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Raffi Kryszek joins Digital Signage Today via video link to discuss the art and science of Proto holograms, predictions for the near future of the industry, and behind-the-scenes commentary on recent celebrity use of holograms including Chris Pratt, Jimmy Kimmel, and Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholtz.
Chris Pratt and Jimmy Kimmel stage a prank for Disney park visitors using Proto hologram technology. Image and video provided by Proto.
Raffi Kryszek is an Emmy Award winner and serves as principal hardware architect at Proto Hologram. He joined Digital Signage Today editor Daniel Brown via video link to share a behind-the-scenes perspective on holograms, recent adoption by global celebrities, the science of how the technology works and predictions for the future of the industry.
Already seeing adoption by celebrities, presenters, academic institutions, medical practitioners and more, Kryszek makes a strong case for viewing holograms not as a distant future development but as a growing, current reality, stepping to his in-home hologram unit for an impromptu demo session of various programs and use cases.
Coming from a background in Hollywood VFX, Kryszek also explains how he got involved in hologram innovation, why his team cares so passionately about their work and what he hopes holograms can do for humanity.
“We’re working towards a world that is visually engaging, visually meaningful, and we want to bring heart and humanity to the digital world wherever you may be, and that’s the future that we see at Proto,” Kryszek said. “We see a world not constrained by geographic boundary or connectivity — if you want to be someplace, we can make it happen, and with that will come magic.”
Special thanks to Proto for video clips, including an excerpt of the Chris Pratt prank segment on the Jimmy Kimmel program and the hologram appearance of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Interview edited for clarity and length. Full transcript available below.
Interview Transcript
Raffi Kryszek:So my name is Raffi Kryszek. I’m the principal hardware architect, head of innovation at Proto started about a year and a half, almost two years ago and kind of charged with evolving the hardware, deeper integration with a really sophisticated software stack that we’re really excited about, kind of innovating, pushing the attack, whether that means miniaturization, different form factors, different footprints, and just overall improving the experience. I come from an entertainment background, and particularly post production, visual effects. And with some kind of deep experience in engineering, hardware, anything from automated retail to kind of entertainment specific hardware implementations for studios, things like that. And it all just kind of came together. When I met David and the team, and they asked me to create something special for them.
Daniel Brown:So were you part of the team, we chatted with David, that design, there’s a special way that you make it basically live transmission, but there’s so much data, he said, you kind of have to do this special compression algorithm or something.
Kryszek:Yeah, that’s right. So, you know, we have a few governing principles behind everything that we do. And that kind of drives our engineering and design. One of them is simplicity, we don’t have a lot of different cameras for our holographic capture, right? Like some people do, we have one camera, but a lot of processing, right. So what that requires us to do to keep the latency down, is compress it, stream it to the cloud, and do what’s essentially like a intelligent content delivery system, designed specifically for our type of media. And then it transmits it to the devices and decodes on device. So you have this kind of complex dance of compression locally, streaming efficiently, spinning up nodes, wherever geographically, it makes sense, depending on the destination, then receiving them in the boxes and decoding them. It’s pretty wild. If you think about all of the steps.
Brown:I think they said the statistically 800 million people got the internet in the last two years that on planet Earth, they never had connection. So are you building a future where I could beam myself anywhere around the world? Basically?
Kryszek:That’s exactly right. I mean, internet is becoming, you know, a, a, almost a human right, dare I say, the ability to connect with other people, right? So think of things Advents like Starlink, where now we’re able to bring connectivity to places that never had it before. So what does that mean? That means let’s, let’s kind of embrace that and understand that with that communication will change. And why restrict ourselves to either telephonic text, or 2d, like what we’re having now, let’s, let’s jump on top of that. Increasing connectivity and bringing people together holographically, the no real sort of what I like to call a real present sort of way.
Brown:Is there a future where instead of working in my home office, which is super cool, don’t get me wrong, I love my Dell multifunction monitor of super great. I could have 3d hologram zoom meetings, if you will, as a normal course.
Kryszek:Absolutely. So and there are a couple of ways to utilize it, right. So it’s just to see people, that feeling of presence, the non linguistic cues that you just miss out from this kind of chest up two dimensional view, that it’s also a great collaboration tool, or let’s say that we’re communicating, but we’re discussing something like an architectural plan, a special effect, a character design, something that would lend itself to volumetric visualization, we can now use our desktop unit as kind of a visual aid, fly around that object or engineer that widget or that handbag or that shoe. And let’s see what it looks like in 3d space.
Brown:So would you say that your experience, my sense is that you kind of work in Hollywood in this capacity, right, with visual effects? Is that Is that fair? Would this shape did this shape you to where you can help proactively design a system that can handle this workload?
Kryszek:That’s exactly right. So I come from an environment where kind of virtual visualization is kind of second nature, right? Whether that’s it, whether or not that’s fun, and a fact, or four, you know, planning a sequence virtually or building a set virtually. It makes sense to me already. Right? So now how can we elevate the experience, bring it to more people and make it usable in a new way in a new visual way on your desktop, or in a large device?
Brown:Well, I think that was one of the big questions. When we first talked to David about this, this new invention. This was before even the Canadian patent came through.
David Nussbaum: Very loyal. We call ourselves Protopeans – Proto, Protopeans. Because we really are a family, we believe in each other. And no, this company doesn’t exist without every single one of them. The engineers, the operators, the producers behind the camera people, it is truly because of them that that guitar over my shoulder looks like it’s floating inside that box.
Brown:A lot of this was hypothetical, and people would say, we just saw this amazing thing with Guardians of the Galaxy. A wonderful prank. I laughed out loud, Chris Pratt, you know pranking people.
Kryszek:Oh, yeah.
Chris Pratt:Do you have any questions for me?
Audience Member:What’s your favorite ride?
Pratt:Do you have any questions for me?
Audience Member:Yes. What is your favorite ride?
Pratt:Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Breakout.
Audience Member:That is also my favorite.
Pratt:I am powered by a quantum computing AI technology. I know everything about you, Jen.
Audience Member:Oh, do you? What do you know about me?
Pratt:I know that you just left Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission breakout.
Audience Member:That was a given that was
Pratt:Have you ever seen Terminator 2?
Audience Member:Yeah, yes, actually.
Pratt:Skynet is real.
Audience Member:(Laughter) This is so great.
Pratt:Laugh now.
Brown:It’s super cool. And I think a lot of people still have maybe a misconception. Okay, sure. This is a prototype. This is 20 years down the road. There’s no way I could afford this in my basement or whatever. But it sounds like this is actually coming into a consumer grade product. Now. Is that fair?
Kryszek:Yeah. So I would say that our primary use cases, our product categories right now are more enterprise driven. Right? That’s on the count of the initial use cases and price point. But there is a world in the next Dare I say 24 or 48 months where pricing comes down. The software is developed in such a way that it is accessible within reach of a consumer market. We’re not there yet, but we’re working towards it. In terms of practical application, we’re working towards that because it is being used practically. Yeah. You see the stunts on the Jimmy Kimmel, you know, our first kind of foray into late night, which is super cool. But we’re doing really game changing industrial magical stuff from digital signage, retail is the no brainer. But Siemens for instance, recently used it in Germany as a design collaboration tool. Right. So they have engineers in different parts of the planet working together to assemble a battery. You know, I think I think the press I think it was like two weeks ago, a week ago or something like that Olaf Scholz like appeared
Olaf Scholz:(Speaks in German).
Kryszek:The Chancellor of Germany appeared in their in their Proto, right? And that got the press like, you know, world leader beams in holographically. But I think that’s cool. Don’t get me wrong, that was really cool. But what I love is a practical application. They’re using it as a tool. And that kind of brings, bridges the gap from novelty to functionality. Awesome.
Brown:I love that. And one thing that I’m curious about does this mean things like okay, you can have therapy sessions remotely, you can have mental health care for folks that are isolated, all these are even surgery. Can you do remote surgery someday?
Kryszek:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, remote surgery is done on the daily with dementia devices right now. Right? So now it’s about how do you bolster the visuals? Right now they do goggles, right? But is there a world where you just have a holographic display in front of you and you’re not constricting yourself? It’s kind of one of our governing principles is no wearables to make the experience work. It is being used for, in medical applications right now. You know, there are certain diagnostics that you need kind of more, more fidelity, more depth of volumetric approach to assess someone’s gait, their limited range of motion, things like that, that you don’t get through normal means of communication. So these are things being utilized right now. And I, you know, I think you’ve been with us for many years now. And you’ve kind of seen the evolution and we’re really reaching a critical mass here of utility.
Brown:This is incredible. One reason I was so excited to talk to you. You have the knowledge, the technical knowledge, you’re an applied scientist, I like even better than the term engineer you an applied scientist. So ChatGPT, AI – all this happened after I talked to David, and I’m curious, how does it impact you? What do you see in your work as a result?
Kryszek:Yeah, I’m glad you asked that because we recently announced our first implementation of large language model. Artificial Intelligence in our system. So this is how we see it. You know, so many people are familiar with conversational AI like ChatGPT, and a number of other LLMs out there. Well, what does an engagement look like without right now? It’s, it’s amazing you type, right? You type, you know, make me a poem, or whatever the plethora of prompts that you can input, right? Well, we’re a visual computing platform. So how do we take that to the next level? Well, what we’re doing first step is personifying the AI. Right? Let’s make a thing, an individual and ego that you can interact with. So now we have an avatar, that we’re almost ready to show up probably within this month that I want to say, our tests are really wild, really crazy. But now we’re putting a face a body a holographic, individual to ChatGPT. And what does what does that mean? That means that we can create a product evangelist, a product specialist that someone can engage face to face, have a conversation with? How do I join this to my iCloud account? What are the best shoes for running a marathon? You know, we can build in that expertise into a humanoid avatar, without having to program them because they’re using AI. We can, we’ll be creating virtual artificial, intelligent conversational characters. So imagine your famous, your favorite animated character or movie character, coming to life in a way that you can ask it about it, and it just knows because of the deep canon associated with the film franchise, you know, so we’re, we’re doing really, really cool stuff.
Brown:That’s amazing. So does this also mean I’m thinking about customer service, right? I’m thinking about front end of stores. I’m also imagining I used to work in it, of course. And as a consumer, I’ve tried to use the phone lines for help. It’s been a horrible nightmare. Sometimes, it sounds like this is going to revolutionize – I feel like I’ve got a person there with me, but they have infinite knowledge, and they’re gonna get the answer for me with my technical issue or what have you.
Kryszek:That’s exactly right. So imagine, Geek Squad without the humans, right? You can engage with a person whether you’re little Timmy then wants to get their phone working or Gramma that doesn’t know how to check their email. Now it’s it’s done conversationally, it’s done naturally. And I think that’s the key behind all of this AI: It’s intuitive to use.
Brown:On a technical level, how do you not just engineering accomplish this? But how do you mind privacy, safety, security, and make sure it doesn’t start cussing someone out? You know, all these different things.
Kryszek:Yeah, it’s a, it’s a good question. And, frankly, a moving target that’s evolving daily in the world of large language models, AI. You know, the trust and safety provisions are a little different for implementation, and the requirements of the customer. But we have tool sets at our disposal. Anything from prompt engineering, to restricting the corpus of data from which the AI references and, you know, chat prompt and chat engineering, circumvention of trust, and safety is a thing right now. And we have to be aware of it. And as good as we get at combating it, nefarious actors will probably try to overcome it. But all we can do is is try to stay ahead and and hope for the better angels amongst users from time to time.
Brown:That’s kind of like I think if you look at the history, people do diagrams of technology, and there’s little dips, where somebody does something bad. And then there’s a huge rise and there’s a dip, then there’s a huge rise. But overall, there’s this progress is what I’m hearing.
Kryszek:That’s what I believe that’s what I’m hoping for, you know, it is a new technology. And I like to I like to think that it’s going to evolve for the better and not for the worst. Good, not evil.
Brown:Right? See no evil.
Kryszek:See, yeah, we don’t want evil holograms everywhere.
Brown:So I’m curious. On the puzzle level, you’re a puzzle solver. Right? You and your team. I’m curious without giving away trade secrets. What’s one of the things that you accomplish with your team that you’re most proud of where you’re like, I can hang my head on this, like I did that?
Kryszek:Oh, that’s easy. What, what, what I think I’m most proud of is the creation of its first first of its kind, holographic operating system. So as opposed to like, one piece of hardware, which I’m very proud of with a display tech and then you know, connecting computer and driving content to it in a specific way. We’ve developed an ecosystem much in the way that iCloud Is to Apple or the Android ecosystem is to Chrome. We’ve created an operating system ubiquitous across all of our hardware that is tailor made for holographic experiences, whether that’s five communication, playback of pre recorded content on the schedule, like in a digital signage application. And now, we’re going to be launching our app store to, we’ve really come full circle in creating the system, the hardware, creating an ecosystem around it. And soon we’re going to unleash it to the world of developers to utilize a tool sets we’ve worked so hard to create, in ways that we couldn’t even imagine.
Brown:So I’ve got tons of friends that work in education, right? And one of the hardest parts of education is the repetitiveness and I’m just so curious, can I start working on my French and German? Could I take math lessons? Could I get infinite tutoring from this personable avatar character? And suddenly, that frees up all these other people for the hard teaching stuff?
Kryszek:That’s absolutely right. I mean, we see that as an application, not only for the AI, but also for the devices in general for the live communication, right. So obviously, an AI with baseline understanding and educating in law, in a language can interact in a conversational way. But also above that. And in the same device, by the way, you could have an expert in a field located in London and educate you in Los Angeles. And I think in real time volumetrically with a real sense of presence that’s missing from like a video chat. And I think that’s a special, that’s the special kind of magic of the toolset. It’s everything all in one. And it brings things you know, to your doorstep that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.
Brown:This is amazing. So I’m curious if this has come to fruition, because there was talk about this, have you guys measured and you’re not the only company doing this, there’s a lot of people interested, the impact of the hologram revolution on carbon climate change, less air travel.
Kryszek:That’s right. So because it is seen more as a replacement for being present. People can feel the presence without traveling there. And like you said, with that comes, you know, an impact to the environment, especially if it requires air travel, especially if it requires road travel, all of these things to get, if you think about the butterfly effect on the environment of me going to London, there’s a lot of stuff that happens. And it’s not so great for the environment, if I can achieve the same net effect of presence, without actually going through all of those steps. What an unbelievable benefit to the environment.
Brown:That’s incredible. And of course, as a movie night, I just discovered there’s a wonderful independent film in Spain, there’s this horror tradition. So I’m watching all these movies with the subtitles. And I’m also curious as a gamer, and people are very excited about the last of this, right. So you’ve got video gaming is even bigger than Hollywood, and they’re working together. How does this invention this hologram revolution affects that entertainment sector?
Kryszek:Right. So a lot of entertainment over the years has kind of followed the visual medium, right? Start from board games, to video games, video games only possible with television, high resolution video games, only available with 4K and high processing capability devices, right? So now we’ve devised a new visual medium, a volumetric one that can be community experience. It’s different than virtual reality. It’s different than augmented reality. It’s its own category. And you know, as I mentioned, the App Store, you know, we’re focused on creating a tool set platform and environment for people to create all sorts of things. So as we reach out to the developer community gaming we imagined to be right there, one of the first case uses to be explored. I mean, at the end of the day, it’s a device that’s a touchscreen and it’s, you know, has Bluetooth Wi Fi capability. So, people the way people interact with it will change and evolve, but fundamentally having that depth inside of the box, it’s just it’s going to be special for gamers.
Brown:So I’m curious maybe you can dumbed down the science for me because you understand it way better than I ever will. What is being done with this device? That is so unique? How the hell pardon my French do you create this three dimensionality? And is this another step towards you know, I remember as a little boy watching Star Wars and you’ve got Princess Leia, right. Are we moving towards that?
Kryszek:“Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” That’s right. I hear that a lot. I hear that a lot. Um, yeah, you know it is. So right now we’re kind of constrained to the box. Why is that? So? You know, when I, when we I mentioned earlier a governing principles, one of our bamboo governing principles is no wearables and communal experience. So if you look at some of the competing technologies out there, obviously virtual reality and metaverse tech, you’re living in the goggles and the world around you, right. So you can’t experience it with somebody, unless they’re also in the same virtual environment. Same with, you know, the cumbersome kind of nature of the goggles, we wanted something different and not knocking, it just we wanted something different. Some of the other hologram tech relies on eye tracking. So what that means is, it creates a great experience for the individual, but it can only track one person at a time. So the moment you have two people standing, the experience, as long as it looks like kind of a blurry piece of content on a display. So we needed to have no wearable, we needed to be a communal experience, we needed to be streamlined. So with that, what’s resulted is kind of what we call negative sea volume. So if you can think of the box, all of our volumetric content exists inside the box, they tell you to think outside the box, but we’re thinking inside the box. And what that does is just increases the flexibility. So the kind of natural progression and attack to get to that Star Wars moment is, how do we remove the actual proscenium of the metal frame, and have that in depth behind, you know, a piece of crystal or glass and that’s kind of what we’re working towards. It’s, we have some cool stuff in the lab not ready to show yet. But I’m cooking.
Brown: I love it. I love, your cooking. Well, you better keep us up to date as you invent things and release them. I want to hear about it. You know, I was a big I loved reading as a kid, the Isaac Asimov novels where he talked about some of this stuff, okay. And in my head, I’ve always thought I can’t wait. Maybe I’ll be 90 years old, but I can’t wait for there to be not just volumetric appearance, it’s it’s haptic, you know, you can touch the object. Are we getting close to that future as well?
Kryszek:I would love to, you know, and it’s not so far fetched, because we have displays with haptic feedback already. Right? Think of the Apple Watch. Right? You push on your Apple Watch, and you get the feedback. So obviously, the tech remains pretty small at the moment. But that’s not to say that we’re not bench testing it in larger form factors, right. So it’s just a matter of scale and evolution. And on the touchscreen, you’ll be able to get tactile feedback of that 3d model that you’re manipulating. And it’s going to be incredible.
Brown:That’s amazing. Well, and I’m so curious, and I want to be respectful of your time. So I’ll try to compressify a couple of questions.
Kryszek:And I can show you some things on the M, too.
Brown:Oh, I hope so, that would be amazing. I guess the biggest question I have, and I’d love to see a demo to where do you think this is going to affect our friends in the digital signage and marketing industry? Whether it’s billboards, retail stores, you name it, like, are those folks going to be taken care of as well?
Kryszek:Yeah, I mean, obviously, it’s a it’s a huge use case for us. And kind of like the the first, kind of, how should I put it? The most, one of the most obvious use cases, we’re deploying right? Now, let’s say h&m is a great example. Right? So H&M is utilizing our devices as essentially a digital mannequin replacement, but so much more. It’s, it’s, it’s alive. The mannequins are alive, they can show the garments, and they can centrally manage them. So redressing a store window is a matter of programming it in the computer. So the the the trick that I tell the sales team a lot is that it’s about educating about possibility, you know, digital signage, is kind of, you know, your typical to the screen in a space that you push content to, it’s often repurpose content from, you know, print, or maybe it’s a repurposed video spot, something like that. And now it’s about educating into a whole new medium, getting ad agencies on board with understanding what it means visually, it’s a little bit challenging to demonstrate without actually seeing you in person. Right. So but we’re really excited about some large out of home display implementations that we’re doing in major retail around the world. So each of them being kind of a small sampling. Yeah,
Brown:Well, I’m imagining in my head going to the mall, and however long it takes, and oh, those shoes look cool, but what if they’re not in my size? What would they look like in blue? I like blue better. Oh, wait, I can actually see in front of me This is what it would look like.
Kryszek:I’m very excited to be able to show that to you. It’s something that we’re working on with a major retailer. That’s not been announced yet. It’s not public. But it’s essentially just that, and not just with shoes, and it’s going to be wild. That’s so cool.
Brown:It reminds me of working at a mall many years ago, and one of the horrible headaches is the returns, people return so much. And that’s not good for the environment. It’s not good for the company, it affects bottom line, do you think this will have a measurable impact on that area of retail?
Kryszek:Yeah, so why do people in terms of returns, why do people return there’s, it’s not as they expected, it doesn’t fit. Right. So visualizing something with our devices is going to be come an invaluable tool. When I say visualizing, I mean, our ability to visualize, let’s say, a material change in the same SKU, I want the shoe is in patent leather instead of, you know, plastic, whatever the case may be, there’ll be able to visualize that in a meaningful way right there on the device and be able to lend that to a purchasing decision. Next step, is something that we’re working on that’s not ready yet very complex, more complex that than you might imagine, is a virtual triumph. So now imagine our holographic device is essentially a holographic mirror. That is to say, you stand in front of it, you select a garment, and it does a scan of your body. And it lets you visualize holographically in front of you, you in that garment, life sized. In the epic, it would be life size, and they would be smaller. Right? So this is this is roadmap, definitely something we’re working on. And part of the challenge is that it requires deep collaboration with the brands, especially from the production side of the brands to be able to replicate elasticity, pucker, draping of material. And we’re excited to bring AI into the mix of that, too. So it’s all towards the value proposition. Like you said before the brands have minimized returns. Let’s get them satisfied from onset, as opposed to later on. And so we’re excited to work on that.
Brown:Well, as a tech nerd, I hope you don’t mind. Do you have like two minutes? Just to show us real quick, a couple of things on this device I’ve been?
Kryszek:Yeah, absolutely. What kind of things? Can we show you? Let’s see. This is an art piece. Right? It’s kind of and this is coming through? Okay. Sometimes it’s Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s beautiful. Yeah. Okay, great. So this is key, you know, we’re, we have such a sense of presence, that we have performers doing stand up comedy. They can interact with the audience, it’s real time, and the audience feel like they’re there. It’s really wild. It’s a product visualization, you know? And this is all is this 4K, the smaller devices 1080. And the large device is 4K, and the resolution adjusts dynamically. So imagine this in the app packet, but it’s the entire storefront window. Right. So this this, this is right there.
Brown:And this is where I think we covered they did a fitness classes of some kind as well through this.
Kryszek:Yeah, I think this was in Williamsburg store. Right? And then they’re going to be launching other initiatives. It was very successful and very popular for them. You know, what’s cool also about this is this device will go landscape. So for certain pieces of content that lend themselves to landscape visualization, you have that flexibility with a smaller device. Wow.
Brown:Now help me understand because in my in my tiny brain, I keep thinking about traditional LED, think about pixels, what is happening in this box that makes it so unique and volumetric like that.
Kryszek:So it’s a combination of the directionality of the light on the inside, and the lensing on the cover glass, and the transparency of the custom built LCD panel. So it’s kind of a orchestration of a lot of things happening at once. That kind of give you the effect. Yeah.
Brown:So how long will it be before this becomes like every family has a TV in the house, every family is going to have some form of hologram in the house?
Kryszek:It’s hard to say how long to put a timeline on it. But, you know, we expect consumer adoption to be within the next, you know, 24 to 48 months. So with that said, with that said, it’s gonna, we think, expand like wildfire, you know, especially as their more tool sets more of an app ecosystem, more developers coming up with things that we haven’t even thought of yet. Right. Like, I think it would be silly for us to think that we could think of every use case for this type of display tech, which is why we want to open it up to the developer community much like, iPhone.
Brown:It’s interesting, because it’s so novel, and there’s so many potential applications. I almost don’t know what questions to ask because it’s so futuristic.
Kryszek:You know, frankly, that’s kind of our biggest problem, right? Because, let’s, let’s imagine, for a minute, the customer interaction, every customer has a different use case. And we tailor the conversation to them, because it accommodates so many use cases.
Brown:We’ve seen some interesting conversations. And there’s some interesting players in this field, talking about eldercare, and whether it’s loneliness, which is a huge problem. And we’re about to see a huge influx in the older population that needs care, but also in terms of dementia, and Alzheimer’s and so forth. Do you think this is also an application for the technology?
Kryszek:Yeah, absolutely. So I don’t know if you can see it, because we have a camera in here. So it’s, you know, for people that can’t be with their loved ones, they feel like their loved ones are with them. And that is priceless. We’re seeing some really interesting early applications. We were talking about health care before. And, and auto autism, you know, interacting with autistic children in a visual way, through animated characters or, you know, something highly stylized, has had a very positive impact that they’re kind of researching now. And it’s communicative. Right? It’s real time you can engage with them in a conversation.
Brown:Now, now, is this just used to create loneliness? Or is it may be a social behavioral training cool as well? Education?
Kryszek:Exactly right. Exactly. Behavioral behavioral training, exposure, desensitization, that sort of thing.
Brown:That’s power-. Oh, is that is that Howie Mandel? Yeah. Yeah. And he’s an investor, right, as well as promoting it?
Kryszek:He’s an investor, advisor, and, he just loves using the thing.
Brown:How long until this 3D, true 3D, becomes the standard for television or movies? Or do you think that’ll never happen, 2D’s always gonna have a place?
Kryszek:No, I think it’ll have a place especially when we’re talking about the feeling of presence again, I know I keep coming back to it. But it’s such an underlying principle. You know, when we say telepresence is not presence, presence is more than visual, it’s a feeling, and when Howie does stand up, it’s different when you’re in the audience, versus watching it on TV. And if that meaning is shared amongst others, as they’re exposed to tech, which I believe it will be, it’ll, it’ll be pretty quick when these are in the living room. You know, there will be content creation enterprises built around bringing performers into that space, right there. Whether it’s large form factor or small form factor on your counter. So I think that that’s going to happen pretty quick with the consumer adoption.
Brown:It makes me wonder, and I think Howie Mandel might have mentioned this on the Joe Rogan program, talking about this, but helping artists, writers, speakers, make a better living by being in more than one place at once. Without having to travel could be.
Kryszek:Yep, yep. Because, you know, travel is expensive, and the environmental impact, or if you’re, how, you just don’t want to be around people. And, and so, you know, it’s, it’s like, I mean, it sounds cliche, but how did the printing press improve education in the world, while it now it was easy to get a book, if it’s easy for an educator, to be present with you, to educate you, and to entertain you and to make you feel something, then people will learn more, feel more and be better for it? And that’s what we hope to be a small part of.
Brown:Well, it feels to me that you’re trying to invent a better world with technology and I’m curious if just as as an expert in the field who works in technology so deep, what would you say to the negative naysayers and it’s very popular to publish, you know, in certain publications, these negative doomsday – ‘AI, 3D, it’s all scary. It’s all bad. It’s going to take all our jobs.’ How do you respond to that kind of negative narrative, if you will?
Kryszek:You I think that kind of speaking to what I mentioned earlier, we have, we operate under a core belief that, in general, in aggregate, people are good. The things that they strive to achieve are good. So let’s give them tool says to do good, even if there’s a small chance, evil will be done. You’re an Asimov fan, right? You gotta teach the robot to not harm humans. So
Brown:That always drove me crazy about the movie, because the book is the most optimistic robotics book you could ever read. It’s so optimistic and the movie is all scary.
Kryszek:That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. So, you know, this, we have to operate under some assumption of positivity, you know, and with any of these things, whether it’s AI or deep fakes, or whatever the case might be, we’ll have to manage it, regulate it. But understand that we’re doing all of this for the greater good with the greater good in mind. And we can’t live in fear and stifle innovation, because of that fear.
Brown:Would you have any advice to offer whether it’s the politicians who are up in arms, whether it’s the civilians trying to lobby, like, how do we wisely regulate this exploding new field?
Kryszek:Cool. Now we’re getting into an interesting topic. I think that the biggest problem with our regulators is unwilling an unwillingness to learn about that which they are regulated. I mean, think about every time Zuckerberg testifies before Congress. And you know, our lawmakers are asking him, if Facebook is free, how does it make money? You know, there’s just there’s just a baseline understanding that you have to have and you have to keep up with I mean, AI. In general, I don’t think anybody’s equipped to regulate that right now. Because it’s evolving so fast. You know, it’s hard to keep up with. So my advice to anybody, before you jump to a conclusion, whether you’re correct or not, is engage in a deep exercise of learning of understanding. And only then can you really understand what you’re regulating?
Brown:If we put on your futurist cap for a moment, I’m curious, what are you most excited and optimistic about with all this new technology? What are you excited to see and use and have in your life?
Kryszek:I’m most excited today, it was what I was most excited about, actually, 10 years ago, when I really started thinking about this stuff. It is access to information, right? Access to information, it’s not that it’s commoditized. But it’ll become so. So simple, so So, so kind of accessible to everyone, whether it’s reading a website on your phone, or having a generative conversation with an AI. Now, it’s about how humans will evolve into into utilizing information as opposed to the exercise of seeking information. Right? What is it going to do to the knowledge workforce? If knowledge is accessible to all? It’s, it’s, it’s going to mark evolution of humanity that we can’t even think about right now. We don’t even know what it’s going to be. But I’m excited for it. We’ll see.
Brown:I love that you remind me of so many wonderful – Walter Isaacson’s verdict on these questions. 10 years ago, and the innovators, which is still my favorite history of computing, highly recommend it to everyone. But we also talked to Dr. Micah Shippee. Recently, and he, he spoke of the same questions and he said, Look, I use Google Maps to drive to the grocery store, and that enhances my life. Let’s, let’s expand that to as he would say, knowledge work, you now have a power tool for knowledge work, it doesn’t take you out of the equation, it makes it more useful and efficient, if you will.
Kryszek:Right. Exactly. I think it’s a, I think it’s I think it’s fairly pessimistic to say that all of these tool sets will eliminate people from the equation, I think it will just make people more productive and free them for new innovations that haven’t even been devised yet. You know, if you’re spending, if you’re an expert in a field or passionate about a field, and you are now able to reduce the physical work to do that, then it frees you up to do other amazing things that we can’t even think of the more innovation to come.
Brown:I love that. And I’ll tell you, that’s such a great way to kind of close the whole view of this exciting new technology. I’m curious we have a lot of readers who maybe aren’t super technical, they’re not as into the technology. We got business people you name it, all ages.
Kryszek:Sure.
Brown:What would be your big Is there anything you want to share a burning message for the ages, if you will, your summary of the whole issue that you just want? If you take one thing away, what would it be?
Kryszek:My big takeaway? That’s a very loaded question. There’s so much that I can scripted into constrain it into, like a soundbite. You know, we’re working towards a world that is visually engaging, visually meaningful, and we want to bring heart and humanity to the digital world world, wherever you may be. And that’s the future that we see at Proto. We see a world not constrained by geographic boundary, or connectivity. If you want to be someplace we can make it happen. And with that, we’ll come magic.
Brown:I couldn’t phrase anything more beautifully. Well said. Thank you.
Video Credits
Guest:
- Raffi Kryszek, principal hardware architect at Proto.
Interviewer, video production:
- Daniel Brown, editor, Digital Signage Today.
Interview recording courtesy of Networld Media Group/Daniel Brown/COMPANY.
Video clips of Chris Pratt and Olaf Scholz hologram appearances provided by Proto.
Created with tender loving care and Adobe Premiere.
Transcript created with help from Otter.ai and checked by editor for accuracy and readability.
©2023 Networld Media Group. All rights reserved.
Daniel Brown is the editor of Digital Signage Today. He is an accomplished technology writer whose experience includes creating knowledge base content for a major university’s computing services department. His previous experience also includes IT project management, technical support and education. He can usually be found in a coffee shop near a large pile of books.
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