Gene Feldman: All right, everybody. Welcome to the next episode of Neon Protocol. We're really excited. this is a guest I've actually been wanting to have on for a while now. for right now it's good it's pretty much gonna be a one on one conversation with Peter Wittig from Motive I.O., which I got a chance to work with when I was at Prina, and I've got a chance to really get exposed to his story and his use cases over the past couple years. Either through conferences or getting a chance to actually sit down and see what he's working on. and we just came out of AES, which was the augmented enterprise summit for those that aren't aware. I'm not sure if you were there. I I I kind of assume you you weren't. So
Peter Wittig: That was all.
Gene Feldman: it was kind of a weird one this year because I think AI took a lot of predominance over it. But what I would like to do is actually, Peter, I'm just turn it over to you if you want to give yourself a little introduction. I think we all like to introduce. We all know how we like to be introduced ourselves the best. But really curious kind of what what you've been working on the past year or so since we've talked and what what you got kind of cooking in your in your realm with the company.
Peter Wittig: Sure. Well, well, first of all, thanks for having me on, Gene. it's great to be here. I've certainly listened to some of the episodes that you've had so far, and I I enjoy the the style and I'm happy to be part of it. so I I my name is Peter Whittig. I'm one of the the co-founders at Motive.io. we've gone through quite a long journey of starting as a game company, getting into immersive training, and I'd say in the last year or so, we've been doing a lot of work on another piece of our platform, which we call Motive Intelligence. should be no surprise as AI has become quite prominent these days. but with everything we build, we build it because a customer has needed it for a project. And so that's really served us well as a company. So there are things you may we may look and say, hey, that's pretty cool. that'd be interesting to try. But we we make sure that there's someone who says, you know what, I'm gonna pay for that. This is something I need at my company. And then we incorporate that into what we we already offer. And that served us pretty well.
Gene Feldman: Nice. So you mentioned that you were you were a game company to start and then you kind of got into the enterprise. I know a lot of people kinda jump into the game industry because it's you know it could be very lucrative if you can hit it right. So for those listening, what caused you to change out of the game industry and start going into more enterprise solutions?
Peter Wittig: Well, so two of the guys that I work with, Ryan and Jeff, also co-founders at the company, they had made a game in I think twenty eleven called Code Runner. And it was awesome. It it was a location aware game for an iPhone. And effectively the story would change based on where you were, the time of day, the weather, if you're near a gas station versus a a grocery grocery store, the details of the narrative changed based on your context. And They hired me to work on another version of that. And what we decided to build was a a tool to make it easier to build that type of an experience. So Jeff comes from a film background, Ryan comes very much from platform development, and so there was a difficult workflow between Jeff and Ryan at the time. So, you know, spreadsheets and and documents, when really the faster way would be if Jeff could iterate on content without needing to talk to the developer. And so we built this tool called Storyflow. And the idea was is that you could create these experiences with that and it would download that content into the app and be able to play it out on your phone. no one knew really what we were talking about because this was before Pokemon, long before, and and no one really had any ideas. you know, both those guys would say it would take twenty-nine minutes about 39 minutes to explain what we were doing and before we got there. So we would go to these game conferences and we would do a lot of this stuff in Unity. the game was in Unity but the the authoring tool was on the web. And we have these people from Enterprise Learning who would walk by the booth and they'd say, hey wait, could we do that with training? And we said sure because it's pretty general purpose. There's no reason you couldn't use it for for that versus what we had built it for. And so we just found that that proved to be a a more lucrative market. So we made that switch. And interestingly You know, the offering is what people really got enamored with and still frankly are. But over time, what we learned is what enterprises really need. So I would say that, you know, Storyflow is certainly the flashy part and and people show up, they find us for that and they they check it out. But it's really the what I call the boring but essential piece is why people stay. Is we've never failed an IT sec review. If you need a version of our platform that captures data from our immersive training, anyone else's immersive training. Can feed that into your LMS, can use SSO, needs to to dump data to another system, maybe work with another piece of AI. that's all possible with our platform. And that's the piece that people really seem to need. Once they get past that idea of content, like how can I make this really part of a larger part of the work that I'm doing internally and not just a cool pilot that that people try once or twice.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. I mean the data collection, especially for training and development, is huge because it's always trying to quantify the unquantifiable. You know, how how
Peter Wittig: Yes.
Gene Feldman: do people learn? But I think one of the things that's really interesting is for those that were n have never been a part of a software development is the scrum, you know, the scrum method, you know, of you know, you roadmap, you iterate, you create, and then you fix. But and that ta that can take, you know, I mean one company I worked with, it was a six week scrum pattern. So it was six weeks before you were able to even get bugs fixed, you know, because it had to go through that entire process. But I think it's really neat to be able to iterate as you're going and being able to create and do that. So as well as, you know, getting it in the hands of people that aren't necessarily the software developers, you know, because a lot of training and development. You I mean that's what they end up doing. They end up learning cornerstone, learning LM you know, the LMS systems, and learning e-learning. And it's kind of an a neat vibe to it. So in in this, but I want to actually circle back to your data piece. What's some of the big data points that you've identified over the past couple of years that really seem to carry the use case of either XR or AI that you've seen that companies really can capture on for those that are looking for r good ROI.
Peter Wittig: Right. I and I think for for XR in particular, I'll kind of start there. But with with XR,
Gene Feldman: Please.
Peter Wittig: ROI is is the thing. you know, and and so there's a few pieces to that. But if if if you choose a good use case, and you can then say if we make this piece of training, we can measure this metric, and then we can say if the metric improves by X amount, then we can put a dollar amount to that and say if we roll this out after we show that it works. Your whole organization that should save you this amount of money. And that's, I think, really the key. So then once you can produce that report and show, hey, we we you know knock down training time by 30%, that means you know, we roll that out that you're gonna save you know 17 million dollars a year if you do that nationwide. that's fantastic. The next part is you have to be ready to work with IT and say, Will this be accepted within your corporate network? And that's the part we've we've really done very well. And again, I call that the boring but essential piece, but it it is absolutely essential. And so you can have the best pilot in the world, and a lot of these companies have done that, and then it it dies because IT won't let it through. And one of the things we noticed with so many of our big customers is they sometimes have one of those great pilots that somebody else made, which is why we made it easy for that piece of software to send data back to our platform, which could get past IT, to say, well, let's keep you the momentum going. That's to you can keep getting more work. We're just working on the data piece. And then the company is getting value from more people building content. And and hopefully everybody's doing better as a result of that.
Gene Feldman: I agree. the red tape that companies put on their IT, because I've always told I always tell people if you're going to do a use case, not only do you need to get IT involved, you need to get finance and legal. Cause one of those three prongs can kill your project in like seconds. You know, so what were some of the big hurdles? because I know you mentioned some of your certifications. what are some of the what were some some of the big hurdles that you had to overcome to get it to work with all these IT departments or to ensure I guess let me ask it a different way. because because one of the big hurdles is convincing IT that it's safe. You know, and so I guess how do you approach that type of conversation? Cause I think a lot of people have those conversations and I think a lot of people w want to bring these use cases to their company, but once they learn that okay, they have to get past the IT gatekeeping, they kind of, you know what, it was a great idea, but You know, I'm just gonna pass on it. It's too much trouble. So how do you approach that IT conundrum?
Peter Wittig: Well, I I think one of the things that I'd say to whoever it is that is is concerned about that IT roadblock is please let me talk to IT. I actually really enjoy talking to IT. I'm happy to talk to them and then I tell them the same thing. I I just say we've never failed an IT sec review. And I actually find IT to be the most consistent group from organization to organization to organization. They have certain concerns which are quite valid. They have things that you need to show them that you do in order to be to be secure in their mind. And if you do them, they'll pass you. And and so if if you just do it from you know, and it the concerns are the same, like organization A, B, C, D. And so if you can do that, there's no reason they'll say no. And so for that reason, I think their consistency, I think is is one of the reasons that that that we like in dealing with them and and talking with them. And we asked to get on a call with IT as soon as we get on a project. Like, do we talk with IT too?
Gene Feldman: Guys, so what so w are there any c I mean, what would you say some of the biggest concerns that I that you that if people were encountering this that they can kinda prepare for, some of the big concerns that IT may usually have?
Peter Wittig: Well, I I I think usually what they want is control is the ability to say that we are in control of this. The data is staying, you know, where we want it to. and so for that reason, and usually one of the requirements coming out is to say, Hey, the data needs to go from your system into into one of our systems. And so we will say, Okay, well, we've got our SOC two type two compliance, so we we are looking at those security points. But more importantly, what what usually does it is to say, Do you want your own instance resin running in your Azure cloud or in your AWS cloud? Either one is fine. We've even got somebody that's just doing it all on prem, all possible. And usually when you do that and then answer a few of their questionnaires related to where's the data moving, you say, well, you you have control of that from this point on. That usually is enough to do it.
Gene Feldman: Nice. Yeah, 'cause I know one of the things that I always try to let them know, especially when the AI when AI first start coming, is really helping not only IT but the entire organization understand that there's a difference between open source AI and close so you know, closed sourced, that you can close an AI engine to only run your data.
Peter Wittig: Mm.
Gene Feldman: rather than outside. So No, that's really interesting, you know. because I think a lot of what we try to talk about here is helping people, you know, approach these use cases. So besides the security, let's let's get to more of the fun stuff. I think we I think even people get get tired of the security, even though it's extremely important. So any IT listeners, we're not diminishing what you do whatsoever. But you know, you before we were, you know, start recording, we were talking about, you know, AI. So what do you think? some of the big trends are because I know you were really big on creating some immersive authoring tools that allow people to create different experiences. So and you mentioned your AI, are you kind of bringing it to where it's kind of gonna be a full package with XR and AI, or are you kind of dividing and conquering at the moment?
Peter Wittig: well we've done a bit of both. And so we we had a project a while back, and this particular company wanted an AI assistant inside of their training module. And so we created that and we were using Gen AI to do that. We incorporated that into the authoring tool. But the idea was the the agent needs to speak English, French, Hindi, and Punjabi. The the agent needs to only know training procedures and corporate policy. So we we built a rag that could to do that. we built an interface where you could kind of customize and say, well this agent should should behave in this way, the way you give a you know a custom GPT or like a Gemini gem a description and a way to behave. And we've done that as well. the nice part about that is then we kind of built an entire layer to say, okay, well You can define this how you like, but then you can point it at whatever model you want to. Because some companies said we're going to run that open open source piece on on a box that we've got. Some other companies are saying, no, no, we're gonna go use you know enterprise open AI or Anthropic. And we don't really have an opinion about what they want to use. What we tried to build was, okay, you've got this way to put this in XR. What was really interesting to me is and this has been true generally. As soon as someone has an AI somewhere that they like, they then usually want that AI somewhere else. And and so they're like, Can we have that same AI you built for the XR training, but not in it in XR? And like it as a chat bubble, like you know, somewhere like on a on a device. And so for that, you just need a nice API layer. And so that was part of motive intelligence was the way to create these customized AIs to say point at whatever model you want. define how you want it to behave, give it the documents you need, but then we make it very easy for you to access that wherever you want. We had a few templates to say you can put it here, put it there. But again, a lot of these companies have teams inside who want to build these custom interfaces and they're able to do that with with Motive Intelligence. So we found that because that's what a company is doing and wanted, that's what we build, as opposed to kind of taking a swing and saying, let's let's just try this.
Gene Feldman: No, interesting. So it almost kinda s you always start with what the company's bringing to you.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. And one other advantage again with going back to take it back to IT and getting through the sec
Gene Feldman: No, please.
Peter Wittig: review is is once we're in, it's not a it's not always an easy process to get a new vendor approved or to get a new AI system approved. And so if we're already there and we can already do it, that means teams who have ideas and have momentum can just start taking advantage of it right away using our platform to go through it because we're already in and approved.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. As well as by being able to connect their AIs, you know, that if they've got proprietary AI, no problem. Cause basically it's almost it's almost like a middleman, you know,
Peter Wittig: Exactly.
Gene Feldman: being able to design, you know, and almost remove the prompting from it, if that makes sense. Cause one of the big hurdles I think a lot of people are experiencing with AI right now is AI is great, but it's only as good as two things. One, the data that's in there. And the prompting he used to get the data back out. You
Peter Wittig: Mm.
Gene Feldman: know, and for those of us that have been in it for years, we've kind of learned the backdoor approach to prompting, you know, and how to train the AI and things like that. Not there's some great secret backdoor to into AI. It's honestly that we've, you know, for those of us that were a part of when it was first being d developed and coming out, we learned very quickly how to converse with it. And so that's why I refer to as kind of the backdoor. But You know, what you're really doing is creating it for you know, which I think is great. I've been a I think we've had these conversations in the past, is that you're creating something for the non techie person to be able to take full advantage of this technology.
Peter Wittig: Yeah, that's our that that's our aim. And and even to say, you know, there's taking a lot of like the I I again I would say so some of the work that that might just take up more time in your internal teams, say we already did that part for you. Just get to the part where you can put this where you want it to be, run the experiments you want to run, start using it in a productive way. it's just about taking you as close as we can to where you want to be without knowing where that place is right away.
Gene Feldman: No, absolutely. And you're seeing other companies kind of do this too, like Unity Light, I think, did a really good job of bringing Unity out of the developers' hands and kind of bringing it into everybody's hands. You know.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. I mean it it's interesting. I I always with L and D, like going back on that, to the XR side of things, but whether it's XR or AI, but if Unity is involved, the way I always pushed it to L and D was to say this is our tool is a return to normalcy. you know, of course you're the one creating the content, like you have been for all these other un you created the videos, you created the the e learning, you created all of those those pieces of content. All we're saying is here's this new medium. Of course you're gonna create the content for it. and I I sometimes found that was a better way to to present it simply because it was hearkening back to, hey, you're very skilled in this area. You're not you are gonna learn something new, it's a new tool, but it's still it's doing the thing that that you've been doing for a long time.
Gene Feldman: No, which I think is great because one of the one of the sometimes the issues I have and I've been a kind of a critic of is we get these s use cases that were created by a group of developers that really it it was interesting to them, but really served no purpose outside of them. You know, like there's one game I know an w a recent game that I saw people starting to get excited about was a blacksmithing XR game. Now not to diminish what they created. But when I'm sitting around getting an XR, the last thing I'm thinking about is I want to be a blacksmith. You know, it's it what's the solution? What what's it's how are we going to get the most people to benefit from this type of tool? And by allowing the experts to still control the training, the educational philosophy, the instructional design, but having this tool, it's to me it's kind of like what was it in PowerPoint? When they first introduced the presentation slide suggestion, what I can't remember what they call it. But for me, it was great because I all of a sudden it would take me six hours to design a slide and pick a font and pick a color. I could now just have 20 different options going, okay, which one do I like the best? And
Peter Wittig: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: it To me, by taking out that busy work, it allows you to now focus more on that educational theory and more on that training of how can we get people to s to proficiency a lot faster, if that kind of makes sense.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and that's that's your s you know, y the skill you have that that's really making it work. I mean yeah, yeah, like you say with the PowerPoint, you don't need to design that slider. I I will say with the blacksmith thing immediately I was thinking that'd be some good safety training.
Gene Feldman: It it no, it would no, and that's where I think some of the games do lead to it. Like I still remember Wrenched that came out years ago that I used when I used to do early talks to the factories, you know, back when the factories hated XR. You'd walk in there and you were public enemy number one, you know, and I would walk in with it and I'm like, but you can actually build an entire engine. you know, in VR with the torque specs, which I think is fantastic. And so I think the gate and this is where I s I still think the games have some great because it's great for ideation. But when the developers I think s lose focus of what the customer wants, it it can sometimes hurt them.
Peter Wittig: Yeah, I I'd agree with you there. it's yeah, I I it's I I always like the philosophy of just kind of having tools for people to do what they do a bit better. And you know it's it's that specificity thing and it's an old analogy that I use, but they'll probably date me as well. But I mean I mean it's it's when groups can kind of forget what they do. And and I I've certainly encountered this when I'm trying to present this new way of doing something, and I know you have too.
Gene Feldman: Mm-hmm.
Peter Wittig: But you know, there there are people that I'll run into where as opposed to thinking that they're training, they're thinking that what they do is create e-learning. As opposed to saying I'm helping someone learn and and work at their job better, like no no no, I make PowerPoints. And it's kind of like saying, you what, no, no, no, I I'm not a mis music distribution, I I make CDs. And that's why they don't own the digital space. Or it's like I I I make trains, don't fly in an airplane, they forgot they're in transportation. they thought they were in the train business, you know, so it's kind of that you get too specific on the thing that the activity that you do without really remembering what the purpose of the activity is. And I think that that that is usually a quick way to kind of discern if I think a a group is going to be truly engaged in trying something new with a new technology. Cause because if they see it from that more general point of view, hey, we're helping people learn better, train better. access the data they want to to find better, more efficiently, yeah, a new tool is welcome. But if it's like, no, no, no, I do it this way, it's a lot less welcome.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. I always go back to the iPhone BlackBerry to buy, you know, when Black BlackBerry gave gave us what you needed and people only used it. You know, those that carry Blackberries are the ones that were connected 24-7. The rest of us, you know, when the iPhone first came out, it was the Star Wars and Star Trek fanatics that were buying it because you have a tricorder or a lightsaber app. You know, then all of a sudden it became something much more. And I kind of see XR and AI leading leading in that direction. Unfortunately, I think AI took a lot of steam out of the XR space. And
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: we're slowly starting to see it grow back as AI is I don't want to say it's run its course, but I I almost want to say the honeymoon is slowly ending with AI because you're now starting to see the impact and the what I call the collateral damage of AI. You know, you know, with The you know, all the recent layoffs, you know, we're recording it at the time when this is a week after Netflix laid off a thousand associates. That was a huge wave of AI impact. You know, we're seeing Disney on its third round of layoffs, you know, and now we're even seeing lawsuits slowly coming up against different HR recruiting sites that use AI and that they're almost filtering out. They're not looking for talent. They're looking for buzzwords. You know, the idea of being able to talk to somebody one-on-one and clarify your idea or communicate your idea, it got lost in that shuffle, I think, because I think just AI just it it just caught on too fast, if that makes sense.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. I you know, it's it I I I hear what you're saying, and and I think that there's there's certainly a lot of things that were that have happened lately that that I think if they'd had a second chance to to maybe do it, they'd they'd do it differently. But you know, we were talking before we started recording and and I think that there's just an aspect of a new technology and the way people use it, right? And like with with XR, it it's the same. And and one point I would make is that I agree with you, A AI has taken a lot of the this theme out of the room. in terms of XR. I I would say though that the companies who have seen XR working for them, they're continuing to expand in what they're doing. It's just that those new innovation groups tend to go with AI over XR for right now. But you know, you remember back in those XR days too, like the early days where people were were doing things that you really have no business being in XR. And and you know, so now we're seeing that with AI too. people are doing things and and eventually it's gonna come back to that you like we actively sh stayed away from metaverse as a term as a company. It's like we were like, we do this, we do this because we know it works really well. We do training. That's what we're doing. This is that's a way to do training. and and with AI, I think that there's some things that it does super well and and we like, you know, putting our foot on the gas on those. but you know as you pointed out there's a whole lot of people using it in ways that I think that they'll they'll they'll certainly need to to think about.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, I mean, I always go back to the to me the best version, and I always sound like a really harsh critic, but I just think we picked the wrong word. I I don't think it's artificial, I think it's assisted. But I look
Peter Wittig: Mm.
Gene Feldman: at it coming from like the same kind of lens with you. I look at it from that training point of view of how can this help somebody train? Like for me, one of the biggest things I know we've had conversations over is being able to train people on negotiation, you know,
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: or some of these more complex skills where Typically, you would only get the chance to learn by being thrown into the fire, you know? And you actually get a chance to actually practice that. Like I actually go back to this old story. one of the a band I really love is the Runaways. They were a 70s all-girls hard rock band. But when they formed, what they would do is they would practice in this trailer and their manager would throw things at them. To prepare them for when they got on stage, because at that time, you know, it was it was a very male-dominated industry. And because they got that opportunity to practice in that type of setting, in that much more realistic setting, it didn't set up any false expectations, but I also think it gave to their hard edge, you know, and how they approached the music and how they approached their concerts. And for if you've never gotten a chance to listen to the runaways, Joan Jett and Leto Ford, this is where they came from. This was their first band.
Peter Wittig: right.
Gene Feldman: For those for those that are listening that have never heard that tur that band. So, but I mean I but it c it comes down to it. It's that ab ability to be able to practice and have some type of simulation in that real and being able to create as true to life as you possibly can. You know, because if you're because if you're creating it in a way that is always positive
Peter Wittig: Yeah, absolutely.
Gene Feldman: or always best case scenario, as soon as you get to the worst case scenario, you're really gonna have issues. You know, I mean look at pilots, they'll practice in a simulator. Hundreds of hours before they ever get into a plane. And they'll run them
Peter Wittig: Thank goodness.
Gene Feldman: through the ringer on different situations.
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm. And I'm very glad every time I get in a plane that that they've done that.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. So so without the beyond this, what are some of the big because I know because I didn't attend AES this year and I know you didn't. I know coming out of it, a big a big conversation that a lot of people were having as a new trend is OSHA safety glasses that have some type of digital splay. So almost like taking the I the e the even glasses. The G2s and making them safety standards. you know, Lenoble, I know, was doing it for years, and then they closed shop earlier this year as the conversations are starting to emerge. So outside of that trend, which was again really bigly big echoed at AES, what are some of the trends that you're starting to hear or notice about either XR or AI that that that a lot of companies are starting to like almost gravitate towards?
Peter Wittig: I mean to me, I mean right now in in XR established companies have seen the value in what they've made and so what they want to do is make more content faster and be able to deliver that in as quickly as they can because it saves them a whole lot of money. and they're just saying, Well, if we did it here and it worked, we could do it there and save a whole lot more. And so it's really about speed of getting the content done. And and then really it's kind of upskilling people who deliver the training and say, How am I gonna manage the medium in which they're going? and AI, I what I really find is is it's just mostly, at least in a corporate sense, it's about finding the right information and at the moment they need it. And so it's about con not needing to context switch. And saying, hey, this is the thing I need to know. I'm working here. Can I ask? Can I get the information? And and there it is. Now you might need to jump to one piece of software or another, but to to talk to the AI if the AI doesn't happen to already be in the piece of software you're using. But at the same time, the you know, what was there before AI was maybe jumping through six different things, searching, looking through all these things. So I mean, as boring as it might seem, again, I I think just retrieval of information seems to be the one I I hear the most. Now aspirationally I hear you know pretty cool things. I haven't seen those play out the way those aspirations have have been voiced. We did have a company and I won't say anything about who it is or or what the idea was, but they presented a a a safety training with AR glasses. that that frankly I think would have really wound up getting somebody hurt. and and w we told them pretty frankly this isn't this this would be a quite of a dangerous activity to do. I mean, if it all worked perfectly, it would be amazing. I just
Gene Feldman: Absolutely.
Peter Wittig: just didn't think that that was going to be the case. And and you know, given the technology and and what they were their their hoped for outcome. I was thinking I I just maybe one day, but I think right now that's just going to get somebody hurt. so I I don't know. I I I I don't spend as much time I I think the collaboration aspects with AR glasses is is really cool. It being able to drop a piece of equipment in and amongst a few people, be able to work on that, check it out, do an operation or two, at least discuss it, i is is more on the the MR side, the AR side that I see a lot. And then performance support. you know, you got an expert in your ear and they're pointing out something that you can do on a piece of real machinery or a piece of equipment, that there's that that's a big one too. all very good, I think, uses of of that technology. But AI, yeah,
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Peter Wittig: it's like, hey, what's the thing I need to know where I am right now?
Gene Feldman: No, I remember us having conversations because I still have that training room in my back pocket to be able to pull out at some point. You know, of you know, I get tired, especially as a trainer, handing somebody a link to 20 different SharePoints and say, take a week and go through you don't even know where to start of a SharePoint of SharePoints. And it'd be so great to be able to have that type of interaction with some type of system that can say, all right, let's let's now guide you through it. In lieu of not having somebody there, I don't think it replaces instructor led or replaces a trainer, but it can help answer those questions. Cause you know, like one of the the trends in this is just that I've noticed is you know, you get trainers that end up after a couple of years of answering the same question over and over again, they tend to develop short page patience for those type of questions. Whereas an AI c will never get exhausted with that same question.
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: You know, and then you also have the the learner saying, Well, I don't want to bother them again. I've already asked them six times. I I don't want to ask them again. Well, they can go to the AI. And now, as well as the I you know, I think eventually, you know, having the AI be able to capture like what are the top five questions? You know, what what's the one thing that everybody keeps going back to? I think it also be a of great value.
Peter Wittig: Well, that's interesting. Like I we had a client and and one of the things that you know again, they wanted an AI training assistant. And you know, in the past before Gen AI was there, there's that kind of conversational AI, you know, you call up a movie theater and say, Hey, what's playing today? And say, What what time is this movie playing? And it would it would tell you. and and that AI has been available for quite some time. And What we found with the j a lot of the gen AIs, at least within a a training aspect, is that 70% of the questions are often the same couple of questions. And so for this one client, they were quite cost sensitive on AI. And this was earlier and in a few years back. But what we said is well, look, people are asking mostly the same questions. We can use this old AI, which the latency was better, the speed and the cost was way better. And we say, we'll say if it's one of these. we'll use that AI and if it's not, then we'll kick it to the gen AI and then and go there. And they were thrilled with that result because the the end users didn't know the difference, except the fact that it got, you know, they got answered faster and the company liked it 'cause it kept the cost way down. so that was an interesting one.
Gene Feldman: No, absolutely. You know, I mean I always I always think what Netflix did for you know, you know, with being able to predict what movie you want to watch. And, you know, at first it was all right, if you watch one sci-fi, it's gonna give you all sci-fi. Now
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: it gets pr I mean, that and like Apple TV gets really close at going, okay, you know what, maybe I will give this a try.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. Yeah. It's it despite your you know, not you but one's best in intention to resist those things. But it's yeah, like you know, actually that is pretty good. I I think I will watch that.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. You know, I mean, I I do it all the time. And you know, and I end up and I always hate it when I go at the end, I'm like, you know what? It was right. Gosh darn it. You know, it I
Peter Wittig: Ha ha ha.
Gene Feldman: really did enjoy myself.
Peter Wittig: I like that one.
Gene Feldman: you know, but you know, and you just you keep seeing it pop up everywhere, those different things. I think what's really, you know, it's great is is really getting people to recognize that it's been around for years. You know, we're just we're just at the next iteration of what AI can do. You know,
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: but we've had it for years. Amazon's used it for your shopping list and recommendations like crazy. You know, like I still remember when the Amazon device, I'm not gonna say her name because if I do, it will set off in my where I'm sitting. But even to this day, I s
Peter Wittig: But I I guess I won't either.
Gene Feldman: yeah, yeah, it it will she will go. But one of the things I love is, you know, is anytime I need like I need to remember to buy something, all I do is just start talking about it to myself. And by within four hours, I go into Amazon and it has, here's here's all the recommendations for that item. Perfect. You know, and and so it's finding those type of use cases, you know, those little uses that help us out. But unfortunately, there's also times where it kind of goes bad. And with your with your gaming background, I would love to actually kind of get your thoughts on this with what's going on not only with PlayStation, but with Adobe and a couple of these other software companies where they have found out how they could use either Claude or I can't remember which other AI engine they're using, but to either jailbreak the systems or to copy the software itself and then republish it free. You know, again with you with a gaming background and then, you know, with what mo you know, with the solutions that motive does, I would love your thoughts, concerns. I mean, what what are you taking away from all of this?
Peter Wittig: Well, you know, you I I thought goes to the the so many hard working people who who try to make those who put all that time and effort into making those games. and and really what I'm thinking about are is like programmers and artists and game designers because having worked at game companies in the past, you know, I'm thinking of specific people and and I know how hard those people worked and the the passion that they have for it. so I I certainly don't want those folks to you know, to be taken advantage of and and to lose out on on something. I do think there'll be a a a big change in how things are are made. and basically you know, I even think with XR, you'll get the games that were popular and you'll get mobile and you know, the way that games have progressed since like, I don't know, I I started like even the eighties and then through the nineties and and as the different devices that people use to play them have changed. the audiences and and like you know are you gonna play a massive epic that might take you two years? Are you gonna play a quick mobile game that you can play in 30 seconds like but you could play it anytime, all the time it's free to play. This one costs you, you know, quite a bit of money. That one doesn't. and so the it'll be interesting to see people going after these huge companies for for these types of games. I think at least in XR, the games that have been the most popular have been the ones that have been more mimicking of like quick free games. And and so I I wondered if if making those types of games in that way by jailbreaking, which I don't think is a good thing for all those those people who work so hard on it, will be fruitful for those groups who are who are doing that. I don't know. I haven't kept track of what they they've published and how it's gone. but it'll be interesting to me to see if there's audience for that that type of content.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. And unfortunately, I probably am a little bit too deeper into it than I I I should be, but I've I learned a long time ago that if you follow the gaming industry, you can learn a lot of lessons that they taught us very early on. Like you mentioned content. You know, N64, I still think was one of the best systems that was ever created, but there were no games. When it released, there was only three games. And I'm sorry, as good as Pilot Wings was. You could only play it for so long before you just got frustrated. You know, because there was that, there was Mario, and then there was Tetris for like four months. And I still remember it. I only reason I remember is because my Star Wars Shadows of the Empire was on back order that whole time. But
Peter Wittig: wow, okay. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: that's you know, but you see that with a lot of these gaming companies, you know, and you know, like right now, you know, I I bring that issue up with the, you know, either the jailbreaking or that because, you know, PlayStation has you know, made some big changes over the past couple months. You know, by getting rid of the physical discs and some of the other things. And it's not to be a bashing at PlayStation, it's just talking about what the you know, kind of what they're doing, going to much more subscription based service, which seems to be the the trend in a lot of the gaming and tech companies right now. You
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: know, but and for me it's kind of a good use case to kind of pay attention to because like I said, it's kind of taught us what to do, what not to do throughout the years. Because as long as people are gonna see XR as a gaming device, we have to me, I feel like we have to still kind of treat it as such.
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm. You know, I I I think that's that's fair. And just in in the way that you framed that, you know, it just was making me think like, you know, from I don't know, I I I mean I think people have been copying software and taking video games for free for a long w as long as they possibly they can. So I mean, you know, whether you're copying all the files from someone's computer and then dropping them on your computer, whether you were burning a CD of of a game and passing it along, whether you're, you know, finding some crack for a a license key. so that kind of thing has been happening for for you know decades really. And so I guess it's just the next iteration. The thing to me that's that's always so interesting is like when I I don't I don't know what percentage of it and I think it depends on the context you're looking at, but what percentage of it actually cuts into the real business because, you know, so often I mean like, you know, I just think of music again, like when, you know, Napster was was around. it was because
Gene Feldman: I was just thinking Napster too.
Peter Wittig: yeah, I mean it was it was wildly successful because there was no industry alternative. but then, you know, as soon as you know iTunes showed up, I was frankly it was it was amazing how quickly people switched to to iTunes. And so it it it almost speaks to like a a something that people want that the industry isn't addressing. I don't condone people stealing other people's work. I don't think that's a good thing. But it is certainly something that's been around for quite some time and this is I probably just the next iteration of that.
Gene Feldman: yeah. Well, I mean, it's just like the NFT craze that happened a couple of years ago. People buying these digital images, not realizing I can screenshot your screen and now I own the image as well. You know,
Peter Wittig: Yeah. Have you
Gene Feldman: but
Peter Wittig: Have you tried one of these games actually? Because I I have not, so I don't know what the quality of them is. I don't know if it's just a jailbreak or is it like, Hey, I'm I'm building an an actual variant of
Gene Feldman: So
Peter Wittig: of a of a triple A game.
Gene Feldman: with Adobe, it's recreating the entire Adobe suite. And then they released it as freeware. But
Peter Wittig: Hm. Wow.
Gene Feldman: with some with the PlayStation, what they're doing is jailbreaking it, and now they can play their PS2 games at 4K, high quality, fast bitrate. I think it's Wii games can be played on the PlayStation. I mean, the number of things the jailbreak did, and I know. Sony just released new firmware that basically said if you don't update this firmware, your PlayStation becomes a brick that you have to run the most current firmware. So I know Sony is staying on top of it, but it's it's weird because you know, we talk about privacy, we talk about protection with all these tools, and then these bigger things happen, and it's like, okay, this is what we were scared of. Like for me, the the Smart glasses with the cameras. You know, I you know, I keep saying that as soon as Hollywood realizes that you can bootleg an entire movie from the theater and nobody would ever know with these glasses, they'll get shut down. Because I mean, the number of movies I've seen recently that have come out because people sit in the theater and they record with these smart glasses. You know, and to me, it's for me, it comes down to intellectual property, you know, that is it fair to take AI and recreate something that somebody else put blood, sweat, and tears into, or are you making it better and being able to use AI to give people what they really want to take the hands out of the big company? I don't know the answer. I'm kind of in between. My loyalty
Peter Wittig: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: to Tron kind of makes me want to be a pirate, but
Peter Wittig: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: I can't do that.
Peter Wittig: Yeah, I I had heard about the Adobe one to be fair. And I it's, you know, a again, more abstracting it. I I think that you know, there's people like convenience. do do they is it just as easy to use a pirated version as it is the non pirated version? Is it just as easy to get and access? And and even the smallest of barriers can make people choose one over the other. I I think we're when these things are are when these options are presented. so yeah, I I don't know. It'll be it'll be interesting to see. Do they trust? Again, trust is an issue there too. If if they're making something with it, where does it live? Some people think about that, some people don't. yeah, it'll be it'll be an interesting one to see. I you know, with AI I do like I I I saw like Linus Torvald's like latest about you know putting his foot down saying using AI is not only fine, but you know, he's like I you went on a nice get a nice explanation saying, Well, I'm not going to demand that you use your own compiler. And if you haven't used your own compiler, then you don't understand it. Or if you haven't written your own text editor to write the code, then you clearly don't understand the end line. He's like, I'm not gonna do that. He's like, I do expect you to under you know put in your best effort and to understand what you're talking about. I'm paraphrasing, of course, he said it in a
Gene Feldman: absolutely.
Peter Wittig: different way. But I I thought that that was a an interesting point of view on AI and I and I I like that one to say, well, if if it's a tool, you can use it if it's you know separate from the intellectual property conversation. I I people are using it to create new and and exciting things and and as long as they understand what they're doing with it and it's producing something that people like, I I do want think that should be encouraged.
Gene Feldman: No, I agree. You know, and like I said, I I kind of fall on both sides of it. I really do. And I think where I have the biggest where I where it comes with the conflict really the internal conflict I think comes the most is with Suno, you know, the AI music tool. Because I'm a lifelong musician. I've spent years looking at sheet music, practicing scales over and over. I spent years as a drummer playing rudiments. You know, and now somebody can go in and produce a song in five seconds that used to take us a year to perfect. You know, but I look at the people that I look at what some of these people are doing. You know, imagine you know, like somebody like Jim Morrison, a beautiful poet, but did not have the doors to play with. Suno
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: could actually benefit them. That I think it becomes a tool for certain people as long as it doesn't become I think my concern is when it it phases out the old art, if that makes sense.
Peter Wittig: this conversation with a friend of mine and he he had written a song, you know, and he was telling me and and another guy about it. And then we kind of got into AI, the conversation moved along and he was expressing similar concerns about the art. And I I just stopped him and I said, answer me this. If the best AI in the world for making music, you know, something for 50 years showed up here tomorrow, would it have stopped you from writing that song you just wrote? And because and of course he said no. And it that's inspiration and I don't think that inspiration i is going to you know go away in humans. And I don't think because you can use something else to make something that people won't act on their inspiration. So I I'm less concerned about the art. Now profitability is another matter, but but actually making
Gene Feldman: But I mean,
Peter Wittig: the art, yeah.
Gene Feldman: yeah, and what people don't realize is is so many of the popular pop songs over the past five, ten years have had AI components. I mean, auto-tune is AI vocal processing in and of itself. You know, and I I honestly I kind of become I for me though, as a musician, it's making me develop the Dwight Schroute paradox that I'm calling. Because if you remember the episode where they had where Dwight Competed against the AI bot who can have the most sales. That to me, that's the paradox. And so for me,
Peter Wittig: Okay.
Gene Feldman: it's forcing me to become a better musician. Okay. I now I have to compete against this. But it the thing is, I know AI will never be able to get as creative as I can because AI is going to operate under parameters. So now it's going to it's going to force new music. It's going to force that evolution of a new style that could come out. You know, 'cause I mean, you know, AI is can never create jazz or create thrash metal. It's gonna create what it knows. And so Yeah.
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, even though that even, you know, and and to that point, it's like, you know, i i if you know, if you wanna learn to play the trumpet, I think people are gonna go learn to play the trumpet. It doesn't mean you're gonna be Miles Davis. But, you know, it it's that they're you should still do it. You should you know, just 'cause something, someone is gonna be much better doesn't doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. As well as you know, I mean, I'm sorry, but some of the AI tools to learn the instruments. if I had them when I was a kid, it would have been awesome because I had a drum teacher, it was like whiplash, you know, it was screaming, yelling, throwing drumsticks. And now you get these apps where within 10 minutes you can be playing a song. And as well as the AI can increase the difficulty with you. So you're not, you know. It's it's just a whole
Peter Wittig: Pretty cool.
Gene Feldman: different thing. And I think that's where we need to start we start learning to pick and choose what works for us and what doesn't. But again, it and it almost becomes to me almost an individual experience with the AI. That's getting deep. Sorry.
Peter Wittig: No, but I like that, Jane. You brought it right back to training. You know.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. Cause because it really comes down to because I mean, for training for me, to to kind of get us full circle is, you know, I know everybody talks about the four distinct learning styles, you know, whether it's VARC or savvy, depending on which school of thought you want to buy into. But for me, it's each individual learner learns there there may be small consistencies from learner to learner. But in general, we all have. Different learning styles. Like a lot of, you know, like a number of people say, I have to listen to music when I'm studying. For me, as a musician, that is the worst thing I could ever do. Because if I start listening to music while I'm studying, I stop focusing on what I'm learning and all I'm doing is listening to the music. So for me, I listen to movies. I always have movies going. And that's the thing is that as you get older, you learn what works for you and what doesn't. I think that's what we're going to have to do with the a lot of these tools to kind of pick and choose what's working for us. You know, I mean, we're even seeing MySpace coming back, you know, because people are realizing, you know what, I actually liked that better than the alternative we have today.
Peter Wittig: Mm. Interesting. I hadn't I hadn't realized there was a resurgence in in mind space.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, it's slowly well, it's all part of this nostalgia. I mean, Toys are Us is coming back, which I couldn't be more excited for. So, you know, I I mean, really, I think Masters of the Universe did a great job of of showing that there's really a beauty to thus Gen Xers that grew up, you know, in the heyday of the eighties. You know, I still think eighty two to eighty six was just it was like a renaissance of years.
Peter Wittig: I'll just quick eighty two, last time the Brewers were in the World Series, so I'm very excited. Milwaukee Brewers back in the World Series.
Gene Feldman: I know. In fact, I was just they were talking about Bob Euchre and saying that he
Peter Wittig: I hear the loved one.
Gene Feldman: sat there for forty years and the only time he got to announce a Super Bowl was during the Major League movie.
Peter Wittig: that that's tough. That's tough.
Gene Feldman: But yeah, no, congratulations. I saw that. That is so exciting. See
Peter Wittig: Yeah, go first.
Gene Feldman: yeah, I'm St. Louis. The Cardinals make it every other year, it seems like.
Peter Wittig: Yeah, they're off we could. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, but that's okay. It's I love I love it when you see these other team, you know, these these teams because to me it's it's the perseverance that I thoroughly enjoy. And that kind of comes back to what we're doing a lot we talked about is that perseverance of seeing of seeing this through and you know,
Peter Wittig: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: realizing that AI can actually help us with that perseverance. So, but we're come actually coming up near the end. So I this is where we usually do what we call final protocol.
Peter Wittig: Okay.
Gene Feldman: So if you could leave the listeners with a thought or a piece of advice that you could pass on, what would it be?
Peter Wittig: Wow, that's that's that's deep. I think if you can, and I realize not everybody's life accounts for it, if you can have a few minutes in your day where you where you can just stop doing an activity and just think about it and maybe make a list of all those things you got in your mind that you you wanna do. I I find that that's really helpful. It helps focus me and say, well, these are the things I really want to get done or these are the things that I'm interested in. And it could be a today list, it could be when I got the time list. Just just taking a minute to stop the constant activity to just focus and think about the things that you want to do.
Gene Feldman: No, I like that. 'Cause sometimes we're so quick to action we don't stop to think about it ahead of time.
Peter Wittig: How about you? And be nice to people. I think that's good.
Gene Feldman: I love it. So, everybody, so thank you so much for listening. remember, you can catch all of our on your favorite listening platform. You can catch our past episodes, as well as we've got a couple really good future episodes coming up as we wrap up this year. I can't believe I'm saying that it's middle of October. but You know, as well as be sure to like, follow, and share. Please, this will help our channel grow and really kind of help share. As well as if you have any ideas for shows, please post them on LinkedIn, share them with us, and we'll see what we can do. But Peter, absolutely fantastic catching up with you, my friend. I I love seeing what you guys are doing. Highly recommend to check them out on LinkedIn. the links and everything will be shared with the episode. But really enjoyed catching up with you and and getting a chance to kind of pick your brain on some of these topics, my friend.
Peter Wittig: Thank you, Gene. I appreciate you having me on.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely.
Peter Wittig: That was all.
Gene Feldman: it was kind of a weird one this year because I think AI took a lot of predominance over it. But what I would like to do is actually, Peter, I'm just turn it over to you if you want to give yourself a little introduction. I think we all like to introduce. We all know how we like to be introduced ourselves the best. But really curious kind of what what you've been working on the past year or so since we've talked and what what you got kind of cooking in your in your realm with the company.
Peter Wittig: Sure. Well, well, first of all, thanks for having me on, Gene. it's great to be here. I've certainly listened to some of the episodes that you've had so far, and I I enjoy the the style and I'm happy to be part of it. so I I my name is Peter Whittig. I'm one of the the co-founders at Motive.io. we've gone through quite a long journey of starting as a game company, getting into immersive training, and I'd say in the last year or so, we've been doing a lot of work on another piece of our platform, which we call Motive Intelligence. should be no surprise as AI has become quite prominent these days. but with everything we build, we build it because a customer has needed it for a project. And so that's really served us well as a company. So there are things you may we may look and say, hey, that's pretty cool. that'd be interesting to try. But we we make sure that there's someone who says, you know what, I'm gonna pay for that. This is something I need at my company. And then we incorporate that into what we we already offer. And that served us pretty well.
Gene Feldman: Nice. So you mentioned that you were you were a game company to start and then you kind of got into the enterprise. I know a lot of people kinda jump into the game industry because it's you know it could be very lucrative if you can hit it right. So for those listening, what caused you to change out of the game industry and start going into more enterprise solutions?
Peter Wittig: Well, so two of the guys that I work with, Ryan and Jeff, also co-founders at the company, they had made a game in I think twenty eleven called Code Runner. And it was awesome. It it was a location aware game for an iPhone. And effectively the story would change based on where you were, the time of day, the weather, if you're near a gas station versus a a grocery grocery store, the details of the narrative changed based on your context. And They hired me to work on another version of that. And what we decided to build was a a tool to make it easier to build that type of an experience. So Jeff comes from a film background, Ryan comes very much from platform development, and so there was a difficult workflow between Jeff and Ryan at the time. So, you know, spreadsheets and and documents, when really the faster way would be if Jeff could iterate on content without needing to talk to the developer. And so we built this tool called Storyflow. And the idea was is that you could create these experiences with that and it would download that content into the app and be able to play it out on your phone. no one knew really what we were talking about because this was before Pokemon, long before, and and no one really had any ideas. you know, both those guys would say it would take twenty-nine minutes about 39 minutes to explain what we were doing and before we got there. So we would go to these game conferences and we would do a lot of this stuff in Unity. the game was in Unity but the the authoring tool was on the web. And we have these people from Enterprise Learning who would walk by the booth and they'd say, hey wait, could we do that with training? And we said sure because it's pretty general purpose. There's no reason you couldn't use it for for that versus what we had built it for. And so we just found that that proved to be a a more lucrative market. So we made that switch. And interestingly You know, the offering is what people really got enamored with and still frankly are. But over time, what we learned is what enterprises really need. So I would say that, you know, Storyflow is certainly the flashy part and and people show up, they find us for that and they they check it out. But it's really the what I call the boring but essential piece is why people stay. Is we've never failed an IT sec review. If you need a version of our platform that captures data from our immersive training, anyone else's immersive training. Can feed that into your LMS, can use SSO, needs to to dump data to another system, maybe work with another piece of AI. that's all possible with our platform. And that's the piece that people really seem to need. Once they get past that idea of content, like how can I make this really part of a larger part of the work that I'm doing internally and not just a cool pilot that that people try once or twice.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. I mean the data collection, especially for training and development, is huge because it's always trying to quantify the unquantifiable. You know, how how
Peter Wittig: Yes.
Gene Feldman: do people learn? But I think one of the things that's really interesting is for those that were n have never been a part of a software development is the scrum, you know, the scrum method, you know, of you know, you roadmap, you iterate, you create, and then you fix. But and that ta that can take, you know, I mean one company I worked with, it was a six week scrum pattern. So it was six weeks before you were able to even get bugs fixed, you know, because it had to go through that entire process. But I think it's really neat to be able to iterate as you're going and being able to create and do that. So as well as, you know, getting it in the hands of people that aren't necessarily the software developers, you know, because a lot of training and development. You I mean that's what they end up doing. They end up learning cornerstone, learning LM you know, the LMS systems, and learning e-learning. And it's kind of an a neat vibe to it. So in in this, but I want to actually circle back to your data piece. What's some of the big data points that you've identified over the past couple of years that really seem to carry the use case of either XR or AI that you've seen that companies really can capture on for those that are looking for r good ROI.
Peter Wittig: Right. I and I think for for XR in particular, I'll kind of start there. But with with XR,
Gene Feldman: Please.
Peter Wittig: ROI is is the thing. you know, and and so there's a few pieces to that. But if if if you choose a good use case, and you can then say if we make this piece of training, we can measure this metric, and then we can say if the metric improves by X amount, then we can put a dollar amount to that and say if we roll this out after we show that it works. Your whole organization that should save you this amount of money. And that's, I think, really the key. So then once you can produce that report and show, hey, we we you know knock down training time by 30%, that means you know, we roll that out that you're gonna save you know 17 million dollars a year if you do that nationwide. that's fantastic. The next part is you have to be ready to work with IT and say, Will this be accepted within your corporate network? And that's the part we've we've really done very well. And again, I call that the boring but essential piece, but it it is absolutely essential. And so you can have the best pilot in the world, and a lot of these companies have done that, and then it it dies because IT won't let it through. And one of the things we noticed with so many of our big customers is they sometimes have one of those great pilots that somebody else made, which is why we made it easy for that piece of software to send data back to our platform, which could get past IT, to say, well, let's keep you the momentum going. That's to you can keep getting more work. We're just working on the data piece. And then the company is getting value from more people building content. And and hopefully everybody's doing better as a result of that.
Gene Feldman: I agree. the red tape that companies put on their IT, because I've always told I always tell people if you're going to do a use case, not only do you need to get IT involved, you need to get finance and legal. Cause one of those three prongs can kill your project in like seconds. You know, so what were some of the big hurdles? because I know you mentioned some of your certifications. what are some of the what were some some of the big hurdles that you had to overcome to get it to work with all these IT departments or to ensure I guess let me ask it a different way. because because one of the big hurdles is convincing IT that it's safe. You know, and so I guess how do you approach that type of conversation? Cause I think a lot of people have those conversations and I think a lot of people w want to bring these use cases to their company, but once they learn that okay, they have to get past the IT gatekeeping, they kind of, you know what, it was a great idea, but You know, I'm just gonna pass on it. It's too much trouble. So how do you approach that IT conundrum?
Peter Wittig: Well, I I think one of the things that I'd say to whoever it is that is is concerned about that IT roadblock is please let me talk to IT. I actually really enjoy talking to IT. I'm happy to talk to them and then I tell them the same thing. I I just say we've never failed an IT sec review. And I actually find IT to be the most consistent group from organization to organization to organization. They have certain concerns which are quite valid. They have things that you need to show them that you do in order to be to be secure in their mind. And if you do them, they'll pass you. And and so if if you just do it from you know, and it the concerns are the same, like organization A, B, C, D. And so if you can do that, there's no reason they'll say no. And so for that reason, I think their consistency, I think is is one of the reasons that that that we like in dealing with them and and talking with them. And we asked to get on a call with IT as soon as we get on a project. Like, do we talk with IT too?
Gene Feldman: Guys, so what so w are there any c I mean, what would you say some of the biggest concerns that I that you that if people were encountering this that they can kinda prepare for, some of the big concerns that IT may usually have?
Peter Wittig: Well, I I I think usually what they want is control is the ability to say that we are in control of this. The data is staying, you know, where we want it to. and so for that reason, and usually one of the requirements coming out is to say, Hey, the data needs to go from your system into into one of our systems. And so we will say, Okay, well, we've got our SOC two type two compliance, so we we are looking at those security points. But more importantly, what what usually does it is to say, Do you want your own instance resin running in your Azure cloud or in your AWS cloud? Either one is fine. We've even got somebody that's just doing it all on prem, all possible. And usually when you do that and then answer a few of their questionnaires related to where's the data moving, you say, well, you you have control of that from this point on. That usually is enough to do it.
Gene Feldman: Nice. Yeah, 'cause I know one of the things that I always try to let them know, especially when the AI when AI first start coming, is really helping not only IT but the entire organization understand that there's a difference between open source AI and close so you know, closed sourced, that you can close an AI engine to only run your data.
Peter Wittig: Mm.
Gene Feldman: rather than outside. So No, that's really interesting, you know. because I think a lot of what we try to talk about here is helping people, you know, approach these use cases. So besides the security, let's let's get to more of the fun stuff. I think we I think even people get get tired of the security, even though it's extremely important. So any IT listeners, we're not diminishing what you do whatsoever. But you know, you before we were, you know, start recording, we were talking about, you know, AI. So what do you think? some of the big trends are because I know you were really big on creating some immersive authoring tools that allow people to create different experiences. So and you mentioned your AI, are you kind of bringing it to where it's kind of gonna be a full package with XR and AI, or are you kind of dividing and conquering at the moment?
Peter Wittig: well we've done a bit of both. And so we we had a project a while back, and this particular company wanted an AI assistant inside of their training module. And so we created that and we were using Gen AI to do that. We incorporated that into the authoring tool. But the idea was the the agent needs to speak English, French, Hindi, and Punjabi. The the agent needs to only know training procedures and corporate policy. So we we built a rag that could to do that. we built an interface where you could kind of customize and say, well this agent should should behave in this way, the way you give a you know a custom GPT or like a Gemini gem a description and a way to behave. And we've done that as well. the nice part about that is then we kind of built an entire layer to say, okay, well You can define this how you like, but then you can point it at whatever model you want to. Because some companies said we're going to run that open open source piece on on a box that we've got. Some other companies are saying, no, no, we're gonna go use you know enterprise open AI or Anthropic. And we don't really have an opinion about what they want to use. What we tried to build was, okay, you've got this way to put this in XR. What was really interesting to me is and this has been true generally. As soon as someone has an AI somewhere that they like, they then usually want that AI somewhere else. And and so they're like, Can we have that same AI you built for the XR training, but not in it in XR? And like it as a chat bubble, like you know, somewhere like on a on a device. And so for that, you just need a nice API layer. And so that was part of motive intelligence was the way to create these customized AIs to say point at whatever model you want. define how you want it to behave, give it the documents you need, but then we make it very easy for you to access that wherever you want. We had a few templates to say you can put it here, put it there. But again, a lot of these companies have teams inside who want to build these custom interfaces and they're able to do that with with Motive Intelligence. So we found that because that's what a company is doing and wanted, that's what we build, as opposed to kind of taking a swing and saying, let's let's just try this.
Gene Feldman: No, interesting. So it almost kinda s you always start with what the company's bringing to you.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. And one other advantage again with going back to take it back to IT and getting through the sec
Gene Feldman: No, please.
Peter Wittig: review is is once we're in, it's not a it's not always an easy process to get a new vendor approved or to get a new AI system approved. And so if we're already there and we can already do it, that means teams who have ideas and have momentum can just start taking advantage of it right away using our platform to go through it because we're already in and approved.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. As well as by being able to connect their AIs, you know, that if they've got proprietary AI, no problem. Cause basically it's almost it's almost like a middleman, you know,
Peter Wittig: Exactly.
Gene Feldman: being able to design, you know, and almost remove the prompting from it, if that makes sense. Cause one of the big hurdles I think a lot of people are experiencing with AI right now is AI is great, but it's only as good as two things. One, the data that's in there. And the prompting he used to get the data back out. You
Peter Wittig: Mm.
Gene Feldman: know, and for those of us that have been in it for years, we've kind of learned the backdoor approach to prompting, you know, and how to train the AI and things like that. Not there's some great secret backdoor to into AI. It's honestly that we've, you know, for those of us that were a part of when it was first being d developed and coming out, we learned very quickly how to converse with it. And so that's why I refer to as kind of the backdoor. But You know, what you're really doing is creating it for you know, which I think is great. I've been a I think we've had these conversations in the past, is that you're creating something for the non techie person to be able to take full advantage of this technology.
Peter Wittig: Yeah, that's our that that's our aim. And and even to say, you know, there's taking a lot of like the I I again I would say so some of the work that that might just take up more time in your internal teams, say we already did that part for you. Just get to the part where you can put this where you want it to be, run the experiments you want to run, start using it in a productive way. it's just about taking you as close as we can to where you want to be without knowing where that place is right away.
Gene Feldman: No, absolutely. And you're seeing other companies kind of do this too, like Unity Light, I think, did a really good job of bringing Unity out of the developers' hands and kind of bringing it into everybody's hands. You know.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. I mean it it's interesting. I I always with L and D, like going back on that, to the XR side of things, but whether it's XR or AI, but if Unity is involved, the way I always pushed it to L and D was to say this is our tool is a return to normalcy. you know, of course you're the one creating the content, like you have been for all these other un you created the videos, you created the the e learning, you created all of those those pieces of content. All we're saying is here's this new medium. Of course you're gonna create the content for it. and I I sometimes found that was a better way to to present it simply because it was hearkening back to, hey, you're very skilled in this area. You're not you are gonna learn something new, it's a new tool, but it's still it's doing the thing that that you've been doing for a long time.
Gene Feldman: No, which I think is great because one of the one of the sometimes the issues I have and I've been a kind of a critic of is we get these s use cases that were created by a group of developers that really it it was interesting to them, but really served no purpose outside of them. You know, like there's one game I know an w a recent game that I saw people starting to get excited about was a blacksmithing XR game. Now not to diminish what they created. But when I'm sitting around getting an XR, the last thing I'm thinking about is I want to be a blacksmith. You know, it's it what's the solution? What what's it's how are we going to get the most people to benefit from this type of tool? And by allowing the experts to still control the training, the educational philosophy, the instructional design, but having this tool, it's to me it's kind of like what was it in PowerPoint? When they first introduced the presentation slide suggestion, what I can't remember what they call it. But for me, it was great because I all of a sudden it would take me six hours to design a slide and pick a font and pick a color. I could now just have 20 different options going, okay, which one do I like the best? And
Peter Wittig: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: it To me, by taking out that busy work, it allows you to now focus more on that educational theory and more on that training of how can we get people to s to proficiency a lot faster, if that kind of makes sense.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and that's that's your s you know, y the skill you have that that's really making it work. I mean yeah, yeah, like you say with the PowerPoint, you don't need to design that slider. I I will say with the blacksmith thing immediately I was thinking that'd be some good safety training.
Gene Feldman: It it no, it would no, and that's where I think some of the games do lead to it. Like I still remember Wrenched that came out years ago that I used when I used to do early talks to the factories, you know, back when the factories hated XR. You'd walk in there and you were public enemy number one, you know, and I would walk in with it and I'm like, but you can actually build an entire engine. you know, in VR with the torque specs, which I think is fantastic. And so I think the gate and this is where I s I still think the games have some great because it's great for ideation. But when the developers I think s lose focus of what the customer wants, it it can sometimes hurt them.
Peter Wittig: Yeah, I I'd agree with you there. it's yeah, I I it's I I always like the philosophy of just kind of having tools for people to do what they do a bit better. And you know it's it's that specificity thing and it's an old analogy that I use, but they'll probably date me as well. But I mean I mean it's it's when groups can kind of forget what they do. And and I I've certainly encountered this when I'm trying to present this new way of doing something, and I know you have too.
Gene Feldman: Mm-hmm.
Peter Wittig: But you know, there there are people that I'll run into where as opposed to thinking that they're training, they're thinking that what they do is create e-learning. As opposed to saying I'm helping someone learn and and work at their job better, like no no no, I make PowerPoints. And it's kind of like saying, you what, no, no, no, I I'm not a mis music distribution, I I make CDs. And that's why they don't own the digital space. Or it's like I I I make trains, don't fly in an airplane, they forgot they're in transportation. they thought they were in the train business, you know, so it's kind of that you get too specific on the thing that the activity that you do without really remembering what the purpose of the activity is. And I think that that that is usually a quick way to kind of discern if I think a a group is going to be truly engaged in trying something new with a new technology. Cause because if they see it from that more general point of view, hey, we're helping people learn better, train better. access the data they want to to find better, more efficiently, yeah, a new tool is welcome. But if it's like, no, no, no, I do it this way, it's a lot less welcome.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. I always go back to the iPhone BlackBerry to buy, you know, when Black BlackBerry gave gave us what you needed and people only used it. You know, those that carry Blackberries are the ones that were connected 24-7. The rest of us, you know, when the iPhone first came out, it was the Star Wars and Star Trek fanatics that were buying it because you have a tricorder or a lightsaber app. You know, then all of a sudden it became something much more. And I kind of see XR and AI leading leading in that direction. Unfortunately, I think AI took a lot of steam out of the XR space. And
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: we're slowly starting to see it grow back as AI is I don't want to say it's run its course, but I I almost want to say the honeymoon is slowly ending with AI because you're now starting to see the impact and the what I call the collateral damage of AI. You know, you know, with The you know, all the recent layoffs, you know, we're recording it at the time when this is a week after Netflix laid off a thousand associates. That was a huge wave of AI impact. You know, we're seeing Disney on its third round of layoffs, you know, and now we're even seeing lawsuits slowly coming up against different HR recruiting sites that use AI and that they're almost filtering out. They're not looking for talent. They're looking for buzzwords. You know, the idea of being able to talk to somebody one-on-one and clarify your idea or communicate your idea, it got lost in that shuffle, I think, because I think just AI just it it just caught on too fast, if that makes sense.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. I you know, it's it I I I hear what you're saying, and and I think that there's there's certainly a lot of things that were that have happened lately that that I think if they'd had a second chance to to maybe do it, they'd they'd do it differently. But you know, we were talking before we started recording and and I think that there's just an aspect of a new technology and the way people use it, right? And like with with XR, it it's the same. And and one point I would make is that I agree with you, A AI has taken a lot of the this theme out of the room. in terms of XR. I I would say though that the companies who have seen XR working for them, they're continuing to expand in what they're doing. It's just that those new innovation groups tend to go with AI over XR for right now. But you know, you remember back in those XR days too, like the early days where people were were doing things that you really have no business being in XR. And and you know, so now we're seeing that with AI too. people are doing things and and eventually it's gonna come back to that you like we actively sh stayed away from metaverse as a term as a company. It's like we were like, we do this, we do this because we know it works really well. We do training. That's what we're doing. This is that's a way to do training. and and with AI, I think that there's some things that it does super well and and we like, you know, putting our foot on the gas on those. but you know as you pointed out there's a whole lot of people using it in ways that I think that they'll they'll they'll certainly need to to think about.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, I mean, I always go back to the to me the best version, and I always sound like a really harsh critic, but I just think we picked the wrong word. I I don't think it's artificial, I think it's assisted. But I look
Peter Wittig: Mm.
Gene Feldman: at it coming from like the same kind of lens with you. I look at it from that training point of view of how can this help somebody train? Like for me, one of the biggest things I know we've had conversations over is being able to train people on negotiation, you know,
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: or some of these more complex skills where Typically, you would only get the chance to learn by being thrown into the fire, you know? And you actually get a chance to actually practice that. Like I actually go back to this old story. one of the a band I really love is the Runaways. They were a 70s all-girls hard rock band. But when they formed, what they would do is they would practice in this trailer and their manager would throw things at them. To prepare them for when they got on stage, because at that time, you know, it was it was a very male-dominated industry. And because they got that opportunity to practice in that type of setting, in that much more realistic setting, it didn't set up any false expectations, but I also think it gave to their hard edge, you know, and how they approached the music and how they approached their concerts. And for if you've never gotten a chance to listen to the runaways, Joan Jett and Leto Ford, this is where they came from. This was their first band.
Peter Wittig: right.
Gene Feldman: For those for those that are listening that have never heard that tur that band. So, but I mean I but it c it comes down to it. It's that ab ability to be able to practice and have some type of simulation in that real and being able to create as true to life as you possibly can. You know, because if you're because if you're creating it in a way that is always positive
Peter Wittig: Yeah, absolutely.
Gene Feldman: or always best case scenario, as soon as you get to the worst case scenario, you're really gonna have issues. You know, I mean look at pilots, they'll practice in a simulator. Hundreds of hours before they ever get into a plane. And they'll run them
Peter Wittig: Thank goodness.
Gene Feldman: through the ringer on different situations.
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm. And I'm very glad every time I get in a plane that that they've done that.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. So so without the beyond this, what are some of the big because I know because I didn't attend AES this year and I know you didn't. I know coming out of it, a big a big conversation that a lot of people were having as a new trend is OSHA safety glasses that have some type of digital splay. So almost like taking the I the e the even glasses. The G2s and making them safety standards. you know, Lenoble, I know, was doing it for years, and then they closed shop earlier this year as the conversations are starting to emerge. So outside of that trend, which was again really bigly big echoed at AES, what are some of the trends that you're starting to hear or notice about either XR or AI that that that a lot of companies are starting to like almost gravitate towards?
Peter Wittig: I mean to me, I mean right now in in XR established companies have seen the value in what they've made and so what they want to do is make more content faster and be able to deliver that in as quickly as they can because it saves them a whole lot of money. and they're just saying, Well, if we did it here and it worked, we could do it there and save a whole lot more. And so it's really about speed of getting the content done. And and then really it's kind of upskilling people who deliver the training and say, How am I gonna manage the medium in which they're going? and AI, I what I really find is is it's just mostly, at least in a corporate sense, it's about finding the right information and at the moment they need it. And so it's about con not needing to context switch. And saying, hey, this is the thing I need to know. I'm working here. Can I ask? Can I get the information? And and there it is. Now you might need to jump to one piece of software or another, but to to talk to the AI if the AI doesn't happen to already be in the piece of software you're using. But at the same time, the you know, what was there before AI was maybe jumping through six different things, searching, looking through all these things. So I mean, as boring as it might seem, again, I I think just retrieval of information seems to be the one I I hear the most. Now aspirationally I hear you know pretty cool things. I haven't seen those play out the way those aspirations have have been voiced. We did have a company and I won't say anything about who it is or or what the idea was, but they presented a a a safety training with AR glasses. that that frankly I think would have really wound up getting somebody hurt. and and w we told them pretty frankly this isn't this this would be a quite of a dangerous activity to do. I mean, if it all worked perfectly, it would be amazing. I just
Gene Feldman: Absolutely.
Peter Wittig: just didn't think that that was going to be the case. And and you know, given the technology and and what they were their their hoped for outcome. I was thinking I I just maybe one day, but I think right now that's just going to get somebody hurt. so I I don't know. I I I I don't spend as much time I I think the collaboration aspects with AR glasses is is really cool. It being able to drop a piece of equipment in and amongst a few people, be able to work on that, check it out, do an operation or two, at least discuss it, i is is more on the the MR side, the AR side that I see a lot. And then performance support. you know, you got an expert in your ear and they're pointing out something that you can do on a piece of real machinery or a piece of equipment, that there's that that's a big one too. all very good, I think, uses of of that technology. But AI, yeah,
Gene Feldman: Yeah.
Peter Wittig: it's like, hey, what's the thing I need to know where I am right now?
Gene Feldman: No, I remember us having conversations because I still have that training room in my back pocket to be able to pull out at some point. You know, of you know, I get tired, especially as a trainer, handing somebody a link to 20 different SharePoints and say, take a week and go through you don't even know where to start of a SharePoint of SharePoints. And it'd be so great to be able to have that type of interaction with some type of system that can say, all right, let's let's now guide you through it. In lieu of not having somebody there, I don't think it replaces instructor led or replaces a trainer, but it can help answer those questions. Cause you know, like one of the the trends in this is just that I've noticed is you know, you get trainers that end up after a couple of years of answering the same question over and over again, they tend to develop short page patience for those type of questions. Whereas an AI c will never get exhausted with that same question.
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: You know, and then you also have the the learner saying, Well, I don't want to bother them again. I've already asked them six times. I I don't want to ask them again. Well, they can go to the AI. And now, as well as the I you know, I think eventually, you know, having the AI be able to capture like what are the top five questions? You know, what what's the one thing that everybody keeps going back to? I think it also be a of great value.
Peter Wittig: Well, that's interesting. Like I we had a client and and one of the things that you know again, they wanted an AI training assistant. And you know, in the past before Gen AI was there, there's that kind of conversational AI, you know, you call up a movie theater and say, Hey, what's playing today? And say, What what time is this movie playing? And it would it would tell you. and and that AI has been available for quite some time. And What we found with the j a lot of the gen AIs, at least within a a training aspect, is that 70% of the questions are often the same couple of questions. And so for this one client, they were quite cost sensitive on AI. And this was earlier and in a few years back. But what we said is well, look, people are asking mostly the same questions. We can use this old AI, which the latency was better, the speed and the cost was way better. And we say, we'll say if it's one of these. we'll use that AI and if it's not, then we'll kick it to the gen AI and then and go there. And they were thrilled with that result because the the end users didn't know the difference, except the fact that it got, you know, they got answered faster and the company liked it 'cause it kept the cost way down. so that was an interesting one.
Gene Feldman: No, absolutely. You know, I mean I always I always think what Netflix did for you know, you know, with being able to predict what movie you want to watch. And, you know, at first it was all right, if you watch one sci-fi, it's gonna give you all sci-fi. Now
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: it gets pr I mean, that and like Apple TV gets really close at going, okay, you know what, maybe I will give this a try.
Peter Wittig: Yeah. Yeah. It's it despite your you know, not you but one's best in intention to resist those things. But it's yeah, like you know, actually that is pretty good. I I think I will watch that.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. You know, I mean, I I do it all the time. And you know, and I end up and I always hate it when I go at the end, I'm like, you know what? It was right. Gosh darn it. You know, it I
Peter Wittig: Ha ha ha.
Gene Feldman: really did enjoy myself.
Peter Wittig: I like that one.
Gene Feldman: you know, but you know, and you just you keep seeing it pop up everywhere, those different things. I think what's really, you know, it's great is is really getting people to recognize that it's been around for years. You know, we're just we're just at the next iteration of what AI can do. You know,
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: but we've had it for years. Amazon's used it for your shopping list and recommendations like crazy. You know, like I still remember when the Amazon device, I'm not gonna say her name because if I do, it will set off in my where I'm sitting. But even to this day, I s
Peter Wittig: But I I guess I won't either.
Gene Feldman: yeah, yeah, it it will she will go. But one of the things I love is, you know, is anytime I need like I need to remember to buy something, all I do is just start talking about it to myself. And by within four hours, I go into Amazon and it has, here's here's all the recommendations for that item. Perfect. You know, and and so it's finding those type of use cases, you know, those little uses that help us out. But unfortunately, there's also times where it kind of goes bad. And with your with your gaming background, I would love to actually kind of get your thoughts on this with what's going on not only with PlayStation, but with Adobe and a couple of these other software companies where they have found out how they could use either Claude or I can't remember which other AI engine they're using, but to either jailbreak the systems or to copy the software itself and then republish it free. You know, again with you with a gaming background and then, you know, with what mo you know, with the solutions that motive does, I would love your thoughts, concerns. I mean, what what are you taking away from all of this?
Peter Wittig: Well, you know, you I I thought goes to the the so many hard working people who who try to make those who put all that time and effort into making those games. and and really what I'm thinking about are is like programmers and artists and game designers because having worked at game companies in the past, you know, I'm thinking of specific people and and I know how hard those people worked and the the passion that they have for it. so I I certainly don't want those folks to you know, to be taken advantage of and and to lose out on on something. I do think there'll be a a a big change in how things are are made. and basically you know, I even think with XR, you'll get the games that were popular and you'll get mobile and you know, the way that games have progressed since like, I don't know, I I started like even the eighties and then through the nineties and and as the different devices that people use to play them have changed. the audiences and and like you know are you gonna play a massive epic that might take you two years? Are you gonna play a quick mobile game that you can play in 30 seconds like but you could play it anytime, all the time it's free to play. This one costs you, you know, quite a bit of money. That one doesn't. and so the it'll be interesting to see people going after these huge companies for for these types of games. I think at least in XR, the games that have been the most popular have been the ones that have been more mimicking of like quick free games. And and so I I wondered if if making those types of games in that way by jailbreaking, which I don't think is a good thing for all those those people who work so hard on it, will be fruitful for those groups who are who are doing that. I don't know. I haven't kept track of what they they've published and how it's gone. but it'll be interesting to me to see if there's audience for that that type of content.
Gene Feldman: absolutely. And unfortunately, I probably am a little bit too deeper into it than I I I should be, but I've I learned a long time ago that if you follow the gaming industry, you can learn a lot of lessons that they taught us very early on. Like you mentioned content. You know, N64, I still think was one of the best systems that was ever created, but there were no games. When it released, there was only three games. And I'm sorry, as good as Pilot Wings was. You could only play it for so long before you just got frustrated. You know, because there was that, there was Mario, and then there was Tetris for like four months. And I still remember it. I only reason I remember is because my Star Wars Shadows of the Empire was on back order that whole time. But
Peter Wittig: wow, okay. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: that's you know, but you see that with a lot of these gaming companies, you know, and you know, like right now, you know, I I bring that issue up with the, you know, either the jailbreaking or that because, you know, PlayStation has you know, made some big changes over the past couple months. You know, by getting rid of the physical discs and some of the other things. And it's not to be a bashing at PlayStation, it's just talking about what the you know, kind of what they're doing, going to much more subscription based service, which seems to be the the trend in a lot of the gaming and tech companies right now. You
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: know, but and for me it's kind of a good use case to kind of pay attention to because like I said, it's kind of taught us what to do, what not to do throughout the years. Because as long as people are gonna see XR as a gaming device, we have to me, I feel like we have to still kind of treat it as such.
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm. You know, I I I think that's that's fair. And just in in the way that you framed that, you know, it just was making me think like, you know, from I don't know, I I I mean I think people have been copying software and taking video games for free for a long w as long as they possibly they can. So I mean, you know, whether you're copying all the files from someone's computer and then dropping them on your computer, whether you were burning a CD of of a game and passing it along, whether you're, you know, finding some crack for a a license key. so that kind of thing has been happening for for you know decades really. And so I guess it's just the next iteration. The thing to me that's that's always so interesting is like when I I don't I don't know what percentage of it and I think it depends on the context you're looking at, but what percentage of it actually cuts into the real business because, you know, so often I mean like, you know, I just think of music again, like when, you know, Napster was was around. it was because
Gene Feldman: I was just thinking Napster too.
Peter Wittig: yeah, I mean it was it was wildly successful because there was no industry alternative. but then, you know, as soon as you know iTunes showed up, I was frankly it was it was amazing how quickly people switched to to iTunes. And so it it it almost speaks to like a a something that people want that the industry isn't addressing. I don't condone people stealing other people's work. I don't think that's a good thing. But it is certainly something that's been around for quite some time and this is I probably just the next iteration of that.
Gene Feldman: yeah. Well, I mean, it's just like the NFT craze that happened a couple of years ago. People buying these digital images, not realizing I can screenshot your screen and now I own the image as well. You know,
Peter Wittig: Yeah. Have you
Gene Feldman: but
Peter Wittig: Have you tried one of these games actually? Because I I have not, so I don't know what the quality of them is. I don't know if it's just a jailbreak or is it like, Hey, I'm I'm building an an actual variant of
Gene Feldman: So
Peter Wittig: of a of a triple A game.
Gene Feldman: with Adobe, it's recreating the entire Adobe suite. And then they released it as freeware. But
Peter Wittig: Hm. Wow.
Gene Feldman: with some with the PlayStation, what they're doing is jailbreaking it, and now they can play their PS2 games at 4K, high quality, fast bitrate. I think it's Wii games can be played on the PlayStation. I mean, the number of things the jailbreak did, and I know. Sony just released new firmware that basically said if you don't update this firmware, your PlayStation becomes a brick that you have to run the most current firmware. So I know Sony is staying on top of it, but it's it's weird because you know, we talk about privacy, we talk about protection with all these tools, and then these bigger things happen, and it's like, okay, this is what we were scared of. Like for me, the the Smart glasses with the cameras. You know, I you know, I keep saying that as soon as Hollywood realizes that you can bootleg an entire movie from the theater and nobody would ever know with these glasses, they'll get shut down. Because I mean, the number of movies I've seen recently that have come out because people sit in the theater and they record with these smart glasses. You know, and to me, it's for me, it comes down to intellectual property, you know, that is it fair to take AI and recreate something that somebody else put blood, sweat, and tears into, or are you making it better and being able to use AI to give people what they really want to take the hands out of the big company? I don't know the answer. I'm kind of in between. My loyalty
Peter Wittig: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: to Tron kind of makes me want to be a pirate, but
Peter Wittig: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: I can't do that.
Peter Wittig: Yeah, I I had heard about the Adobe one to be fair. And I it's, you know, a again, more abstracting it. I I think that you know, there's people like convenience. do do they is it just as easy to use a pirated version as it is the non pirated version? Is it just as easy to get and access? And and even the smallest of barriers can make people choose one over the other. I I think we're when these things are are when these options are presented. so yeah, I I don't know. It'll be it'll be interesting to see. Do they trust? Again, trust is an issue there too. If if they're making something with it, where does it live? Some people think about that, some people don't. yeah, it'll be it'll be an interesting one to see. I you know, with AI I do like I I I saw like Linus Torvald's like latest about you know putting his foot down saying using AI is not only fine, but you know, he's like I you went on a nice get a nice explanation saying, Well, I'm not going to demand that you use your own compiler. And if you haven't used your own compiler, then you don't understand it. Or if you haven't written your own text editor to write the code, then you clearly don't understand the end line. He's like, I'm not gonna do that. He's like, I do expect you to under you know put in your best effort and to understand what you're talking about. I'm paraphrasing, of course, he said it in a
Gene Feldman: absolutely.
Peter Wittig: different way. But I I thought that that was a an interesting point of view on AI and I and I I like that one to say, well, if if it's a tool, you can use it if it's you know separate from the intellectual property conversation. I I people are using it to create new and and exciting things and and as long as they understand what they're doing with it and it's producing something that people like, I I do want think that should be encouraged.
Gene Feldman: No, I agree. You know, and like I said, I I kind of fall on both sides of it. I really do. And I think where I have the biggest where I where it comes with the conflict really the internal conflict I think comes the most is with Suno, you know, the AI music tool. Because I'm a lifelong musician. I've spent years looking at sheet music, practicing scales over and over. I spent years as a drummer playing rudiments. You know, and now somebody can go in and produce a song in five seconds that used to take us a year to perfect. You know, but I look at the people that I look at what some of these people are doing. You know, imagine you know, like somebody like Jim Morrison, a beautiful poet, but did not have the doors to play with. Suno
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm.
Gene Feldman: could actually benefit them. That I think it becomes a tool for certain people as long as it doesn't become I think my concern is when it it phases out the old art, if that makes sense.
Peter Wittig: this conversation with a friend of mine and he he had written a song, you know, and he was telling me and and another guy about it. And then we kind of got into AI, the conversation moved along and he was expressing similar concerns about the art. And I I just stopped him and I said, answer me this. If the best AI in the world for making music, you know, something for 50 years showed up here tomorrow, would it have stopped you from writing that song you just wrote? And because and of course he said no. And it that's inspiration and I don't think that inspiration i is going to you know go away in humans. And I don't think because you can use something else to make something that people won't act on their inspiration. So I I'm less concerned about the art. Now profitability is another matter, but but actually making
Gene Feldman: But I mean,
Peter Wittig: the art, yeah.
Gene Feldman: yeah, and what people don't realize is is so many of the popular pop songs over the past five, ten years have had AI components. I mean, auto-tune is AI vocal processing in and of itself. You know, and I I honestly I kind of become I for me though, as a musician, it's making me develop the Dwight Schroute paradox that I'm calling. Because if you remember the episode where they had where Dwight Competed against the AI bot who can have the most sales. That to me, that's the paradox. And so for me,
Peter Wittig: Okay.
Gene Feldman: it's forcing me to become a better musician. Okay. I now I have to compete against this. But it the thing is, I know AI will never be able to get as creative as I can because AI is going to operate under parameters. So now it's going to it's going to force new music. It's going to force that evolution of a new style that could come out. You know, 'cause I mean, you know, AI is can never create jazz or create thrash metal. It's gonna create what it knows. And so Yeah.
Peter Wittig: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I mean, even though that even, you know, and and to that point, it's like, you know, i i if you know, if you wanna learn to play the trumpet, I think people are gonna go learn to play the trumpet. It doesn't mean you're gonna be Miles Davis. But, you know, it it's that they're you should still do it. You should you know, just 'cause something, someone is gonna be much better doesn't doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely. As well as you know, I mean, I'm sorry, but some of the AI tools to learn the instruments. if I had them when I was a kid, it would have been awesome because I had a drum teacher, it was like whiplash, you know, it was screaming, yelling, throwing drumsticks. And now you get these apps where within 10 minutes you can be playing a song. And as well as the AI can increase the difficulty with you. So you're not, you know. It's it's just a whole
Peter Wittig: Pretty cool.
Gene Feldman: different thing. And I think that's where we need to start we start learning to pick and choose what works for us and what doesn't. But again, it and it almost becomes to me almost an individual experience with the AI. That's getting deep. Sorry.
Peter Wittig: No, but I like that, Jane. You brought it right back to training. You know.
Gene Feldman: Yeah. Cause because it really comes down to because I mean, for training for me, to to kind of get us full circle is, you know, I know everybody talks about the four distinct learning styles, you know, whether it's VARC or savvy, depending on which school of thought you want to buy into. But for me, it's each individual learner learns there there may be small consistencies from learner to learner. But in general, we all have. Different learning styles. Like a lot of, you know, like a number of people say, I have to listen to music when I'm studying. For me, as a musician, that is the worst thing I could ever do. Because if I start listening to music while I'm studying, I stop focusing on what I'm learning and all I'm doing is listening to the music. So for me, I listen to movies. I always have movies going. And that's the thing is that as you get older, you learn what works for you and what doesn't. I think that's what we're going to have to do with the a lot of these tools to kind of pick and choose what's working for us. You know, I mean, we're even seeing MySpace coming back, you know, because people are realizing, you know what, I actually liked that better than the alternative we have today.
Peter Wittig: Mm. Interesting. I hadn't I hadn't realized there was a resurgence in in mind space.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, it's slowly well, it's all part of this nostalgia. I mean, Toys are Us is coming back, which I couldn't be more excited for. So, you know, I I mean, really, I think Masters of the Universe did a great job of of showing that there's really a beauty to thus Gen Xers that grew up, you know, in the heyday of the eighties. You know, I still think eighty two to eighty six was just it was like a renaissance of years.
Peter Wittig: I'll just quick eighty two, last time the Brewers were in the World Series, so I'm very excited. Milwaukee Brewers back in the World Series.
Gene Feldman: I know. In fact, I was just they were talking about Bob Euchre and saying that he
Peter Wittig: I hear the loved one.
Gene Feldman: sat there for forty years and the only time he got to announce a Super Bowl was during the Major League movie.
Peter Wittig: that that's tough. That's tough.
Gene Feldman: But yeah, no, congratulations. I saw that. That is so exciting. See
Peter Wittig: Yeah, go first.
Gene Feldman: yeah, I'm St. Louis. The Cardinals make it every other year, it seems like.
Peter Wittig: Yeah, they're off we could. Yeah.
Gene Feldman: Yeah, but that's okay. It's I love I love it when you see these other team, you know, these these teams because to me it's it's the perseverance that I thoroughly enjoy. And that kind of comes back to what we're doing a lot we talked about is that perseverance of seeing of seeing this through and you know,
Peter Wittig: Yeah.
Gene Feldman: realizing that AI can actually help us with that perseverance. So, but we're come actually coming up near the end. So I this is where we usually do what we call final protocol.
Peter Wittig: Okay.
Gene Feldman: So if you could leave the listeners with a thought or a piece of advice that you could pass on, what would it be?
Peter Wittig: Wow, that's that's that's deep. I think if you can, and I realize not everybody's life accounts for it, if you can have a few minutes in your day where you where you can just stop doing an activity and just think about it and maybe make a list of all those things you got in your mind that you you wanna do. I I find that that's really helpful. It helps focus me and say, well, these are the things I really want to get done or these are the things that I'm interested in. And it could be a today list, it could be when I got the time list. Just just taking a minute to stop the constant activity to just focus and think about the things that you want to do.
Gene Feldman: No, I like that. 'Cause sometimes we're so quick to action we don't stop to think about it ahead of time.
Peter Wittig: How about you? And be nice to people. I think that's good.
Gene Feldman: I love it. So, everybody, so thank you so much for listening. remember, you can catch all of our on your favorite listening platform. You can catch our past episodes, as well as we've got a couple really good future episodes coming up as we wrap up this year. I can't believe I'm saying that it's middle of October. but You know, as well as be sure to like, follow, and share. Please, this will help our channel grow and really kind of help share. As well as if you have any ideas for shows, please post them on LinkedIn, share them with us, and we'll see what we can do. But Peter, absolutely fantastic catching up with you, my friend. I I love seeing what you guys are doing. Highly recommend to check them out on LinkedIn. the links and everything will be shared with the episode. But really enjoyed catching up with you and and getting a chance to kind of pick your brain on some of these topics, my friend.
Peter Wittig: Thank you, Gene. I appreciate you having me on.
Gene Feldman: Absolutely.
