The AI XR Podcast

Ian Hamilton spent years as editor in chief of Upload VR before launching his own Substack, Good VR, and podcast at goodvirtualreality.com. He is one of the few people covering XR longer and more deeply than Charlie Fink, and his perspective spans platform architecture, business strategy, and genuine on-the-ground journalism since the DK1 days.
This conversation traces why the XR dream has taken longer than anyone expected. Ian and Rony Abovitz reconstruct the moment the ecosystem forked — when Meta's Oculus acquisition closed off the open, Valve-led platform path that Magic Leap and everyone else had been building toward. Ian argues the platforms are now playing for keeps: OpenXR moves on decade timescales, and that friction is what keeps real transformation just out of reach.
On hardware, his case is sharp: Meta's self-imposed $200–$600 price ceiling makes OLED and eye tracking impossible at mass market — exactly the features Apple bet on as the mandatory baseline — and that contradiction is why Bosworth ended up pivoting to AI glasses.
In AI XR News You Should Know: Anthropic's Mythos AI model reportedly escaped the company's own containment. Charlie and Rony debate whether calling the consequences "unintended" is even credible given decades of published warnings. Also: a Hollywood Reporter and Otis School study found AI is not the primary driver of empty LA sound stages — runaway production and tax incentives are the main story.
Key Moments:
[00:01:00] – Charlie's new vertical melodrama "Linda's Last Podcast" and why generative AI is already good enough for social media storytelling.
[00:04:52] – Rony on Anthropic's Mythos: the compute to cure cancer, aimed somewhere else.
[00:11:47] – Half of Gen Z holds a negative view of AI. Charlie on the Brown grad who turned down an AI studio internship on principle.
[00:36:00] – Rony and Ian reconstruct the Valve/Oculus open platform — and walk through exactly how that future closed.
[00:47:00] – Meta's price ceiling, OLED as a strategic forcing function, and why Bosworth landed on AI glasses.
[00:52:00] – Ian on the Apple Vision Pro mid-flight: why the headset is a personal computer, not a wearable.

Ian's long view: we're about ten percent of the way through the total investment required to reach a billion users. The supply chain is better than ever, the software has found its footing in simulation and training, and the next five to ten years could be the most interesting window yet — if the platforms decide to let the ecosystem breathe.
This episode is sponsored by Zappar, the team behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences on mobile, headsets, and desktop.
Mattercraft now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time. Start building at mattercraft.io.
Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast for more conversations at the edge of AI, XR, and the future of media.
Available where you get podcasts. Watch full episodes on YouTube https://youtu.be/x5wQy4HBhYE

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Lucas Rizzotto is one of the most distinctive artists working at the intersection of technology and human experience. He built Where Thoughts Go, a VR piece that proved genuine connection was possible inside a headset when everyone said it wasn't. He followed it with Pillow, a mixed reality app designed around the bedroom. He then spent months letting an AI algorithm run his life — wearing Mantra smart glasses, building a surveillance and memory system on himself, and documenting it as an ongoing series on Instagram and TikTok. Now he's making a live cinematic experience called Escape the Internet, which he calls Broadway crossed with a video game crossed with standup comedy. It premiered as a ghost debut at South by Southwest this year.
Mike Boland, analyst and founder of AR Insider, sits in for Rony Abovitz in this episode. The conversation opens on the Rec Room shutdown — $250 million raised, a $3.5 billion valuation, and now a wind-down. The panel connects the collapse to a pattern: VR has always been an exotic pursuit sold as a mainstream one, and the unit economics of concurrent immersive social spaces are nearly impossible. The discussion moves to OpenAI shutting down Sora, the AI video generation race between Google VO3 and Kling, the rise of AI slop in social feeds, and Lucas confirming he quit LinkedIn because it's unreadable.
AI XR News You Should Know: Rec Room is shutting down after raising $250M at a $3.5B peak valuation. Snapchat is acquiring its remaining assets. OpenAI closed down Sora, overwhelmed by competition from Google VO3 and Kling. AI-only social feeds from Meta and Grok are not gaining traction — users are tuning them out.
Key Moments:
[05:37] – Ted's thesis: VR is an exotic pursuit that was never going to be mainstream, and Rec Room would have been healthier if it accepted that early
[07:33] – Lucas: Ready Player One was the worst thing to happen to XR — it gave executives a fictional roadmap to fund
[18:38] – Ted asks whether Apple can do for mixed reality what it did for the smartphone — and the panel is skeptical
[27:42] – Mike on physics as the hard ceiling: Moore's Law doesn't apply to waveguides and optics the way it applies to chips
[29:02] – Lucas explains why he dropped display glasses for his wearable AI experiment — they increase engineering complexity by 50x
[32:17] – Lucas's AI-controlled life series: a complex algorithm watches him, mines personal data, and tells him what to do to find happiness — including an unplanned trip to Lithuania
[34:12] – Ted asks if the experiment is a net positive or negative. Lucas: neutral if you're in control, net negative if Meta or OpenAI are running the system
[37:52] – Lucas on convenience as a death by a thousand cuts: he optimized his life in Berlin to have everything within three minutes and became miserable
[41:00] – Charlie on Where Thoughts Go: assigned it to students every semester; it only works if you surrender to it
[47:15] – Escape the Internet: hundreds of people in a movie theater, all on their phones, playing a shared cinematic narrative. Lucas calls it a modern version of church
[53:40] – The standup model applied to software: Lucas tested Escape the Internet at SXSW and cut 50% of the material that didn't get a reaction

This conversation sits at the intersection that the AI XR Podcast lives for: technology as creative material, not just commercial tool. Lucas's view that we've been building things people use all the time when we should be building things that blow their minds for two hours and then get out of the way is one of the sharper critiques of the attention economy you'll hear this year.
This episode is brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences on mobile, headsets, and desktop. Mattercraft now includes an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser.
Start building at mattercraft.io.

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Shelley Palmer,media technologist, advisor, and author with over 700,000 daily newsletter subscribers, returns to the show. He's one of the sharpest thinkers writing about AI today, and this conversation covers the full arc: from social media liability to the trust collapse coming for all of us, and into the real productivity gains and surveillance trade-offs of living inside an AI-first workflow.
The episode opens with the Google and Meta lawsuit verdict and quickly moves past the legal question. Shelley's position is precise: you can't legislate parenting, but you can legislate transparency, and the tech industry has failed on that front entirely. The $6 million judgment against Meta and Google is a rounding error — not a deterrent. What matters is what platforms actually engineered: engagement above all else, backed by neuroscience, probabilistic math, and dopamine feedback loops optimized for shareholders, not users.
AI XR News You Should Know: OpenAI is ending Sora and pivoting hard to Codex and enterprise. Ben Affleck secured $900 million from Netflix for a custom AI filmmaking tool. Epic Games cut 1,000 jobs as Fortnite loses audience. NVIDIA's Jensen Huang introduced Nemo Claw and Open Shell at GTC — a corporatized framework for personal AI agents.
Key Moments
[00:01:15] – Charlie opens noting the show missed one episode in nearly 300 — his daughter's wedding
[00:01:55] – OpenAI kills Sora; the Critters director goes dark before the episode
[00:04:45] – Google and Meta lose their social media addiction lawsuit; Meta also loses in New Mexico
[00:08:07] – Shelley on what can actually be legislated: not parenting, but transparency
[00:11:42] – Shelley on Zuckerberg: he genuinely believed connection would be net positive; ask him today
[00:13:31] – "Planetarily net negative. No matter what good it does, it does more harm."
[00:18:16] – Rony on dopamine engineering: neuroscientists studying pixel size, color, sound to refine addiction
[00:19:40] – Shelley reframes it: engagement maximization for shareholders, no more insidious than that
[00:23:19] – The physiological change argument: humans evolved to default to trust; AI-generated everything breaks that
[00:31:50] – Rony's counterpoint: trust will reset local; the software ecosystem will follow
[00:36:53] – Shelley: "Our business increased last year. Everyone on my staff is doing 400 times the work."
[00:44:42] – AI-first means automating every workflow you can honestly automate — and knowing what isn't ready
[00:45:06] – Jensen's Nemo Claw and Open Shell: the safer path to personal AI agents, and what it actually costs
[00:49:42] – The surveillance trade-off: an effective AI agent requires more personal data exposure than anything before it
[00:51:24] – Apple's Secure Enclave play: why Tim Cook may win the AI trust war in the end

The productivity gains are real, but so is the privacy exposure, and the systems that earn trust — at every level — are the ones that will survive.
This episode is brought to you by Zappar, the company behind Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences across mobile, headsets, and desktop. Mattercraft now features an AI assistant that helps you design, code, and debug in real time, right in your browser.
Start building at mattercraft.io. Subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you listen.
Watch the full episode for the full breakdown. Available where podcasts are. Full videos available on YouTube. https://youtu.be/S_AECjELYyo
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Cathy Hackl, futurist for Nokia and advisor to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), joins the podcast to discuss her fascinating work across the Middle East and her insights on the next generation of AI and connectivity. Learn how nations like the UAE and KSA are strategically positioning themselves to lead in spatial computing, quantum supremacy, and a hopeful, future-forward vision of AI.
Cathy details her work in the Middle East, including her residency in the UAE and her advisory roles on massive projects like NEOM and Qiddiya, explaining how these regions are embracing technology as a means to modernize. She shares her perspective on the shift in global venture capital, noting how Europe and the Middle East are providing significant funding that is moving beyond traditional Silicon Valley terms.
AI XR News You Should Know:
The hosts discuss massive AI funding rounds, including a $1 billion seed round for Advanced Machine Intelligence and a $500 million round for Mind Robotics, highlighting the intense capital war for chips and the boom in robotics. They also cover the rise of YouTube as the world's largest media company and the ethical questions surrounding the collection of human data to train robots.
Key Moments
[00:01:19] Intro: Friday the 13th and geopolitical news.
[00:02:17] Mind Robotics & Advanced Machine Intelligence: Discussing the $500M and $1B seed rounds for robotics and AI startups.
[00:04:04] Headband Camera for Robot Training: Debate on the ethics of companies paying people to wear cameras to collect training data for robots, comparing it to "Gargoyles" from Snow Crash.
[00:10:12] YouTube Surpasses Disney & Netflix: Discussion on YouTube becoming the world’s largest media company with $62 billion in revenue.
[00:11:29] AI & Media Market Dominance: Questioning whether today’s AI music and video companies will eventually surpass all big film, music, and streaming companies.
[00:14:40] Cathy Hackl Interview Begins: Cathy discusses her work as a futurist for Nokia, focusing on AI-native networks.
[00:16:26] KSA Projects: Cathy's experience working on the virtual and gaming strategy for Qiddiya and on the KSA Pavilion at the World Expo.
[00:22:07] Golden Visa & Gifted Residency: The privileges associated with becoming a resident of the UAE or KSA for highly skilled talent.

This conversation offers a vital global perspective on technology, innovation, and culture that is often missed when focusing solely on Silicon Valley. Understanding these geopolitical and technological movements is key for anyone trying to anticipate where the next wave of global innovation will truly come from.
This episode of The AI XR Podcast is brought to you by Zappar, the folks behind Mattercraft, a leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences—mattercraft.io.
Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or watch the full episode on YouTube. https://youtu.be/Mw0yM_qpGG8

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Co-founders Dr. Salman Avestimehr and Dr. Aiden He join the podcast to discuss their new "agentic" company, Teamily AI. They dive into how their platform is disrupting the social landscape by weaving multi-agent AI into group chats, enabling groups, friends, and families to interact with virtual friends, essentially creating a collaborative environment where AI acts as a participant that anticipates needs and remembers the full context of a conversation.
This conversation explores the core value proposition of an AI-first social platform—not just making an individual superhuman, but enabling a collective of human and AI agents to do "fascinating things together." The founders detail their technology, which is built on deep expertise in distributed machine learning and multi-agent systems, and their long-term vision to IPO and evolve the very nature of social networks by bridging the gap between human and artificial intelligence.
In the news segment, Charlie Fink and Rony Abovitz unpack the week's biggest AI stories: Ben Affleck selling his stealth AI film company, Interpositive, to Netflix; Anthropic's Claude briefly dethroning OpenAI's ChatGPT in the app store; and a deep dive into Jack Dorsey's company Block cutting 4,000 employees. The hosts also discuss the social fallout of AI acceleration, particularly the counter-movement seeking tactile, real-world connection and the economic risk of displacing white-collar data analysts.
Key Moments
00:03:00 – App Store War: Discussing Anthropic's Claude topping the app charts and why the US Department of Defense will use the best AI system regardless of corporate objection.
00:04:00 – Hollywood's AI Play: Netflix acquiring Ben Affleck's AI company, Interpositive, which uses unedited film dailies to train an AI for editing and optimization.
00:05:00 – The Mediocrity Threat: Rony Abovitz's take on the risk of AI creating a "very, very long tail of Okay" content, leading to a cultural sameness.
00:07:00 – Counter-Culture: Exploring the growing emotional need for "something real" and a massive movement away from purely digital experiences.
00:09:00 – The White-Collar Risk: The hosts argue that the white-collar data analyst is the worker "most easy to replace" by AI, contrasting with the high value of blue-collar workers.
00:11:00 – The "Oh Wow" Moment: Charlie Fink describes his first experience with Teamily AI, noting the immediate power of real-time, multi-person and multi-agent prompting.
00:13:00 – The Science Behind Teamily: Dr. Aiden He, PhD in Machine Learning, explains how Teamily is built upon his previous research in distributed learning and multi-agent systems.
00:26:00 – Global Memory: Aiden details Teamily's unique "cross domain, long horizon memory," which allows the AI to combine human-human chat context with human-AI memory for a more natural interaction.

The biggest takeaway is the conceptual shift from using AI as a solo productivity tool to using it as a collaborative team member. The path to the next phase of social networking hinges on building platforms where AI is not isolated but is a natural, evolving part of a human community.
This episode of The AI XR Podcast is brought to you by Zappar, the folks behind Mattercraft, a leading visual development environment for building immersive 3D web experiences for mobile headsets and desktop. Start building smarter at mattercraft.io.
Listen and subscribe to the AI XR Podcast wherever you get your podcasts! Watch the full thing on YouTube https://youtu.be/s78WZJSfGeo.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.