great book by, you know, it was Isaacson, The Innovators. You go back to like Aida Lovelace, and the idea of what a machine or computer would be able to do. So 100 years from now, what's real, what's not real? We still all have jobs or something? >> We have jobs but different. Remember, I don't know if you're a historian, but back in the industrial age, there was a whole bunch of people screaming doom and gloom. In fact, if we go way back to the age of the Luddites, who just hated machines of any kind. I think that in general, we don't like, you know, we're scared of change. So I do think a lot of the jobs that exist today are going to be done by machines or code. That doesn't mean the jobs are going away. It means jobs are changing. A lot of the jobs that people have today didn't exist in the industrial age. So I think that we have to accept that we are going to be pragmatic enough to accept the fact that humans will continue to evolve as the infrastructure powering our world evolves, you know? We talk about living in the age of the quantified self, right? There's a whole bunch that we don't understand how to do yet. For example, I can think of a whole industry that tethers my FitBit to my nutrition. You know, like there's so much opportunity that for us to say, oh that's going to be the end of jobs, or the end of innovation or the end of capitalism, is insane. I think this just ushers in a whole new age of opportunity. And that's me, I'm just an optimist that way, you know. >> So the Luddites did famously try to destroy the machines. But the thing is, the Luddites weren't wrong. They did lose their jobs. So what about the people whose jobs are replaced, as you say net new, there's a net new number of jobs. But specific individuals, like people who manufacture cars for example, lose their jobs because a robot can do that job safer and better and faster than a human can do it. So what do we do with those humans? Because how do we get people to have new jobs and retrain themselves? >> I address some of these notions in the book. For example, one of the weird things that we're suffering from is the lack of welders in society today, cause welding has become this weird thing that we don't think we need people for, so people don't really get trained up in it because, you know, machines do a lot of welding but there's actually specialty welding that machines can't do. So I think the people who are really good at the things that they do will continue to have careers. I think their careers will become more niche. Therefore they'll be able to create, to demand a higher wage for it because almost like a carpenter, you know, a specialist carpenter will be able to earn a much higher wage today by having fewer customers who want really custom carpentry versus things that can be carved up by a machine. So I think what we end up seeing is that it's not that those jobs go away. It's they become more specialized. People still want Rolls Royces. People still want McLarens. Those are not done by machines. Those are hand-made, you know? >> That's an interesting point, so the value of something being hand-made becomes, instead of it being a worse product, it's actually- >> Tal: That's a big concept in the book. >> Oh okay, right. >> A big concept in the book is that we place a lot of value on the uniqueness of an object. And that parlays in multiple ways. So one of the examples that I use in the book is the value of a Big Mac actually coming from McDonald's. Like, you can make a Big Mac. We know the recipe for a Big Mac. But there is a weird sort of nacent value to getting a Big Mac from McDonald's. It's something in our brain that clicks that tethers it to an originality. Diamonds, another really good example. Or you know, we know there's synthetic diamonds. We still want the ones that get mined in the cave. Why? We don't know. Right, they're just special. >> Because De Beers still has really good marketing. (laughing) >> So I think there's- >> That's interesting, so the concept of uniqueness, which again comes to scarcity and so on. As an author, someone who is no doubt, signed a lot of his book, that means that that book is unique because it's signed by the author, unlike something which is mass produced and there is hopefully thousands and thousands of copies that you sell. >> Going into this, I actually thought about that a lot. And that's why I've created like multiple editions of the book. So like the first 500 people who pre-ordered it, they get like a special edition of the book that's like stamped and all this kind of stuff. I even used different pens. (laughs) I appreciate that because I'm also a collector. I collect music, I collect books. And you know, so I see those aspects in myself. So I know what I value about them, you know? >> And the crossover between music and books is interesting. So as someone who has a musical background, I know that there's a lot of musicians who'll come out with special editions, and you know, because this is an age where we can download it. You can download the book. Do you think there is something, is there something that is intrinsic to having a physical object in a virtual world? >> I think to our generation, yes. I'm not so sure about millennials, when they grow up. But there are, for example, I'm going to see U2 next week, I'm very lucky to see that. But part of the U2 buying experience, to get access to the presale, you need to be part of their fan club. To be a part of their fan club, you need to get, you get like a whole bunch of limited edition posters, limited edition vinyl, and all this kind of stuff. So there's an experience. It's no longer just about going to see U2 at a concert. There's like the entire package of you being a special U2 fan. And they surround it with uniqueness. It's not necessarily limited, but there's an enhanced experience that can't just be, it's not just about you having a ticket to a single concert. >> Justin: Yeah, okay. >> I'm curious, the genre, if you'd call it, is hard science fiction. >> Yes. >> The challenge with that is, you know, what is an extension of what we're doing, and what is fiction? And people probably poke at that. Have you had any interesting experience, things like that? I mean, I've listened to a lot of stuff like Andy Weir, like let the community give feedback before he created the final The Martian. (laughing) But so yeah, what's it like, cause we can, the geeks can be really harsh. >> Yes, I've learned from my Reddit experience that, so what's really funny about it is the first draft of this novel was hard as nails. It was crazy. And my publisher read it, and it would have made all the hard science fiction guys super happy. My publisher read it, he was like, you've written a really great hard science fiction book, and all five people who read it are going to love it. (laughing) You know, but like, I came here with my buddy Danny. He couldn't even get through the first three pages of it. He's like, he wanted to read it. So part of working through the editorial process is saying, look, I care a lot about the science because one of my deep goals is to write a STEM-oriented book that gets people excited about technology and present the future as not a dystopian place. And so I wanted the science to be there and have a sort of gravity to the narrative. But yeah, it's tough. I worked with a physicist, a biologist, a geneticist, an anthropologist, and a lawyer. (laughs) Just to try to figure out, how do we carve out, you know, what does the future look like, what does the evolution of each individual sciences, we talked about the mosquitoes, right? You know, we're already doing a lot of crazy stuff with mosquitoes. We're modifying them so that the males mate with females that carry the Zika virus, you know, give birth to offspring that never reach maturity. I mean, this is just crazy, it's science fiction. And now that they're working on modifying female mosquitoes into vaccine carriers instead of disease carriers. I mean, this is science fiction, right? Like who believes this stuff? It's crazy. >> Christopher is amazing. >> Yeah, I've loved, there's been a bunch of movies recently that have kind of helped to educate on STEM some, you know, Martian got a lot of people excited, you know, Hidden Figures, the one that I could being my kids that are teenagers now into it and they get excited, oh, science is great. So the movie, how much will you be involved? You know, what can you share about that experience, too, so far? >> It's been, it's very surreal. That's the word is use to describe it, the honest, god's honest truth, I mean. I've been very lucky in that my representation in Hollywood is this rock-solid guy called Howie Sanders. And he's this bigger-than-life Hollywood agent guy. He's hooked me up, we've made a lot of business decisions that we're focused less on the money and more on the team, which is nice to be, like when you're in your 40s and you're more financially settled, you're not in the kind of situation where you might be in your 20s and just going to sign the first deal that people give you. So we really focused on hooking up with like the director, James Bovin is, you know, he's the guy who co-created Flight of the Concords. He did the Muppets movie, you know, Alice Through the Looking Glass. Really professional guy but also really understands the tone of the book, which is like humorous, you know, kind of sarcastic. It's not just about the technology. It's also about the characters. Same thing with the production team. The two producers, Mandeville Productions, I was just talking to Todd Lieberman, and we're talking about just what is augmented reality, like how does it look like on the screen? So I'm not- >> It's not going to look like Blade Runner is what I'm hearing. >> (laughs) I don't know. It's going to look real. I imagine, I don't know, they're going to make whatever movie they're going to make, but their perspective, one of the things we talked about is keeping the movie very grounded. Like you know, one of the big questions they ask first going into it is before we even had any sort of movie discussions is like is this more of like a Looper, Gattica, or District Nine, or is it more like The Fifth Element, you know, I mean, is it like, do you want it to be this sort of grounded movie that feels authentic and real and near future or do you want this to be like completely alien and weird and out of it. And the story is more grounded. So I think a lot, hopefully what we display on the screen will not feel that far away from reality. >> Okay, yeah. >> You do marketing in your day job. >> I do. >> I'm curious as you look at this, kind of the balance of educating, reaching a broad audience, you have passion for STEM, what's your thoughts around that? Is it, I worry there's so much general, like television or things like that, when I see the science stuff, it like makes me groan. Because you know, it's like I don't understand that. >> I am the worst, because I got a security background too, so that's the one I get scrambled on. The war, I mean, like. >> Wait, thank goodness I updated my firewall settings because I saved the world from terrorists. >> Hang on, we're breaking through the first firewall. Now we're through the second firewall. (laughing) Now we're going through the third firewall, like 15 firewalls. And let me upload the virus, like all that stuff. It's difficult for me. I think that, you know, hopefully, there's also a group in Hollywood called the Hollywood Science and Entertainment Exchange. And they're a group of scientists who work with film makers on, you know, reigning things in. And film makers don't usually take all their advice, i.e. Interstellar, (laughing) but you know, I think (laughing) in many cases there's some really good ideas that come to play into it that hopefully bring up, like I think Jarvis for example, in Iron Man or the Avengers is a really cool implementation of what the future of AI systems might be like. And I know they used the Hollywood Science Exchange to figure out how is that going to work? And I think the marketing aspect is, you know, the reason I came up with the idea for this book is because my CEO of a company I used to work for, he had this whole conversation about teleportation, like teleportation was impossible. And he's like, it's not because the science, yes, the science is a problem right now, but we'll get over it. The main issue is that nobody would ever step foot into a device that vaporizes them and then printed them out somewhere else. And I said, well that's great, cause that's a marketing problem. (laughing) >> Yeah, you're dead every time you do it. But it's the same you, I can't tell the difference. >> Well, you say you're dead, I'm saying you're just moving. (laughing) >> Artificial intelligence, you know, kind of a big gap between the hype to where we need to go. What's your thoughts on that space in general? >> I think that we have, it's a great question because I feel like that's a term that gets thrown around a lot, and I think as a result it's becoming watered down. So you've this sort of artificial intelligence that comes with like, you know, Google building an app that can beat the world's best Go player, which is a really, really difficult puzzle. The problem is, that app can do one thing, and that's play Go. You put in it a chess game, and it's like I don't know what's going on. >> It's a very specialized kind of intelligence, yeah. >> Now with Open AI, you know, they just had some pretty interesting implementations where they actually played video games with a real live competition and won. Again, you know, but without the smack talk, which really I think would add a lot. Now you got to get an AI to smack talk. So I think the problem is we haven't figured out a really good way of creating a general purpose AI. And there's a lot of parallels to the evolution of computing in general because if you look at how computers were before we had general purpose operating systems like Unix, every computer was built to do a very, very specific function, and that's kind of what AI is right now. So we're still waiting to have a sort of general purpose AI that can do a lot of specialized activities. >> Even most robots are still very single-purpose today. >> That's the fundamental problem. But you're seeing the Cambridge guys are working on sort of the bipedal robot that can do lots of things. And Siri's getting better, Cortana's getting better, Watson's getting better, but we're not there. We still need to find a really good way of integrating deep knowledge with general purpose conversational AI. Cause that's really what you need to like, Stu, what do you need? Here, let me give it to you, you know? >> Do you draw a distinction between AI that's able to simply sort of react as a fairly complex machine or something that can create new things and add something? >> That's in the book as well. So the fundamental thing that I don't think we get around even in the future is giving computers the ability to actually come up with new ideas. There's actually a career, the main job of the protagonist in the book, his job is a salter. And his job is to salt AI algorithms to introduce entropy so they can come up with new ideas. >> Okay, interesting. >> So based off the sort of chaos theory. >> Like chaos monkey, right? >> Yeah. And that's really what you're trying to do is like, okay, react to things that are happening because you can't just come up with them on their own. There's a whole, I don't want to bore you, but there's a whole bunch of stuff in the book about how that works. >> It's like hand-carving ideas that are then mass produced by machines. >> Yeah, I don't know if you guys are going to have Simon Crosby on here, he's kind of like an expert on that. He was the Dean of Kings College, which is where Turing came from. So he really knows a lot about that. He's got a lot of strong ideas about it. But I learned a lot from him in that regard. There's a lot of like, the snarky spirit of Simon Crosby lives on in my book somewhere. But he's just funny cause he's, coming from that field, he immediately sees a lot of BS right off the bat, whenever anybody's presenting. He's got like the ability to just cut through it. Because he understands what it would actually take to make that happen, you know? So I tried to preserve some of that in the book. >> That is refreshing in the tech industry. >> So Tal, I need to let you, you know, wrap this up. Give us a plug for the book, tell us, when are we going to be able to see this on the big screen? >> I don't know about the big screen, but the Punch Escrow is now available. You can get it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, anywhere books are sold. It's been optioned by Lionsgate. The director attached to it is James Bovin, production team is Mandeville Productions. I'm very excited about it. Go check it out. It's a pretty quick read, reads like a technothriller. It's not too hard. And it's fun for the whole family. I think one of the coolest things about it is that the feedback I've been getting has been that it really is appealing to everybody. I've got mother-in-laws reading it, you know, it's pretty cool. Initially I sold it, my initial audience is like us, but it's kind of cool, like, Stu will finish the book, he'll give it to, you know, wife, daughter, anything, and they're really digging it. So it's kind of fun. >> Justin: Thanks a lot. >> Tal Klein, really appreciate you coming. Congratulations on the book, we look forward to the movie. Maybe, you know, we'll get the Cube involved down the road. (laughing) >> And we're giving away 75 copies of it here at Lakeside booth, if you guys want to come. >> Tal Klein, author of The Punch Escrow, also CMO of Lakeside, who is here in the thing. But yeah, (laughing) a lot of stuff. Justin and I will be back with more coverage here from VMWorld 2017. You're watching the Cube. (bright music)