Signals

US – As SXSW 2024 unfolds, the enthusiasm for new technologies is increasingly evident. According to futurist Amy Webb, the presence of over 1,500 AI panels at this year’s SXSW speaks volumes, as do the queues forming for discussions led by luminaries like the head of ChatGPT.

During a captivating conversation, Josh Constine, former editor-in-chief at TechCrunch, turned venture partner at venture capital firm SignalFire, engaged in an insightful dialogue with Peter Deng, head of ChatGPT at OpenAI, addressing the core question around defining humanity’s role in an era dominated by artificial intelligence (AI). Deng emphatically asserted that AI’s ascent does not entail the replacement of humans, but rather serves to amplify our capabilities by ‘enabling us to go deeper and explore things we’re wondering about’. Deng suggested that AI’s integration into daily life will foster cognitive enhancement, citing examples like his own nine-year-old child learning programming with ChatGPT’s assistance. When pressed about ChatGPT’s societal role, Deng stated that the main goal is to provide ‘flexible tools that let people remove barriers from the goals they have’.

Expanding beyond the confines of screens and into immersive environments, SXSW has placed significant emphasis on mixed reality (XR) with an experience hall showcasing exhibits like MetaQuest, The Golden Key and Impulse. Notably, the This Week In XR podcast explored XR in the age of Vision Pro, with a discussion featuring Rony Abovitz, former Magic Leap executive and founder and CEO of synthetic beings start-up Sun and Thunder, who emphasised the unique challenges of creating XR devices: ‘Engineering XR devices is harder than projects like SpaceX because we’ve already gone to space. We haven’t done anything like this before.’

While acknowledging the impressive clarity and saturation of colours offered by devices like Apple Vision Pro and Oculus, the panel critiqued the weightiness of the hardware, singling out the design choices by Apple’s Tim Cook. Abovitz, expressing his discontent, remarked: ‘I’m 6’ 2", played football in high school, and this thing is heavy. It’s not something you should wear around your neck. How can you expect to wear this while working all day?’

Concluding the discussion, the panellists turned their attention to the future potential of XR devices, contemplating their capacity to integrate the functionalities of four to five essential devices – such as phones, laptops, tablets and TVs – into a singular unit. They highlighted the cumbersome nature of current headsets, suggesting that a shift towards a design akin to smart glasses could address this issue, especially considering the existing requirement for tethering headsets to a battery pack.