aying under $100 per month. check coveredca.com to see your new lower price. covered california, this way to health insurance. enroll by december 31st. this week on "press here," robots roaming the halls of hospitals. computers take on some of the work making your favorite tv shows, and what exactly is the metaverse. a look at the future this week on "press: here." good morning, everyone, i'm scott mcgrew. i have a fear as i get older i'll pooh-pooh some kind of silicon valley valley invention not because it's dumb, but because i'm too old and set in

ways to appreciate its value. the way travel agents probably rolled their eyes at expedia during the dotcom boom. it's natural, right. you just start rejecting things at some point in your life, you stick with what you know, even if it makes you wrong. i try to keep my mind open, particularly working in silicon valley. it's been difficult, though, there have been challenges like nfts, digital photographs that are infinitely copyable selling for millions of dollars. i don't totally get those. or mark zuckerberg's metaverse, so important he says he renamed the company. but metaverse seems like a rebranding of virtual reality to me, and virtual reality, while cool, has never really caught on. with that in mind, i wanted to bring in jacob navoke to bounce some ideas off of. his company makes next generation video games that are part video game, part reality, and very forward thinking. jacob, i know you've also got a new pac-man out and i want to ask you about that.

because 1980s, i can get behind. let's talk about that at the end of our conversation. but talk to me about this idea of the metaverse. it's something that you're involved with that i'm not totally sold on it. can you explain to me what sold you on it? >> sure. i think that it's basically an inevitability of where the future of internet and people spend time, which is to say we, over the course of the last 40 years since the advent of pong, have been spending more and more time in virtual worlds. they have become more realistic, they have become more engaging, they have become more fun to be a part of. every single day, more people spend more time in games than the day before. and so, as you look at where we, as people, not just americans, but as humanity, will be spending more time in the next decade and the decade after, it's going to be in more highly realistic-looking, more immersive, more fun virtual

worlds, and that's what the metaverse is all about. >> why do we need a rebranding of this? in the sense that if you had the original pong and played the latest x-box game, you would be astounded at how much more immersive it is and how it sucks you into a different world. . but when do we make the jump to what people are calling the metaverse. is that that we're completely in vr, or what makes the metaverse the metaverse. >> main difference between what we have in video games today and where it is that we're going is basically a scale. which is to say, when you participate in, for example, a concert in "fortnite," you are one of 49 other people inside of a room. there may be millions of others who are all in individual rooms similar to you with 49 other people in that room with them, but you're all kind of experiencing it slightly differently. you're not really all part of one singular event, because the

game can't handle having millions of people inside of the exact same room. the internet, the way in which games are developed, just don't hit the level of scale that let us create a reality that looks kind of like the matrix, yet. and that is a technical and design function, which is to say, we haven't designed products are capable of doing that. the internet isn't able to run that level of simulation in realtime yet. but we will eventually get there. and if you look at the essays that matthew ball and i put out there on the metaverse, we say that we're probably one to two decades away from really having the level of experience that we're talking about. >> i can see that, in 10 to 20 years, just based on how fast things are moving, that we will get rid of the big clunky goggles, the oculus sort of goggles into glasses like we put on, sort of like kingsmen, and see something that's not there.

then we really would be in a different universe together? >> you're focuseded on hardware by which you're kind of looking at this world or being immersed in this world, which is to say a lot of the discussion that's frequently has been about, do you have to put something on top of your face. i'm not necessarily promoting that there is or is not a hardware difference here. i think the vast majority of people, even 10 to 20 years from now, are probably going to be participating in this on their phone. and it's more really about the time in which you spend in these virtual worlds and the fact that you're navigating your work or your play or your just idol time in them, rather than you needing to put something on your face. >> can you succinctly, and i know this is a challenge, but can you succinctlytransitioned metaverse to just doing things on your phone. because, yeah, i do things on my

phone all the time. >> sure, a lot of people want to see this very concrete moment no time where we've moved or transitions from internet into metaverse. and while i'm not sure that's the case for all people, worldwide, which is to say different countries and different regions and different people may or may not spend more time in 3-d virtual world than before, at a different pace than what was happening there before. but the way in which i would think about it is, you know, your kids today are spending a lot of their time in roblox or in minecraft or in "fortnite." and prior, they may have just been playing a video game, but they're also now attending virtual conferences, in some cases, they're doing schoolwork. they're hanging out with friends after school in these virtual environments instead of going to the mall. in other words, their minute-to-minute daily lives are being spent more in these virtual social arenas than in

the in-person arenas that they were part of before. and that's why we've been saying that the pandemic kind of accelerated a lot of these. >> you mentioned video games, which you are very deeply involved in. and you are really doing some interesting things with video games. making it more interactive to the audience. video games, i think, often lead the way into new technologies and bring people into new ideas. >> yeah, if you've looked at the history of the industry, it has always been at the forefront of this mixture of technology, content, and business models. it's very interesting. arcades were built not because consoles were or were not a better business model, you just couldn't build a game console 40 years ago at a price that would have made sense. which is to say, the requirement to generate a game image and allow for somebody to input it into realtime and put that back

to them as a screen required such expensive hardware that it would take $2,000 to generate the unit and bring it to somewhere and so people couldn't afford to have $2,000 for a single game running in their home. so it was sold to bars or it was sold to arcades and people basically bought time chunks in it with quarters. eventually, hardware got cheap enough that we could, for a couple hundred dollars, create generic hardware that would let you put a cartridge into it and that became your first ataris and nintendos and everything else. and then over the course of time, it became so cheap that your mobile phone could render games that were much better than your old nintendo was capable of doing. and so as hardware became cheaper, the type of content that was possible became more, you know, varied. and much more impressive to look at. and new business models like

subscription, game passes, et cetera, came about. >> so you have been very innovative with games, so i will be honest, i'll be a -- i was a little surprised to hear that your next project involves pac-man and facebook, both of those words to me are a bit retro. pac-man and facebook. explain what this is beyond just playing pac-man on facebook. if you look at the history of transitions in the game history, pac-man has always been at the forefront. if you think about why that is, it's because the game is so simple for mass audiences to understand. and so what you see here is this really interesting confluence of new technology that lets you jump into it instantly, along with realtime multiplayer, along with user-generated content, along with the ability for anybody who's watching a live stream or streamer to be able to be part of that together. >> that's a long way from the pac-man i ran into the first

time at a rexall drugs on ingersoll avenue many, many ages ago. jacob navok is with genvid and i always appreciate his thoughts on the future. i did do an interview that got deeply into the weeds of the video game industry on our podcast sanfield road. i urge you to check that out. "press: here" will be back in just a minute.

i'm scott mcgrew. recently, we brought you an interview with the folks over at marz that does special effects for tvs and movies. that's marz with a "z," an acronym for monsters, aliens, robots, and zombies. the interview was mostly about how fx artists are working from momentum, making special effects in bedrooms and spare rooms and garages and garden sheds. but during that interview, relearned the company was testing artificial intelligence. ai artists. and i thought, with all the news these days about how hard it is to find good talent at work, let's go back to that idea and pull on that thread about ai. so i asked matt panousis back. matt, good morning. i'm not the only one interested in your ai artists. your company just got funding, series "a", to help pay for it.

congratulations. >> thanks so much, scott. means a lot. >> so this is not just theoretical, right? i mean, you have used ai on a number of projects in which a computer is sort of the artist. >> in way, yes. so we have two producs in development right now at marz. both still in stealth mode for strategic reasons. but, yes, the first product is in what we would call a beta. it's been leveraged on 17 productions this year, and so very excited about it. the term ai artist, i think, may be slightly mischaracterizes what it is that we're doing, and i think i mentioned this the last time we spoke, but really the focus of marz is to help scale, scale the artistry. if an artist is able to do 10 or 20 or 30 times the output that

they were previously able to do, by being aided by artificial intelligence, that to us is a really nice combination, because what we're doing is we're trying to leverage the artist for their artistry and their creative eye. and then help ai scale that individual. and we think we can build enough products like this, we can make a meaningful impact on hollywood, because as you mentioned, there is a very big capacity shortage right now. >> there are a tremendous number of great tv shows that are using artificial -- not artificial, special effects. and when people think of special effects, they think of dragons and space ships, but sometimes the director wants a crowd behind those artists that wasn't there -- or the actor that wasn't there. or trees or a ship off in the distance. a lot more that we're seeing on television is special effects than we realize. >> much more. much more.

you know, i would argue that nearly half of what we do is invisible to the audience. so your point about crowds is a great one. and that became really big focus after covid, when set limitations effectively prevented there being or the ability for them to bring on hundreds of background actors. that's a great example of what we would deem an invisible effect. other examples of invisible effects might be changing set locations. so you're shooting in l.a., it needs to be new york, but so much of what we do is totally invisible. and you know, again, the trend that we see as time moves on, more and more that was being handled practically is beingdig. >> people who remember their tech history remembers that

pixar started out as a computer company, a tool company, they made movies in order to show off how powerful their tools were. you're, to some degree, a movie company that's building a tool. is it possible that the future of marz is not necessarily actually working on the movies, it's all of these cool tools that you're building. >> we're really excited about the future. we don't know -- we don't know exactly where these solutions are going to take us. what i will say is that there are huge synergies that exist between what we do on the vfx side and what we're doing on the ai side. and to separate the two would slow down progress. so at least for the near future, as we see it, we see there's this beautiful synergy between the two. but what i will say is that our vision, our vision initially was all about hollywood, but i think at this point, what we're seeing

is this really, really interesting convergence of industries that may render our solutions or may make our solutions far more applicable to other industries. so i'll give you an example. there's a huge convergence happening between the gaming industry and the film industry. whereby on the film side, we are starting to leverage gaming engines to help create vfx content for tv and film industry, all because of the speed those game engines provide. what those game engines do, again, there's limitations there from a quality standpoint, but they allow different departments to work simultaneously, so there's a convergence there, alternatively, on the flip side, what you're seeing is -- and this was highlighted about two weeks ago by the biggest m&a deal in our space, which was the acquisition of weda digital by unity game engine. so they're not taking vfx tools

and build those into unity and allow creators of games to go ahead and leverage vfx solutions many their games. so you're seeing this -- and of course, the reason that's interesting is because it is vfx, not game welcome that understands photo reel more than anyone. so when unity looks at the incredible work that wed as has done over the last 20 years, weda is peter jackson's company, prolific vfx firm. you're seeing this really interesting convergence, and of course, mea verse gets brought on top of it and we haven't even made that connection until recently that, you know, who is going to build metaverse. it's likely going to be a combination of gaming studios and vfx studios. so as we grow our vision is expanding. i think at this point, wawel excites us is the idea of just democratizing vfx for many different industries that can see value in it, all the way to

the -- i think it's really exciting, this idea that a kid, you know, sitting at home on tiktok, can one day create a piece of content that looks like it's hollywood. >> now, some people might find threatening, though. you know, the specialized artists who say, wait, hold on, if everybody can do this, that would be threatening to me. but you're saying, the more powerful the tool, the easier it is to use, the more ways we'll use it. >> i mean, exactly. and what you have to realize in hollywood, right, there is a very, very, very high bar. so you will always need these incredibly talented artists in a hollywood -- of course, the solutions will make them faster and more effective at what they do and they'll help solve this capacity shortage in hollywood, but there will not be a world where those artists don't exist. those artists are absolutely necessary in the creation of the vfx for tv and film.

>> now, speaking of that high bar, matt. tell spider-man movie, and enjoy it? or do you spend most of the time analyzing how they did it? >> i would -- people would say at the company that i have probably one of the worst creative eyes when it comes to vfx, although i think i've gotten better over the years, living and breathing. but i can still enjoy these things. if anything,chi watch the films and the tv shows, i think i now view them with this added appreciation for just how beautiful some of the work is. >> it is, indeed. matt parnousis, it's always a pleasure to talk with you. i look forward to talking with you again soon. matt parnousis with marz, which is monsters, aliens, robots, zombies. "press: here" will be right back.

tension builds... the plot twist the hero prevails in hollywood, this would be the end. but our here, we are just getting started. introducing the all-new nissan frontier.

>> where walking is a big part of the job description, waiting tables, postal carriers, certainly, and nurses are always on thesinai's hospital is right to solve that with robots. nurses there calculate the robot saves them in total

hospital-wide 300 miles of walking in the first six weeks that they were implemented. the robots can be found in other hospitals, but were developed as part of cedar sinai's internal accelerate perp david marshall chair of the department of nursing at cedars-sinai. good morning to you. you know, you figure about a third of the time, nurses are actually getting stuff, right? they're not in front of patients, they're off fetching something. >> that's correct. >> that's a lot of time away from patients. >> yeah. i mean, we're trying to get them more time to spend with their patients. >> which makes absolute sense. have you run into any nurses that are uncomfortable with this idea? after all, anytime you bring into automation, into "my job," even if it's part of a job i didn't like, i might be a bit concerned? >> i haven't run into that. most of the comments that i've heard have been positive. the nurses report feeling a sense of satisfaction when the robot's heart eyes blink at them or they hear the little chirp

from the robot. and many of them say that they see them as a new team member that's there to help them out. >> and the robot does have a face. and that really does change how people react to a robot if it has some kind of personification to it. >> that's right. it's sort of endearing. so robots are not entirely new at hospitals. what does moxi do that other robots can't? why is this the one you chose? >> you're right. we've been using robots for a long time, behind the scenes that follow, sort of tracks. moxi is different, because moxi is autonomous and moxi can map the environment of the medical center and navigate itself around through elevators, down hallways, into corridors, and pick things up where they need to be picked up and deliver them where they need to be delivered. so it's the autonomy that's really different. >> give me an example of what -- you know, is it a she? what does she do during the day? what's a typical tax for a moxi

robot? >> so, one of the things ma moxi does that travels a long distance is goes to another building is pick up prescriptions for patients that are being discharged and brings them to that patient's bedside so the nurse can take them out of the robot's storage capacity device and give them to the patients, make sure they understand what they're taking. so that's one of the big things that moxi delivers. >> what is moxi bad at? >> i haven't seen anything that moxi is pad at. you know, there were concerns that moxi would run into people in the hallway, but it has technology that allows it to stop as soon as it senses something, so those fears haven't borne out. >> fair enough. so it's made by diligent robotics, but that was part of your internal accelerator. i don't normally think of hospitals as having accelerators. why did cedar sinai decide that that was something that was worthwhile? >> cedar sinai is a top-notch

research institution, and i think that research leads hem to think innovatively, so they explore innovations in medicine and want to share their expertise with companies that are right to solve problems like getting nurses more time to spend with their patients. so collaborating at the medical center with those types of companies is good for both the company, cedar, and cedar's patients and staff. >> so what other projects are you seeing coming out of the accelerator? or other question might be, what sort of project would you like to see introduced? >> i've seen scheduling and staffing systems come through, many app-based systems for clinical diagnosis to, you know, examine, a patient can take a picture of something in their house and send it through the app and it gets automated and artificial intelligence is used and sends it off and they get an answer to what they are looking more. things like that. things that, you know, we want to continue to explore or ore

ways that we might be able to free nurses up to spend more time with their patients. things, innovative things like nurses may want to prototype something, giving them the skills to do that is something that our accelerator could do. those are the kinds of things that we're looking for. >> lastly, i wanted to ask about the patients. when you're uin ad by technologies and lights and beeping and all of those things but moxi seems a little less scarey than all the other stuff. >> that endearing face endears itself to others. just the other day, someone sent me a picture of moxi playing peekaboo with a pediatric patient in the hospital. it's fascinating that it creates that sort of bond with people just right away. >> that's great. david marshall, thank you. david marshall is the chair of the department of nursing at cedars sinai and we will be

right back.

that's our show for this week. my thanks to my guests and thank you for making us a part of your sunday morning.

damian trujillo: hello, and welcome to "comunidad del valle." i am damian trujillo; and today, chusma house publications and my tocayo, charley trujillo, on your "comunidad del valle." ♪♪♪ cc by aberdeen captioning 1-800-688-6621 www.abercap.com damian: and we begin today with an update on the great things that are happening in the east side union high school district of san jose. lorena chavez is a trustee with east side. she's with us on the show. lorena, welcome back to "comunidad del valle." lorena chavez: thank you. thank you so much for having me. i'm really, really grateful to have the opportunity to engage with our community today. damian: yeah, i know there's a lot of great things that are doing. unfortunately, sometimes we only cover the negative ones,

but let's do the positive this time.