Spatial AI, maps, and cameras.

Southbay LA
Joined June 2007
Bart Denny retweeted
I think many knowledge workers who spend an hour with Cowork will get that "Claude Code" moment that has been roiling X for the past few weeks.
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1️⃣ The AI Map Era is here. Google Earth AI launch this week brings AI Map Assistants to prominence. The launch finally exposes the foundational layers that powered Google Maps for years — data built during the Ground Truth era, but that users could never directly access.
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4️⃣ Not only can Chat to Map reason across your project data, and instantly visualize what matters, it also helps out in getting real work done. eg we help environmental consultants train their AI to help create Phase I ESAs, CEQA reviews, or project bids.
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5️⃣And unlike the public platforms, you keep ownership. Your AI can run on your own data, your servers, building your own models. If you own the data, you should own the map — and the intelligence that emerges from it.
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Even truer today... so much going on with Map AIs and assistants.
Replying to @jetscott
It’s just becoming clear how completely AI will subsume AR. Spatially-aware AI understands the world, and can put digital content on top of that world.
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Bart Denny retweeted
Turning daily life into an AR game with the new Snap @Spectacles & @sidequest
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New paper on lifelike 3D avatars running in real-time right on your phone! Qualcomm’s new tech uses a breakthrough method of 3D Gaussian Splatting to make virtual humans more realistic. Best part? My son recently joined this team! qualcomm.com/developer/blog/…
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This theory makes sense to me… esp if rumors of Apple glasses, like meta Raybans but with a display, come to fruition in 2025. Will seed a camera-app ecosystem
Is Apple’s new iPhone button a trojan horse? Here’s @om’s take.
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Let’s go!
I sat down for an extended interview with cofounders @4TristanS @bennbuilds to talk in depth about @reflectorbital If you're building for new space, in high school/college, or trying to figure out what to build, you should watch this!
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VisionOS devs, some huge news here:
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I briefly thought you can upload a podcast mp3 to ChatGPT 4o and the start asking questions about it, all on mobile, ready in less than a minute. Realized quickly it hallucinated its ability to do that (surely possible soon though).
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Huge news for anyone working in tech in the US. Noncompetes are now banned: not just in California (like before), but nationwide. Very, very relevant for anyone at Amazon (which is the Big Tech that has enforced noncompetes even for low-level engineering positions).
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Bart Denny retweeted
If some company, startup or group wanted to disrupt Apple, Meta and Microsoft, same as how they all once disrupted prior giants, and become the new giant themselves. While this will be very ‘hard’ to do, the path to do so I think is clear. A decade ago there wasn’t even a conceivable path to me, but today, I see a path. What you do, get the right mix of XR devs. Both higher-level 3D game dev types but more importantly lower-level devs at the OS and graphics level. Get the right mix of some XR designers. Then get them all the current greatest XR tech. Quest, Beyond, AVP whatever. Then have everyone move out to rather remote locations and work remotely. It’s important they actually live rather remotely, away from any big distracting population in the real world. Not completely isolated, but far enough out that the lack of daily interaction with others, and having people around, and seeing people daily would be a little bit of a bother. The one and only objective is, build the foundations for a spatial telepresence collaborative OS. No zoom. No video calls. No voice calls. Just GitHub and Slack. If you want to experience human interaction with your coworkers, or other (as it could be developed all in the open), then you have to build it. Every day iterating on what exactly can make such a platform effective at truly creating the sense of presence of another. Iterating at how can you get more value from this virtual social space. Then fast forward probably 5 years at least, you’d have a solid basis of some platform which can effectively create a collaborative, spatial, social foundation to enable an all virtual company to feel connected and effectively work together. If you pull this off right, you have the most valuable thing in computing. Even over AI. A virtual environment which can truly make obsolete the need for physical presence is evolutionary. It would completely change the nature of work and cities and living. Not just an iterative step, but a deep fundamental change. You wouldn’t recognize the world after making the need for geographical co-location unnecessary for all knowledge work. It’d completely disrupt Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, all prior screen based social mediums. It would become as central to society as the automobile, if not more so. The big players, pretty much anyone entrenched in prior tech success, they won’t be able to pull this off right because they aren’t incentivized to. People tend to work to just solve their own problems. Deconstruct what anyone is doing and it will rest on some problem which afflicts them. What this means, if human social connection and interaction is not a problem in your daily lived life, then at a deep instinctual level it’s not something you’re going to be tuned into in order to solve effectively. Your deepest instincts will be attuned to solving what your real problem is that actually afflicts your daily life. This is the importance of the living rather remotely, and a bit more on the isolated side. Lack of human connection and daily human interaction in the real world needs to be a problem. Enough of a problem that it triggers something deep in your psyche to fix it. Then you route all of that instinct into building this VR OS and platform which can. No one is going to do this as needed just because it could make a lot of money or it’s a good idea. It needs to be a daily lived and experienced problem those working on it are trying to overcome. As I type this I am starting to wonder if maybe that is the root of the hangup with Big Tech and executing on VR software effectively. They hire so many well-adapted successful sociable people probably with families and decent social lives in the real world. For such a demographic daily social interaction and human connection is not an issue, such a group can’t carry adequate incentivization at a deep instinctual level to commit their full brain to solving such a problem.
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Fantastic @stratechery interview with @hbarra touching on early mobile and diving deep into Apple Vision Pro, VR’s magic of teleportation, and even mention of Gaussian Splats. – at Los Angeles, CA
Absolutely loved this interview with legend and friend @hbarra . He’s seen so much of the tech era and has a ton of perspective and insight. And @benthompson is one of very few interviewers who understands the space and history deeply enough to ask all the really interesting - and sometimes “sensitive” - questions about strategy, business models and choices made that you really want to know. spotify.link/ywHcItbcmIb
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Sharing a bit more about Reflect Orbital today. @4TristanS and I are developing a constellation of revolutionary satellites to sell sunlight to thousands of solar farms after dark. We think sunlight is the new oil and space is ready to support energy infrastructure. This airborne test was the last piece needed before we launch above the atmosphere. 🧵🧵(1/6)
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Bart Denny retweeted
Hugo Barra, who was the Head of Oculus from 2017 to 2020 & lifelong VR enthusiast, makes the argument in his essay about the Vision Pro and how it compares with Meta’s Quest devices, & other headsets that are available on the market. Highly recommended. buff.ly/3IDDHMp
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