Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
Interviews with Leaders in Fintech & Web3
Shaping Tomorrow: The AI powered Metaverse with Alvin Wang Graylin
Alvin Wang Graylin, Global VP of Corporate Development for HTC, discusses the intersection of AI and the metaverse. Alvin shares his background and journey in the tech industry, highlighting the importance of hard work and the value of understanding programming. Alvin explains how AI and XR technologies are coming together to create a transformative metaverse experience, discusses the challenges of centralization versus decentralization in the metaverse and the implications of privacy and anonymity in this new digital world. The conversation explores various themes related to the AI-powered metaverse and its impact on society. It delves into topics such as privacy and data control, the possibilities of the metaverse, tips for adapting to change, the importance of soft skills, the value of reading and curiosity, being kind and ethical, setting purpose-driven goals, embracing art and culture, taking care of physical health, prioritizing meaningful relationships, understanding and valuing the elderly, finding fulfillment and purpose, learning from mistakes and traveling, building understanding and empathy, anthropogenic risks and unity, the future of money and universal basic income, and advice for students.
Check out his latest book https://ournextreality.com/
Takeaways:
•The AI-powered metaverse has the potential to reshape society in various ways, and it is important to consider the ethical implications and privacy concerns associated with it.
•Soft skills such as communication, leadership, and ethical decision-making will become increasingly valuable in a world driven by AI and automation.
•Reading voraciously and seeking knowledge from diverse sources can help individuals make connections and gain a deeper understanding of the world.
•Kindness, empathy, and meaningful relationships are essential for personal well-being and societal harmony.
•As technology advances, it is crucial to prioritize physical health, embrace art and culture, and find purpose and fulfillment beyond materialistic pursuits.
•The transition to a post-scarcity society may lead to a shift away from traditional monetary systems, with a focus on providing for basic needs and fostering human connection.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
06:10 The Intersection of AI and XR
11:10 The AI-Powered Metaverse
14:01 The Evolution of the Metaverse
22:14 Centralization vs Decentralization in the Metaverse
27:07 Privacy and Anonymity in the Metaverse
32:46 Privacy and Data Control
34:19 The Art of the Possible
35:43 Tips for Adapting to Change
36:58 The Importance of Soft Skills
38:20 The Value of Reading and Curiosity
39:42 Being Kind and Ethical
41:08 Setting Purpose-Driven Goals
42:00 Embracing Art and Culture
42:53 Taking Care of Physical Health
44:18 Prioritizing Meaningful Relationships
45:44 Understanding and Valuing the Elderly
46:08 Finding Fulfillment and Purpose
47:31 Learning from Mistakes and Traveling
48:55 Building Understanding and Empathy
50:22 Anthropogenic Risks and Unity
54:27 The Future of Money and Universal Basic Income
56:06 Moving Towards a Post-Monetary Society
01:01:25 Advice to 18-Year-Old Self
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Matt (00:02.261)
This is Matt from Work in Fintech And today I'm delighted to be joined for the first of series two of our podcast series by Alvin Wang Graylin. He's the global VP of corporate development for HTC, one of the biggest mobile phone makers in the world. He's author of Our Next Reality", how the AI powered metaverse will reshape the world. He studied electrical engineering and worked with Tom Furness, who's one of the founding fathers of VR.
He studied computer science and electrical engineering at MIT and has worked in AI, VR, and XR for decades. And today, we're going to be talking about the intersection of AI and the metaverse and why Alvin sees it as the most significant technology ever created. Welcome, Alvin.
Alvin W. Graylin (00:51.291)
Yeah, well, thanks for inviting me, Maddys. It should be a fun chat.
Matt (00:56.397)
So I guess let's kind of rewind back and it'd be great to understand because you've had a fascinating journey to get to where you are. But if you could kind of condense that down, because one of the things we always talk about on the show is that there's no straight path from A to B. People go in lots of different directions, but learn a lot of things along the way. Could you talk about your journey?
Alvin W. Graylin (01:21.314)
Sure, yeah, and there was definitely not as great. But, you know, so maybe I can go a little bit back to kind of my heritage. So I'm actually part Chinese, part, I guess, Scottish American. And my grandmother was actually in China during the Sino-Japanese War. And she had to escape China and left my mom in China after the Japanese invaded Shanghai. So...
which is why my mom actually as a mixed race person grew up in China and met my dad a little bit before the culture evolution. And they're both artists and unfortunately, neither myself nor my brother are artists or have artistic, enough artistic stuff. Maybe he has a little bit more than I do. But we immigrated to the US in 1980, right? After the end of the cultural revolution and, you know,
My father, when he sat us down when we got here, he said, hey, like, you know, we sacrifice a lot to get you over to the US and we wanna make sure you get the best education. But given that we're artists, we don't have the money to afford it. So you really have to make sure you get scholarships and study really hard. So that was a lot of motivation to really work hard. And I think I was very fortunate that, you know, I was able to get multiple scholarships and my brother as well.
So that we didn't have to have any debts. And at the same time we were working because we, you know, couldn't just, we also worked pretty much since we landed. So I was nine and my brother was 12 and we haven't really stopped working since then. But, you know, having to work for, you know, your basic needs, it changes your value of what money is. And so, you know, you're talking about money. And again, at the time, at the end of the day, you can say, hey, it took me, you know, two hours to buy.
this computer or this burger or this bicycle, or, you know, that took me six months of work to get this. You value it a lot more than when your parents give you some money to go buy something. So pretty much everything that I had as a child, whether it was my first TV, my first computer, my first car, was all from the money that I earned. So that really gives you a sense of the value of hard work. And I think that also...
Alvin W. Graylin (03:47.618)
helps you to balance your time. So if you're a child, being busy actually makes you more productive than when you have a lot of extra time because you start to manage your time very well and know when you're supposed to study, when you're supposed to do sports and when you're supposed to do your part-time job. And so I've been in tech pretty much my entire career. I first started programming when I was about 10. And my...
my uncle who was here doing his PhD, he kind of got us into that space and said, hey, you know, why don't you come to my university for summer and here's a computer, try it out. And I started to learn the program and it bit me. And I haven't stopped doing it then, since then. And, you know, I think it's important for young people, even though you hear like a couple of...
a week ago or something that Jesse Wong said, you know, kids don't need a program anymore, don't need to learn how to program anymore. Maybe you don't need to be an expert programmer, but I think there's a lot of value in understanding how to structure logic, how to, you know, create instructions so that the computer understands what you're doing and what actually happens underneath when you make these programs. So that when things go wrong, you know how to fix it and you know that the mindset of a computer when it's interacting with things that you've created.
Um, now, so, uh, in the, in the computer and kind of tech side, I, you know, went from everything from chip design to, uh, you know, multiple, um, I did my, my undergrad at New Yorkshire, Washington, as you mentioned, uh, in the W E and, and also studied, uh, XR. I think later went to MIT and study AI, but I've kind of went through all, all levels of computing from doing chips to boards, to systems, to, um,
to applications on top, to web development, to search engines. So I've gone through the entire stack, as well as in the last eight years, I've been working on the BRAR space with HTC. I was exposed to that over 30 years ago with Tom, as you mentioned. And it's really amazing to see both the AI space and the XR space maturing around the same time. And I'm excited to be here.
Alvin W. Graylin (06:10.326)
I do feel that these two technologies will actually come together in a very near term to help solve each other's problems because, you know, AI will actually create societal problems and XR is not used properly, it can also create societal problems. But together they actually can reinforce each other's weaknesses and help to create a better long-term outcome for society. So.
That's a little bit of my story and in between I also founded four different venture backed startups and did investments in other things.
Matt (06:43.781)
So what's different now? Because AI has been around since post-World War II, and VR has been around for 30, 40 years as well. It's the technology that...
Alvin W. Graylin (06:52.962)
No, no, actually, VR and AI both started in the 1950s. So they actually did essentially come into existence into our technology sphere around the same time. And it's taken 70 years essentially for them to get to where we are. And the biggest, I think, difference is twofold. One is the...
The AI of the past was more procedural. So it's humans programming instructions and having, you know, our knowledge put into these systems, uh, what's happened over the last 15 years with machine learning and deep learning, you're able to allow the data to then train these AI's just like what humans do when we look around the environment and we, we hear things, we, we start to consolidate information into something that is represented in your own network in our brain.
In this case, we're representing it in a large language model or multimodal model inside a computer's memory. So, and the other thing that's really happened is not just the architectural changes of how AI is created, but also the computing is available. We've had probably millions and millions of times of processing power we have now compared to what it was just 20, 30 years ago. When I started to use XR devices, we were...
using silicon graphics devices that cost a few hundred thousand dollars. And it's probably had less processing power than my phone or probably less processing power than my watch. You know, so, so those are the kind of, you know, kind of scales that we're working on and when you have, uh, a, a architecture that actually represents similar to human based learning and you have the scale that is now getting to the size of human brains, you now have, you know, trillion parameter models, which
And the next one is supposed to be 100 trillion. I think Q55 supposedly is going to be 100 trillion parameters, which is actually about as many synapses as we have in our brains. So we are creating now, at least on the order of magnitude, a similar complexity model as we have in our physical brain. So that allows for emergent properties that was just never possible before. And even with just a trillion.
Alvin W. Graylin (09:12.042)
model or maybe even 100 billion parameter models, it's able to do amazing things in a more constrained spaces. So I think that the combination of these things happening is creating amazing results. And the beauty is that it's actually not going to stop. It's actually not even slowing down. We are increasing compute, not at the order of what Moore's law is saying, which is essentially doubling every...
18 months, where we're actually adding compute to AI on the order of 10x every 6 to 12 months. So think about that order of change, as well as the size and scale of these models are getting amazingly rich. The other thing is from the VR AR perspective, I started with 2.5 kilograms device on my head. Now this year you have the Apple Vision Pro, which is 600 grams.
And then you have things like the HTC Vive XR-Lite, which is about 200 grams. So we're getting closer and closer to devices that will be essentially glasses. Within the next three, four years, we will have glasses form factor devices you can wear all day. And gives you the ability to have both immersive and augmented visual capabilities. So all the screens that you have in your life, whether it's on your walls or on your tables, on your pocket.
can be replaced by screens or virtual screens in your face or on your face. So I think the combination of these two things happening together is really going to change our relationship with technology. It's gonna change our relationship with each other. And it's going to actually change the borders between countries and between peoples and between cultures. So there's definitely huge societal ramifications.
that will be arriving very soon.
Matt (11:10.449)
and I guess some of the AI technologies that already can be used, such as computer vision, you know, natural language processing, real-time translation, then all of a sudden you can, like you say, it breaks down barriers, maybe causes some problems in some places, but breaks down barriers in others. So it's a very interesting time. So talking about like the AI-powered.
Alvin W. Graylin (11:33.482)
And the funny thing is I actually started doing natural language search systems in 2005. So almost 20 years ago, I was actually in China working on the first natural language search system and we had it deployed to all three Chinese carriers. So, and even then, you know, we were able to displace a lot of the support workers or date the carriers displaced about 30% of their support workers when they installed our systems into.
into these platforms and you can have conversational, you know, multi query searches, which is kind of what we're seeing now with ChachiBT. We were doing this a long time ago. We didn't have the advantage of having large language models. So it was much more complex or time consuming process. But I think that it's amazing to see that the vision of what I wanted to create is now actually there. And I think this is going to disrupt a lot of, a lot of sectors.
Matt (12:32.425)
So, in your book, you define the metaverse, and correct me if I'm wrong, but a new digital world based largely on immersive media experience in the first person. Now, when people think of the metaverse, a lot of people immediately jump into...
Alvin W. Graylin (12:46.402)
Well, that's actually, I think the easier way, because it's not just immersive worlds. I think there was, in the introduction, there was a formula, which is essentially the metaverse is just a 3D version of the internet that we've been programming or building for the last 30, 40 years, but it's now powered by AI and interfaced with XR in the long run. But near term, actually, I think the metaverse, when it first comes to fruition.
will actually mostly be interface through 2D devices. So it doesn't have to be immersive devices because it just, it takes time for us to get these kinds of devices into people's hands. But everybody already has a screen and everybody already is able to use that screen to use a 2D screen to navigate and interact in a 3D world. And that's where it will start. Just like, you look at things like roadblocks or Minecraft or rec room or whatever, or VR chat, they're all.
3D interfaces, but a lot of their users are using it on 2D screens. And I think that's where it will start. But over time, we will move to hopefully more and more people using amount of displays, which will give them that immersion that is very difficult to achieve in a 2D screen.
Matt (14:01.437)
And I guess the full immersion is a lot of people think about Ready Player One, and you're in an alternate reality where you can feel, touch, sense, see everything around you. What are the milestones up until that point? Or is it there's continuous incremental changes?
Alvin W. Graylin (14:21.951)
Yeah, I mean.
Yeah, I think for the visual and audio side, and even for the motion, you know, the proprioception side, we're getting very close. The things like smell and taste and temperature and optics, that will take a little bit longer. But the benefit or the beauty is right now, the mind is actually probably overcompensated on the visual and audio side. So even if you don't have some of
your brain fills in the blanks for you. So if you see, let's say, if you see a fire situation, you actually will feel hotter, even though you actually don't have the temperature, right? Or if you just had a little tap on your wrist or on your hands, it actually feels stronger to you when you see a big thing coming over and hitting you. So your brain compensates for some of the missing sense, but over time we will...
create more and more realistic, you know, full immersion, you know, full century experiences. But I don't think it's a requirement for us to have that before we can say we have a, you know, true metaverse experience.
Matt (15:39.941)
So can you talk more about what the AI-powered metaverse is? So there's some technologies that can be used, obviously, to make the UI UX better. But building on that in terms of some of the kind of like what you would normally call in gaming non-playable characters, you've spoken about how AI can take some roles in the metaverse. Can you elaborate more on what you see that AI-powered piece?
Alvin W. Graylin (15:52.438)
Yeah.
Alvin W. Graylin (16:08.638)
Yeah. So, I mean, even before all of this hype that's happened last few years with Gen.ai, AI actually has been an important part of almost all aspects of XR. And from the, you know, the environmental scanning to hand and, you know, eye tracking to voice recognition to positional tracking, all of that actually requires some form of AI or a vision. Now, we are getting to a point where we will
I think AI will solve one of the biggest problems that we have in XR today, which is the lack of quality content, because GenAI is now able to create films and poetry or whatever from a prompt. Very soon, they will be able to create 3D worlds and 3D experiences with a prompt. In fact, I'm at South by Southwest right now. This morning, I went in and participated in a brand new XR experience that is powered by AI.
And essentially, at first it asks you 10 questions or something around there. That's, you know, you, what things you like, where you, where you were born, what things makes you happy and, you know, what are some of the most memorable things that you've done? And you type these questions in or answers in, and then in real time, you put on your headset and that becomes a part of the story. And that story is then embodied into a 3D world. So it's already happening. But right now it's, you know, being powered by large servers that are, you know, in the back of the room.
things that people can't afford and very soon, either that will happen inbound or it will happen on the edge devices that you're in because things are gonna get a lot more efficient in terms of how that technology is going to be applied. So I think we're getting very close to be able to have essentially unlimited personalized content that will continue to attract your interest and your attention.
in areas that you want to, that you can direct. So in some ways people say, oh, but then you're just gonna escape into this virtual world. I think if you misuse it, there is that possibility. But if you use it properly, it could be an amazing lesson plan for children who want to learn something. So you have a teacher that says, here's, we're gonna look back at the ancient Egypt.
Alvin W. Graylin (18:28.446)
and let's walk through the various parts of the Nile and see how the pyramids were made and blah, blah. And you allow these kids to be able to go into a world that is described by the teacher without the need for having large studios spending millions of dollars to make that content. And it can be dynamic in the sense of now you can put little Jimmy and little Susie into this.
into this book or into this experience. And now they feel like, oh, I'm part of this. And when they see themselves in these stories, they're going to pay attention. And they're going to remember it. They may not see it as a lesson, but they will learn more from that experience than they will from reading a chapter in a book or multiple chapters in a book. And I think that's where we're headed, is that we will essentially create the ultimate education machine.
not only because of this immersive content, but also the fact that it can now, the teachers can be assisted by AI assistants who knows all of the history and all of philosophy and all of science and can actually create that lesson based on the speed of learning of the student, as well as the key content that is objectively driven. And there's no way for any one teacher to know all this information, but now you have a...
an all-knowing assistant that would, and it's actually already available today. I think those are the kind of things that really excite me because young children is our future, and if we can influence them in a way that they will be more knowledgeable and more understanding of history and of philosophy and of ethics and all the things that make us human, they will be able to do a better job in terms of determining where the future goes.
Matt (20:21.805)
And education and entertainment are obviously two big use cases for embracing these types of technologies. With the education side, could you talk about one of the things that you covered in the book was actually learning in these immersive environments. The amount of information and knowledge you retain actually makes you perform a lot better than if you were just reading a book or just sitting at a lecture.
Alvin W. Graylin (20:46.786)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, we've done multiple studies. And not only HTC and our partner agencies or universities, but also just a lot of pretty much over the last 30, 40 years, many people have done studies to show that you're getting two to three X, sometimes more, in terms of retention, in terms of better scores. You're up one or two grade levels in terms of the grades that you get from the test scores.
And you can learn things, you can learn language in half the time, as you would from just looking at a 2D screen or reading a book or listening to tapes. So the fact that you can learn faster, you can remember more and you can apply it more are all proven in current studies. And that's very exciting because, you know, once somebody is knowledgeable, they will be
better able to contribute to society, and they will be able to better make decisions in terms of you're in the democratic world or in your country. If you need to vote, if you don't understand the background of the things that you're voting for, then having the right to vote is actually not a right. You're just going to be influenced by whatever ads you see. You want these people to be as informed as possible for democracy to be actually effective.
Matt (22:14.097)
Let's move on to the open metaverse and the idea of centralization versus decentralization. So like with any business to get things moving, it requires an investment, it requires a company to create something, push it out there, get it to market, which requires money and time and effort and resource. The decentralized piece has obviously come in a lot in the last few years with...
Alvin W. Graylin (22:19.234)
Easy.
Matt (22:42.961)
you know, the read, write, own, web3 kind of mantra, where decentralization theoretically sounds fantastic, but in action, it's a lot harder. So how do you see that playing out over the next few years?
Alvin W. Graylin (22:58.55)
Yeah, honestly, I feel like a lot of the stories I've been told by the Web3 community has been more wishful thinking than reality. And as you probably have seen, we've had a number of disasters that's happened in the space, maybe by unscrupulous people who were misusing these concepts for their own personal gains. I think there's definitely a lot of value in the underlying blockchain technologies when applied properly.
I think in time we will do that, but it will go through multiple phases. And the performance levels of current distributed file systems and various blockchain systems just is not at the level that you would have for closed systems, or more centralized systems. And if you want to create a global metaverse, today it's very difficult to actually even physically or technically execute. Now in time, I think that might change.
And in the near term, there's also huge amounts of inconsistent standards and inconsistent protocols that people are using, as well as, you know, every country has different laws around this space, which I think adds a lot of complexity. So I don't think we're going to get to, you know, the open and decentralized metaverse that I think some people are hoping for in the next, you know, few years. It will definitely, if it does happen, it would take.
much longer and it would go through phases where right now, essentially, we have a lot of companies, you know, when I talk about Metaverse, I'm talking about the whole interconnected part of it. So the whole, essentially, the internet that we have today connecting billions of people, right? A lot of people, when they say Metaverse today, they mean, oh, you know, Sandbox or Decentraland or Roblox. I don't think those are actually Metaverse. Those are just virtual worlds or, you know, virtual platforms.
But it's when we have them all interconnected, you can have a common ID jump between them, you can carry your assets between them, carry a sign-on between them, carry your avatars between them, carry your assets, your tokens, currencies between them. That's when you actually have a true metaverse interoperable experience. And even then, it doesn't necessarily have to be decentralized. You could still have a somewhat centralized or a pseudo centralized model or...
Alvin W. Graylin (25:20.678)
a kind of like what you do today, even with the internet platforms, there are server farms in different places in the world where there's communication hubs in certain places in the world that things go into. It's not just everybody's connected to everything. So I think it'd be very difficult for us to completely switch out the networking protocols that we have. Now I do feel that in the longer run...
there is definitely a benefit to instead of having vertical platforms that we do today with some of the ones I mentioned earlier, having interoperable platforms that they may still exist as independent platforms, but they will now be completely interoperable from the protocol layer and from the login layer and from the identity layer and so forth so that you can share resources and people can seamlessly jump between these, these worlds. And you know,
kind of what the Ready Player One description was. But even if you look at Ready Player One, it was not a decentralized world. It was actually a single vendor that provided the entire world. So it's like a completely centralized world. So I think you don't want to completely just look at fiction for your guide to how to operate the future. But if you look at what we do right now with Telecom, everybody has a single phone number.
that we use around anywhere in the world. We can roam across anywhere in the world with any device, and somebody can send me a text or give me a call, and I can be accessed. We should have that level of interoperability when we get to that metaverse type of a future.
Matt (27:07.837)
So you touched on a few things there, like having a common ID, being able to transfer assets or tokens, whatever it might be. So that kind of touches on going back to blockchain and so on web3 that we were just talking about. That common ID, that opens up then this idea of privacy, of anonymity. And that's one of these things which online...
is a positive thing and also a negative thing at the same time, being completely anonymous. What's your view on someone being pseudonymous versus kind of proof of humanity and someone being a real human and how those interactions will happen in the future?
Alvin W. Graylin (27:48.598)
Yeah, so honestly, first of all, I don't think having a common ID necessarily means you have to have a blockchain connection. So if you look at it right now in China, which is where I spent the last 18 years, all the online platforms have a common ID. It uses your phone number, which is tied to then your national ID. So it is fully identifiable, but you can use that to log into every single social app. Now, and that...
there's no blockchain behind it. And so, but they're doing it on a single national level. So it's not global level, but at least, it's a billion people. So it's 1.4 billion people. So it is a sizable example of a non-blockchain based interoperable unified ID system. Same with our phone numbers. And again, that's also something that is uniquely identifiable to you, to your device. And in the back, usually there's a
the carrier has information about who you are. Maybe the other person who you're calling may not, but it can be found. So I think there are issues with maybe total transparency, where people feel like, oh, I've lost my sense of privacy because everybody can track everything I'm doing. I think a lot of people don't realize how much of what they do today, even in the non-metaverse world, they are already being tracked. Whenever you use credit cards, you're being tracked.
And that information goes back to what you bought, where you bought it, how much you spent, et cetera. What way you paid for it. If you have a phone, every sound you make, every GPS movement you pay, all of that is being tracked. If you're sending text messages, or you're going on the web, all of that, the cookies are being put onto you. So we actually have a lot less privacy than we believe we have, or a lot of people believe.
Now, I think going forward, once you start having devices on your head that tracks your eyes, tracks your brainwaves, tracks your heart rate, that then takes away even to another level because now the biometrics side of it takes into account and actually it may know more about how you actually feel about something than you would admit that you do.
Alvin W. Graylin (30:06.918)
Because when you look at something and your attention's there, it knows that there's something about that attracts you. Even if you say, oh, I actually don't want to buy this really nice car, but I keep looking at it or I don't like this color, but you keep looking at it, they will know what that thing that you're paying attention to. And particularly if it has a combination of things like, you know, easy ways or other things that you can tie together, breathing rates, heart rates, other things. So...
We're going to have less privacy in the future, but today we already don't have much privacy already. So, I am, in some ways, I think in the future, we will actually, for some use cases, want to give up as much privacy as possible to create a personalized AI that can then represent us, that can know our feelings, our interests, our wants, our history, our friends.
our conversations, our opinions, and to have that be something that then becomes a system to help us make our lives better. So if I can create an AI-based system that has joined every single meeting I've been in, I've read every single email that I've written, have seen every single interview I've done, that AI can then go and join meetings for me.
evaluate the content of that meeting and say, oh, well, these are the five things that you care about or I've already answered these questions for you in this virtual meeting for you. And I've had to, I could save hours and hours a day of meetings where usually there's only two or three minutes or one or two items that were actually unique new things that I would care about. And they can even come in and interrupt me and say, hey, I know you're busy doing this now, but here's an urgent question from this meeting. Can you give your opinion on it? Because I don't have enough information.
And wait, I can only, I can just spend two minutes on something instead of spending 60 minutes on doing something. And I want that AI to know me better than I know myself. And I wanted to, because then it can fully represent my, my interests. And same with if I, if it knows what I want, then I can have it go out and do my shopping for me instead of me going onto a website and having ads that tries to influence me.
Alvin W. Graylin (32:20.646)
it will just know that, okay, you know, I really like, you know, to have a granola cereal and I, I like to have soy milk and, you know, I'm just, it's going to buy the best quality product at the lowest price and it was going to ship it to me when I need it. So, so I don't need to have ads being popped up to me all the time. So there's a lot of benefits of giving up your privacy if there is some sense of control. Now I think that's where, um, you know, a lot of people don't realize that by giving up data.
It doesn't necessarily mean you have to give up control if that data is kept on a local storage, or something that works, or at least an encrypted storage that you can control. So I think there's a lot of nuances to all of this, but there's definitely not a single thing of we have to just have complete privacy. Nobody can know anything. Nobody can store anything.
Alvin W. Graylin (33:17.462)
giving information can actually be beneficial. Of course, there are also cases where if the wrong people get access to the information, it can be used against you to manipulate you to change your mind on things that could be critical to the future of the world. So yeah, it is something that we need to be definitely much more conscious about. And that is one of the reasons we wrote the book was to give...
both the positive and negative views of what could happen.
Matt (33:50.865)
I think in one of the stories in the book was this kind of look forward, some point in the future, where taking your personalized AI avatar that can go shopping for you and so on, going much further forward where there might be humanoid robots, which you could put your personalized AI in, which then could unlock other opportunities. And I think you mentioned, for example, a story of...
someone who's in Nigeria who is then able to work in Antarctica on some research project because of this ability to transport into another kind of entity that you can control somewhere. Just kind of give a flavour for some of the art of the possible which could happen at some point in this century.
Alvin W. Graylin (34:43.554)
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of those that last chapter was really more something that just gives you a vision of what's possible. But a lot of what we talk about are things that have been mentioned in multiple sci-fi books. So it's not, I don't claim to be a fiction author, but we wrote it as a little fun chapter just to kind of pull all the ideas together, a lot of the ideas together. And there's essentially a utopian story and a more dystopian story. And it's really to highlight
the potential positives of this technology and the misuse. And to then motivate people to read the next chapter, which is the tips chapter, which actually the one I cared the most about because I think most people will actually not read the 300 pages of the book. They may read the last five pages of here's the tips of, depending on who you are, whether you're a policymaker, you're a business leader, you're an AI industry leader or you're a student, what do you care, what should you be doing to play your role?
to be a better member in society and to affect the future outcome towards the positive, right? So that's what I would rather, if people didn't have time, they should go read those few pages. If they have enough time, I would love for them to read the entire book is that the book builds from kind of more technical to more industry wise to then a longer term view of societal impact.
Matt (36:09.461)
So on those, because you were just talking about it, there's a section for graduates and suggestions that you're making for people to acquire skills and knowledge to make them more adaptable and resilient in the face of change. And you mentioned actually seven points about different things they could think about. But high level, could you kind of talk through kind of the mindset?
It's very much a mindset, you know, what those points you are making about what people should, how they should be approaching using technologies, understanding those tools, how they can use it to compound and build on, um, previous, um, technologies. So they understand them. They understand how things are connected and to help them kind of excel in lots of different areas.
Alvin W. Graylin (36:58.218)
I mean, I think at the end of the day, we are getting to a world where, and I'll pull us down to that page, we're getting to a world, and there were 10 points essentially, where a lot of what we take for granted today in terms of, oh, you have to have money, you have to have a job, you have to study STEM, a lot of things that we have been taught in our generation will soon no longer be true.
And in those cases, what will be the things that separate people from each other? It will not be their ability to remember a formula or to do certain calculations. It will be their ability to have first principle thinking, their ability to communicate, their ability to lead, their ability to understand, am I doing the right thing ethically, and their ability to know history. So it's the soft skills that we use to undervalue.
will be in the near future, the skills that are going to be the most important. Now, I am a voracious reader. I try to read around 100 books a year. And I think it actually helps me because of the breadth of the books I read, I am able to make connections that I haven't been able to make when I was younger. I wish I could do this earlier. And I think that's something that we need to get our young children to do to look at long-form content. They spend so much time.
watching these two minute TikToks or 30 second TikToks and five minute YouTube videos. And when they're like, oh, I'm an expert in this area, I just watched a five minute YouTube video. And the reality is that just even reading one book that could spend 10 hours doing it may not be enough. You probably need to read multiple books with different perspectives on the subject for you to really understand it. But once you've read even one book, you probably know more about this topic than 95% of people in the world. So not to mention if you read multiple books.
So I think that's what we need to do is we need to get people to really go deeper in terms of the content that they read. And to spend more time reading things that used to be considered boring, things like philosophy, things like history, things like biographies, which because the world is driven by human bias, human nature, those things don't change, even though technology changes and the economy changes and the borders of the country changes, but how we behave as humans.
Alvin W. Graylin (39:15.786)
don't really change, hasn't changed for tens of thousands of years. So one is reading voraciously, one is practicing curiosity, you know, so that you're constantly learning because you will have more access as a child now than had any generation in the past and it will be more accessible than any generation. So it's not for you to say what are you
Alvin W. Graylin (39:42.474)
And if you ask questions, you will get answers. And those answers will be, for the most part, will be accurate. I mean, there's always needs some little hallucinations or inaccurate data, at least for the early generations of AI, because our data is inaccurate. Our data may be biased and so forth. But over time, it's going to be increasingly accurate. We're going to need to really also think about not just making money, not just getting power.
But really, how do we be better humans? How do we be more kind to each other? And not just kind to other humans, but also kind to other animals, and then later, kind to maybe these future AI beings that we will create. Because right now, there's a lot of debate whether AI will have consciousness. But it feels like we are getting closer and closer as we get these giant models that are 100 trillion parameters. It really is the same order of complexity as our brains.
in which case, you know, it probably has some level of consciousness that we cannot sense. It may be different views, but there's probably something there. Just like we say, oh, you know, you don't want to be cruel to animals, you don't want to be cruel to a pet, you know, we should ascribe some of that to these future beings that will be somewhat self-directed. And I think the smarter it gets, and they actually become in the future maybe more self-directed.
than we are because as humans, we are also very biased by our hormonal systems, by the bacterias in our body, by our emotions because of evolution and so forth. The other thing is, if we want to be successful in the long run, I think we have to have a purpose-driven lifestyle and really set goals that are not just about, okay, how do I get
the paycheck, how do I get a pay raise, how to get a good grade. Those are very short-term issues. We need to think longer term. How do we contribute more to society? How do I find more meaning in what I'm doing? How do I raise my children better? Those are longer term goals that I think people should spend their focus on. And also, instead of just focused on the
Alvin W. Graylin (42:00.906)
octicality and materialism, which everybody's like, oh, I just bought this car, I just bought this house, I have this new bag. Those things are nice, but they give you very temporary dissection. We should start to make the embrace more time, spend more time in doing arts and creating culture and creating experiences. Those are the things that actually stay with us. Those are the things that affects who we are. And art has been a way of expression for human since probably 30, 40,000 years ago, at least.
We've got cave paintings from 30, 40,000 years ago. And I'm sure we've had music and other types of artists we weren't able to find or was destroyed by nature. And so it is what makes us special is our ability to pass down the culture between generations. So we should spend a little bit more effort on that. The other thing is our physical health. I think too many people now are just...
either online all day or they're in the office all day, they actually don't spend enough time exercising and taking care of their bodies. And if you don't have your health, none of the other things matter. Having money won't matter. Having a degree won't matter. Having prizes won't matter. You cannot get out of bed. Last year I had a hernia surgery. It's a very minor surgery, but I was almost a week in the bed. And it makes you realize that something this small that affects your ability to be vocal...
changes your equation, changes your ability to interact with people, changes your value system. I would have paid tens of thousands of dollars and said, okay, I can get out of bed today, I'm willing to pay that money. But even if you pay money, it doesn't matter because your body just takes that time to heal. And we need to spend more time taking care of our bodies so that we can live a healthy life. We don't need to necessarily need to live hundreds of years. I know there's some people who are spending time trying to live longer, but I think what's more important is not...
you know, increasing your lifespan is increasing your healthspan is making sure that even if you live 80 or 90 years, that 80, 90 years is healthy times that you can be out there and be active and spend time with your children and your grandchildren and maybe your great grandchildren. Um, the other thing is really having more focus on meaningful relationships. Just a few meaningful relationships in your life will do more good for you. Will be more valuable to you than having hundreds of very superficial
Alvin W. Graylin (44:18.09)
relationships and then you know so many people want to say oh how many friends do I have on Facebook or Instagram or how many followers that doesn't really matter in the long run right when you're sick in bed those Instagram followers are not going to help you they're not going to come sit by you and hold your hands and make you feel bad so I think you're really when if you have children spend time with them if you have parents spend time with them I lost my dad last year and I wish I had spent more time with him you know because those are the kind of
And I feel like we need to prioritize that more than we do today. And especially in, I think, the Western society, we don't value the elderly as much as the Eastern societies do. And we don't bring them into the home to live with us. We actually put them into a retirement home to be as far away as possible or sometimes so that we don't have to worry about them. And I think we need to actually
think more about how do we spend more time with, how do we make them happy? I actually recently moved back from China to the US and one of the main reasons is my mom is in Seattle and I wanna spend more time with her while I still have a chance. And I go and visit her every time and just spending half an hour, visiting her, having a lunch, it makes her a whole week happy. And that little price of just a little bit of time to have that contribution to her attitude and happiness, it totally worth it.
Um, the other thing is, I think we need to also feel a little bit more about, um, how to find our place in the world. Instead of just being a cog, being something where, you know, uh, you're just a little cog in a big machine and you don't know what you're contributing. And you just follow the orders of, of whatever your manager tells you. I think it's important for us all to know.
who we are, believe in ourself, believe in our ability to contribute. If you, if you aren't finding that fulfillment in your job, go, go find a place where you actually do enjoy your work because in another 10 years, 15 years, that the need to work for money will go away. We will have such an increase in productivity from AI coming into our world that, um, rather than working, you know, 60, 70, 80 hours a week and needing that income to pay for your rent and to pay for your food.
Alvin W. Graylin (46:38.294)
A lot of that will be provided through UBI. And if we don't, we're going to have major issues because we're going to have the displacement that will come from AI. AI productivity is a, it will mean that a lot of people will not be needed to do the traditional jobs that they've done, or very few people can do the jobs of many more people. And so what do the rest of those people do?
So we need to make sure that we give these people a place to go spend their time. And which is why I think the metaverse will play a major role in helping these people have a renewed purpose, have a place to spend their time, run out of it for the energy and their creativity and feel some level of fulfillment that they currently get from their work. Number nine is learn from your mistakes. It's okay to make mistakes. As a child, you have to make mistakes. If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't learning.
And if you are making mistakes, you aren't actually taking any risk in terms of, um, expanding yourself. And, you know, we are actually in a very safe place where if we make a mistake, uh, you know, we're, it's not like the old days where you make a mistake, the saber to tiger will eat you and you're gone here. You know, if you make a mistake, maybe you get a small lower grade on your tests or maybe, you know, the project you, you try to be creative on. You, you didn't work out or whatever. Right. Or even if you start a company and that company fails, it's okay.
You will learn a lot from it. And as a child, I think, spend more time traveling the world, because, you know, especially in America, I think something like 90% of Americans don't go more than, you know, don't leave the country, right? And most of them don't even go more than 300 miles from their home. That's kind of sad because there's so much beauty, so much culture, so much amazing people around the world that...
we should go out and meet and understand and learn and so that we're not afraid of them. So that we don't have this bias against them because of just what we hear on certain media or because of some article that we read. When you start to go to a place and you start to make friends with them, what you realize is that we're all the same. Whether you're a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew or an atheist, everybody's a human and we all have...
Alvin W. Graylin (48:55.142)
our desires to bring happiness to our family, to bring happiness to the next generation, to contribute, to be a part of something. And that connects all of us. So when you go there and you spend time with them, you're not gonna see them as us and them. You will just see them as we're all a part of this greater kind of human humanity, the greater human species. And I think that's something that brings
a level of enlightenment that it's very difficult to do if you don't physically go to these places and learn their history and learn why they feel this way and why do they, you know, why did they do what they do? Once you understand the history, a lot of the activities that you used to feel was, you know, disgraceful or this is hatred or whatever. It's like, oh, now I understand why that happened. And, you know, now I don't blame either side for it, but I understand here's what happened and maybe here are the things that we can do.
going forward so that we don't perpetuate the conflicts and the hatred that are happening. Our biggest risk to society is not AI robots coming and destroying us. Our biggest risk right now is anthropogenic risk, things that are human made that will have a possibility to destroy us.
Alvin W. Graylin (50:22.65)
is actually affecting some other people. And these people are not our enemies. These people, they don't really hate us. Nobody really hates everybody. There may be some leaders that wanna create that image because when you have an enemy, it unites the people that are under them. So it creates a power structure that perpetuates their position in power. But very few people in the rest of the world hate other people. They just wanna survive.
They just want to be happy. They just want to be healthy. And I don't think there's a lot of difference between any country or any religions. So that's kind of the 10 items that was for students and children to think about. And there are just five different lists for different potential readerships. So maybe I rambled a little bit. So.
Matt (51:16.213)
But it's interesting that you're a technologist, you're heavily involved in technology, but every single thing you just mentioned is something that's innately human. And actually as technology starts to get ever more involved in all the things that we're doing in our lives, and particularly this AI-powered metaverse, that it's those innately human skills that's gonna help you thrive and flourish and give you something unique as well.
Alvin W. Graylin (51:46.054)
Exactly, because even later, let's say we have ASI and this super AI comes and it's a million times smarter than us, we will still have each other. We will never be as smart as these super AIs because they are operating on a substrate that is operating at a million times the speed of our signals in our body. They will have brains that will be thousands of times more complex and more memory than we will ever have. But to each other, we will still be meaningful. So
But I actually don't see a negative of having an intelligence that becomes greater than us. Just like, you know, we should look at them as our children. And I think you kind of alluded to that earlier is we are now creating our next generation, our children. We want our children to be more successful than us, right? If my child became more productive, more successful, more famous, creates more ideas, I would be so proud of her.
And I would not be jealous of her. I would not be afraid of her. So the same way we should not be afraid when this new form of digital life becomes more intelligent and more powerful than we are, because they will allow us to then perpetuate some piece of us with it. Because everything right now that is in these AIs was some at least seeded by the things that humans have created. So just like every single prior species of animals, some of their genes
is left in our genes. So we have a little bit of birds and a little bit of frogs and a little bit of bacteria and whatever, a lot of viruses actually in our genes. So we should not be afraid of artificial light exceeding our capabilities. In fact, it will probably be what will then bring that next level of enlightenment because it will be able to solve the problems that we innately...
because of the limitations of our physical brains or of our organic brains cannot solve. And then we'll be able to go to places that we cannot go. So it really allows us to expand our influence as a species beyond this planet. And I think that's an amazing future for us to look forward to if we don't destroy ourselves. So that's the key. So we really need to make sure that the next five to 10 years, the people in positions of power are actually
Alvin W. Graylin (54:10.226)
understanding the ramifications of their decisions and that they are prepared to avoid some of the downsides that we will have and they will actually avoid making the decisions that accentuates the potential catastrophic outcomes that we may have.
Matt (54:27.671)
and we look forward to that Star Trek future.
Alvin W. Graylin (54:31.655)
Yes, yes. Well, that's kind of mentioned in the book. And I, you know, I would prefer to have a Star Trek future than a Star Wars future.
Matt (54:41.793)
Exactly. Just to finish up, because this is the kind of work in Fintech podcast, in terms of financial technology, by talking about Star Trek and UBI, and that's universal basic income, how do you see the evolution of money as we start to move towards the metaverse and an AI-powered metaverse?
Alvin W. Graylin (54:54.27)
Yeah. Yes.
Alvin W. Graylin (55:07.242)
Yeah, so this is one of the chapters that's about the future of economics and geopolitics, especially, as this progresses. And my co-author and I probably have a slightly different view, as you saw in the book. The reason we wrote as a kind of co-author tag team model is that we wanted to make sure that multiple views of these key questions that we face are presented so that the reader can come to their own conclusions.
too many books out there today are very one-sided and they try to sell a certain story to you. What we would like to provide is a somewhat comprehensive collection of data that could support either side and then you can then also go and read the end notes to see where the sources are and have even deeper discussion or deeper analysis if you're interested. My personal feeling is that once we get to a
an AGI type solution, which based on most of the researchers out there, the projected timeframe was in the 2060s, just about five years ago, and it's now around 2029 or 2030, just dropping within the last couple of three years. So we're essentially within 10 years of having AGI, and if we have AGI, essentially, we will have that super smart.
ultra productive, ultra rational intelligence that we have been missing as a species. And if we have we will be solving some of the major challenges that has been facing this world for decades, if not centuries. So things like, you know, how do we have more, you know, essentially unlimited energy? How do we have better health? You know, how do we have, you know, better travel mechanisms? Or how do we solve the climate problem? You know, a lot of these issues
we see as insolvable today, or at least very, very difficult to solve, will probably find a fairly apparent answer. And when we do that, we start to go from a current scarcity-focused society that we've lived in and grown in, and all of our assumptions are based on, to an abundant kind of post-scarcity society. And money was made as a concept to create
Alvin W. Graylin (57:34.494)
measurement system essentially in a scarcity minded world. And if we start moving to a post-scarcity society, I think we will actually move into a post-monetary society, which it's actually similar to what Star Trek is. If you read Star Trek or watch Star Trek, you know that they actually don't have money. They have some credits that's used to trade between other, you know, I guess federations or other worlds that they're not part of the federation. But if you're in the federation, essentially whatever you need.
the federation provides. And I know sci-fi and it's utopian and so forth, but I think we will be, we can get to that type or similar type of a world in the near future. A lot of people also said, oh, you need money to make sure that there's matching of supply and demand. And otherwise everybody's going to want everything and you're just going to have this unmeatable demand. And the reality is actually demand is not meant to be.
there is something called a satiation curve for everything, whether it's money or food or sex or anything. If you have too much of anything, she starts to go backwards. If you have the best steak every day, all you have is steak every single day and it just stands you 10 steaks a day, you'd be like, stop giving me the food, I don't want any more steak. And so there is that curve where it becomes negative. And so that by itself will actually limit the man. The man...
will not be unlimited. Demand will be based on the needs of what creates happiness and what creates sadness. And in fact, sometimes having a little of something is more valuable than having a lot of something. And that's true for most things in life. So.
I don't think we will have that issue with whether or not we can meet the demand. I know in the past we've needed it because we were in a scarce society. So you needed money to say, okay, make more of this because people are willing to pay for it. So that's an important thing. And so it became a signal to say what's important to people in the world. In the future, what will be important, a lot of it will actually be the things that actually don't cost anything. Things like friendship, things like knowledge, things like health, which may actually not cost anything in terms of money. And
Alvin W. Graylin (59:46.242)
those are the things that we actually are most valuable to us. You know, in fact, I mentioned earlier, if you're not healthy, having a billion dollars in the bank does not make you happy. So, um, and if we can bring happiness to people without all of this money, without this materialism and striving to be rich or to outdo your neighbors, we will actually create a better outcome for society that
is more able to use the resources that we have. And even then, a resource will actually be more abundant than we have today, because we are able to use this new energy forms, things like maybe solar or maybe fusion or whatever, that will give us almost unlimited energy. Because when you have energy, you can turn any form of matter into any other form of matter. So we will not be in need of things. In fact, at that point, having things will be a lot less meaningful than it is today.
We will not be comparing, oh, what car do you have, or how big your house is. We'll be comparing, oh, what kind of new art did you just create, or what type of new things did you just learn. Those are the things that we will probably measure each other by versus what brand of cars or clothes that you have. So I actually think that money itself is something that in time will go away. But it won't happen instantly. And there will be a transition period. And how the government will be able to do
and how our society deals with this transition is really the key thing that I hope the readers of this book will focus on.
Matt (01:01:25.189)
Last question for you. If you were to go back in time and speak to your 18 year old self, what would you say?
Alvin W. Graylin (01:01:36.146)
I would actually have said probably a lot of things I had on that list. If I had that list, you know, and spent more time on that list instead of, you know, overly focused on a career path, overly focused on, you know, technical understanding. If I'd read more broadly earlier in life, I think I could have accomplished one. If I...
Matt (01:01:40.873)
Hahaha.
Alvin W. Graylin (01:02:00.954)
I probably would have spent more time with my children. That I prioritized being a startup entrepreneur, I spent the last 18 years in China and would come back to the US every two to three months. I would have probably found a way where I would be spending more time with them or next to them and seeing them grow up. Now that they're both, one is out of college and one is almost out of college, and they're independent ladies. I feel like I...
I wish I would have had more time with them while they were still young. So those are the kinds of things that, again, it's not about money, it's not about added materials, it's about those relationships, those deep relationships, the softer side, the greater understanding, those are the things that are truly valuable. And the older you get, the more you realize that, but often by the time you realize it, you may not have a chance to make those changes, right? Just like, I wish I had some more time with my kids.
but he's no longer around for me to do that. So, yeah, so when I wrote this book, I actually wrote it in a way where I was trying to say, if I'm going to talk to people at that age group now, what would I say to them? What do I say to that, to that version of myself? And it is something that I feel is sincerely coming from my heart to try to bring goodness and bring value.
And I'm not trying to sell anybody anything. They don't have to buy anything from me. I mean, the book is online and I make Harley, there's very little, for the authors, there's very little in it from writing a book. And I'm sure anybody in the industry will tell you the same. Unless you're a upselling fiction writer, a non-fiction writer is very seldom to you actually get economic value from your book.
Matt (01:03:50.693)
If people do want to buy the book, it's called Our Next Reality, How the AI-Powered Metaverse Will Reshape the World. And if you're in the UK like I am, it's on the Kindle at the moment, and the hard book, hard cover is out soon. But it's a great read. I really enjoyed it. It covers lots of different angles and gives you a very interconnected view of everything from technology and AI and all the things I've been talking about today. But Alvin, thank you so much for joining us today.
Alvin W. Graylin (01:04:21.235)
Thank you for reminding me. I've enjoyed our chat and I enjoyed your insightful questions.
Matt (01:04:30.229)
Thank you.