The AI XR Podcast.

Cortney Harding steps in as guest co-host this week, joining Charlie to unpack a genuinely strong Meta Connect, new occluded VR glasses aimed squarely at the Vision Pro, a camera-free Ray-Ban, and Muse AI's surprise climb to the top of the app stores. From there, the conversation turns to Disney's newly created CTO role, the quiet fate of its big-money bets on Epic Games and Sora, and Jeffrey Katzenberg's open letter arguing entertainment has always been a technology business. They close out the news with a sharp exchange on Amazon's push into drone delivery and a pointed critique of DraftKings' use of AI to target its most engaged, and most vulnerable, customers.

Simon Horsman and Daniel Wood, co-founders of Quilty.app, join to talk about building an AI-powered script coverage tool for screenwriters who have no access to Hollywood's traditional gatekeepers. The two walk through how Quilty scores a script the way a studio story analyst would, the leaderboard system built to surface strong writing, and a striking real-world comparison Simon shares from his years running a film fund: a big-budget historical epic north of $220 million versus a hybrid AI production covering similar ground for under a million dollars. The conversation closes with how Quilty is trying to connect writers directly to producers in a system that's traditionally shut most people out.

Key Moments:
[01:35] A confident, glitch-free Meta Connect and what it signals
[11:35] Disney creates a company-wide CTO role, hired from Character AI
[13:35] The quiet status of Disney's Epic Games and Sora deals
[15:35] Jeffrey Katzenberg's open letter on tech and entertainment
[19:35] The backlash brewing over Amazon's drone delivery push
[21:35] DraftKings, AI, and the ethics of targeting engaged gamblers
[24:35] Simon Horsman and Daniel Wood join to introduce Quilty.app
[30:35] A real budget comparison: $220M studio epic vs. under $1M hybrid AI film
[34:35] How Quilty scores scripts and connects writers to producers

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Charlie and Rony open with Charlie's hands-on take on Snap's $2,200 Specs launch and Rony's theory on how big tech companies let smaller players pioneer risky new hardware first. From there, the conversation turns to a tense week in AI safety, sparked by Dario Amodei's call for frontier labs to slow down, and a sharp debate over whether the industry's talk of needing regulation is really about something else entirely. They close out the news with a look at how China is approaching AI development differently than the West, plus a genuinely stunning breakthrough in brain-computer interfaces.

Jan Goetgeluk, founder and CEO of Virtuix, joins to talk about the company's path from a Shark Tank rejection to a recent Nasdaq listing (VTIX). Jan walks through Virtuix's VR treadmill business, the surprising overlap between gaming and fitness that's driving consumer sales, and why the company is leaning harder into defense contracts and location-based entertainment than the crowded consumer VR space. The conversation closes with what it's actually like running a public company day to day, and Jan's outlook for the next two years, including a possible move into autism therapy.

Key Moments:
[01:35] Charlie's hands-on impressions from the Snap Specs launch
[04:35] Rony's theory: why big tech lets pioneers take the risk first
[06:35] Dario Amodei's essay and the case for pacing frontier AI
[08:35] Is AI safety talk really about dodging product liability?
[12:35] China's practical approach to AI vs. the race for AGI
[15:35] A brain-computer interface breakthrough restores speech
[20:35] Jan Goetgeluk joins — Virtuix's path to Nasdaq
[30:35] The surprising fitness angle driving VR treadmill sales
[32:35] Virtuix's pivot toward defense contracts

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Recorded on the 25th anniversary of 9/11, this episode opens on a somber note: Charlie, Rony, and Ted remember where they were in 2001 and reflect on where they are now. By happenstance, Ted is actually in New York right now & is joined by the team behind GLO, a mixed-reality graffiti tour running through the streets of Manhattan on Magic Leap 2 headsets, live from their office. After a brief catch-up with friends (and a promo code waiting for you at the end of this description), the news turns dark fast. Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon's resignation, and his warning that AI could kill us all within a decade, sparks a pointed debate about why the AI industry has no equivalent of the FAA or FDA, and why "regulate it like we regulate everything else dangerous" isn't the same as stopping innovation.

Paulina Borsook, former Wired writer and author of the newly re-released Cyberselfish: a Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech, joins to talk about the 26-year throughline connecting her original critique of Silicon Valley's libertarian culture to today's AI safety crisis. The conversation covers the amorality she identified in tech back in the 90s & 2000s, some candid psychological reads on the Tech Fascists of today, and a shared frustration with "spreadsheet philanthropy" and effective altruism's obsession with measurable ROI over genuine selflessness.

Key Moments:
[07:15] A live mixed-reality graffiti tour through Manhattan with the GLO.city team
[15:32] Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon's resignation and AI risk warnings
[19:30] Why AI has no FAA or FDA equivalent
[22:50] Paulina Borsook joins as today's guest to discuss the 26-year legacy of her book, Cyberselfish
[30:22] Silicon Valley's libertarian culture, then and now
[57:27] A psychological read on Zuckerberg's philanthropic reversals
[1:01:00] Effective altruism, "spreadsheet philanthropy," and doing good without an ROI

Cyberselfish by Paulina Borsook is being re-printed via Tin House in 2026 and is available for purchase on September 15th. Find out more on where you can purchase the book in your territory at https://www.cyberselfish.com/.

Special offer: Get 25% off your mixed-reality graffiti tour of New York with promo code AIXR25. Visit www.glo.city, click Book Now to select your date and time, and enter AIXR25 at checkout. Follow Glo.City on Instagram, Tiktok, and X at @GLOdotcity.

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Rony and Charlie (running the show Ted-less this week) open with hard news that Engage XR, one of the last two open-world VR platforms, is shutting down after losing its largest customer. This leaves VRChat as the only major player standing. Steve Grubbs, CEO of Victory XR, drops in to explain how his education-focused VR business avoided the fallout by diversifying off Engage years ago, and what happens now to the schools and developers left searching for a new platform.

From there: Nvidia's Hugging Face acquisition and what it means for open-source AI communities, OpenAI's escalating legal fight with the New York Times (with an unusual amicus brief from the Justice Department), Google's push to license Hollywood content for its Veo platform, and Rony's case for "sovereignty" as the defining concept of the AI era.

Malia Probst, founding partner at Scout House and co-founder of the WXR Fund, joins for the back half to reflect on 11 years in immersive tech; from producing early narrative VR to helping platforms like Meta Horizon and Google build out their creator ecosystems. The conversation covers why this VR downturn feels different, the data behind why founding teams with women tend to outperform, and a wide-ranging closing discussion on career longevity, AI's effect on Hollywood, and what Charlie, Rony, and Malia are each watching most closely over the next two years.

Key Moments:
[01:35] Engage XR shuts down, leaving VRChat as the last major open-world platform
[04:35] Nvidia's Hugging Face acquisition and the open-source community question
[07:35] OpenAI vs. The New York Times, and the DOJ's amicus brief
[16:35] Google's push to license Hollywood content for Veo
[18:35] Steve Grubbs hops on to add insight into how Victory XR avoided Engage's collapse
[23:35] VRChat's business model and whether this is "VR Winter" all over again
[28:35] Malia Probst joins as both guest and host, after 11 years building Scout House and the WXR Fund
[32:35] The data on why women-founded teams outperform
[40:35] Career longevity, AI's effect on Hollywood, and predictions for the next two years

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Charlie and Ted run through this week's news: a humanoid robot's 100-meter dash record at Beijing's World Humanoid Games, historical context on industrial robot safety, a 100-company consortium's statement on AI cybersecurity risk, Bill Gates's recent comments on AI oversight, OpenAI's disclosure on a large-scale agent red-teaming exercise, Stability AI's $76 million raise backed by major music labels, and Nvidia's $100 billion quarterly earnings report.

Biwei Huang, a UCSD assistant professor and founder of Aether AI, joins to discuss her company's approach to robot intelligence. Aether AI builds causal world models, systems designed to learn the physical rules and causal relationships underlying how actions affect the environment. Biwei explains how this approach helps robots generalize to new environments, and the group discusses Aether AI's focus on manipulation tasks like cleaning a table or making coffee. The conversation also touches on interpretability in AI systems, the practical considerations around robot safety and controllability, and Aether AI's priorities for the next one to two years.

Key Moments:
[00:35] Robotics and AI news roundup, including industrial robot safety history
[04:35] OpenAI shares details on a large-scale agent red-teaming exercise
[08:35] Stability AI's $76M funding round
[10:35] Nvidia's quarterly earnings report
[16:35] A look at Google's Project Aura alongside XREAL and Viture
[20:35] Biwei Huang joins and gives us an introduction to Aether AI
[23:35] How causal world models differ from correlation-based approaches
[47:35] A discussion of safety, controllability and interpretability in AI systems
[52:35] Aether AI's priorities for the next one to two years
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