Unaligned #11 IKA platforms Founder Carlos Mats

Ika can work in any device that you have either a tablet, a phone, a PC or whatever. But we already tested it on Apple Vision Pro. Actually like about a month ago, Apple invited us to their top secret lab in New York for, for, for developers and had the pleasure and the honor to be playing with it for six hours with the Apple Vision Pro. And the very first application that I used in the Vision Pro was Eka. And it was really cathartic. It was like I thought this boatway would come where I would be testing my Moonshot software that I thought it was a moonshot six or seven years ago. And now I'm talking to it daily and now I'm looking at it volumetrically with the most sci fi and advanced headset in the world. And it was, it was a great moment.

So who are you?

My name is Carlos Mats. I'm an artist, designer and technologist for the past almost 20 years. I was born in Honduras, but I have created projects all over the world and now I live between Silicon Valley, Mexico and now here in Antigua, Guatemala. This beautiful large green place.

That's awesome. And you're building a new kind of operating system almost with AI, right?

Yes. I'm glad that you find it to be O S E. Yeah. Basically it's an operating system for productivity. It's a new way for us to think about how to manage our daily tasks, projects, files, people, and just look at it in a more natural way. Since we are three dimensional beings, we must have our information displayed to us in a three dimensional way. And also we live in a, in a one dimensional timeline. So how about we combine all those and add conversation on top of it which capsules all the human experience. We are four dimensional beings and we talk to each other. So how about we represent data and work the same way? We have created ICA Intelligence Kinetic Artificial, which is my stealth AI platform that I'm going to be happy to show to you right now.

Yeah, yeah, we should. We'll do a demo separately and roll that in here because it's really something. You have to see how it works to understand why I'm calling it an operating system system.

Right.

And while you're talking to it and it's swishing around and taking you to spreadsheet or whatever, let's back up and talk about the company. Why start this company? What, what got you to do this?

So this is my second company. My very first company is called Schematic, which is a creative studio that I started when I was very young. I was always drawn to technology, design and art. So I basically created my company as a ways for me to fulfill my technological and artistic desires. And then we saw every single technological wave come and go and we wrote every single wave. So that gave us the capability to predict the next wave. And the next wave is the wave that we are right now, which is artificial intelligence and augmented reality and mixed reality. So six years ago we said, okay, we need to rag this way because it feels like it's the biggest one. So we created a new company called ICA Intelligence, which is my software with that premise. Like what would the software of 2030, the regular software of 2030 would look like? Just like for us right now, Google Maps is regular, is normal. Everybody uses it, it doesn't think much about it. But if you would show Google Maps for Some, someone like 80 or 60 years ago, it would be like the most incredible thing they have ever seen in their lives. Like they can pinpoint your exact location in any part of the globe and you can see everything. It's mind blowing and it's wizardry and for us is normal now. So we, so we started to think what, what would 2030 look like in terms of what would be normal in terms of productivity software? So we figured, listen, it has to be immersive, it has to be conversational, it has to be volumetric, it has to be predictive and it has to be something that whose interface was created thinking with artificial intelligence in mind from the central point of view, not sprinkling AI on top of it. No, we know that this is coming. So we built an entire operating system, like you call it, a whole user experience around it. So that's Ika.

Yeah. One thing when you get in there, this really is designed for something like an Apple Vision Pro, a spatial computer, an augmented reality computer where computing happens all around you. Right. Using this on a phone doesn't make so much sense. Right. It, it really has an affordance augmented reality experience like this. Right. Where things can happen all around you. Is that sort of what you're. What you hinted that you're aiming at 2030, so you're probably aiming at the same thing.

Right.

You're assuming we're going to compute in glasses with augmented reality rather than trying to stare at a 2D screen.

Absolutely. We want to be the bridge towards that immersive reality that we're going to live in starting this decade. We're going to be interacting with holograms around us basically. And Ika was thought, as you said, yeah, initially like that we, we started with the end insight and then we worked backwards to where we are now, which is Ika can work in any device that you have either a tablet, a phone, a PC or whatever. But we already tested it on Apple Vision Pro. Actually like about a month ago, Apple invited us to their top secret lab in New York for developers and had the pleasure and the honor to be playing with it for six hours with the Apple Vision Pro. And the very first application that I used in the Vision Pro was ica. And it was really cathartic. It was like I thought this bow would come like where I would be testing my Moonshot software, that I thought it was a Moonshot software six or seven years ago. And now I'm talking to it daily and now I'm looking at it volumetrically with the most Sci Fi and advanced headset in the world. And it was, it was a great moment.

Tell me what was hard about creating this. First of all, tell me what's running underneath the COVID So do you have a large language model? Tell me a little bit about the technology, what's going on because when you talk into this, it's doing a lot on the screen.

So the back end, the, the AI part is basically we have a mix of our own LLM, which is the based off of Llama and we have, depending on the query that you make, we decide whether or not we're going to use our local LLM or if we're going to connect via API to either anthropic or GPT4. So that's basically how we do it. We decide what's the complexity of the prompt that you're asking and then we decide which LLM work we're going to use. And in the front, since we're, we're cross platform and everything, we're using Flutter for the front end. At first we started with Unity, we, we did a couple of versions with Unity, but then we realized that it was not that optimized. Like our phones and our devices got really hot and our Macs got really slow because it was essentially running a video game or as a productivity tool. And even if we got a lot of cool effects and beautiful transitions with Unity because it's inherently 3D for games, it was just not worth all that power. So we were just like, okay, no, we need to rewrite this and make the exact same experience, but it was something completely lighter. So we did it, we rewrote everything and now it runs on your browser.

Yeah, that's crazy. Some very fast without Using much processor power or GPU power, you have to rewrite everything. What are you learning about AI by being building this company?

I'm learning what I'm preaching basically is that you're going to talk to your computers as you talk to a human. So we are building IKA in that very same way. Like, normally we're not very structured in the way that we talk, right? Like we, we go all over the place. But when we're directing to someone, we try to be. When we're giving orders, we try to be as structured as we want, as we need, because we want things to be done right. There's a fine line between being completely loose about how you talk about and then being structured about it. And that sweet spot is the one that we're trying to hone in so that IKA understands what you're trying to say, even if you're not completely explicit about it. But when you give it like very direct and complex and sequential orders, which is one of the breakthroughs that we did a couple of weeks ago, Ethan can actually analyze a sequence of orders. It takes a little bit more time to process, but it does it perfectly. It understands you perfectly. Just takes a little bit more time. So what I'm learning is that fine line, that sweet spot off casual work talk to actual very directed, very specific directions. So that's what I'm learning.

How did you fund this company? How did you get it to this place? Tell me a little bit.

That's a nice story. I started ika, but it was, it's like the child of my very first company called Schematic. So I had created a very popular and very successful streaming application for the 2014 World cup where basically everybody in my home country was watching the World Cup. So I, I made it big, thankfully. So I had some savings and with those savings I invested in, in crypto and Bitcoin and Ethereum and that went really well. And. But still I. I did not have the network, nor the know how, nor anything. I still created another project, a virtual reality project that was successful as well. And I had savings, basically, I had savings. So I was like, this is something that I really want to spend my life, energy and resources on. Everything was made with my savings. And then because I didn't have the network nor anything, so I was introduced to the whole venture capital world and funding rounds and everything. And then some angels came in. I'm so thankful for my angels. They have helped me grow my network and everything. And basically we have funded this with my own Funds for my savings and angel money. And now we're ready to launch this month, the beta. And we are open now to see if any deep tech funds or artificial intelligence and augmented reality funds want to talk. So we're here.

It's a new world. Talk to the users of Ecov, what are some things they need to know up front and as they are starting to use it, give us some tips of how to use it, how to things to think about using it for.

So basically, if you are a small and medium business that is based on projects, we are basically project management of the future. That's how we describe ourselves. Like I central project management. So if your company is project driven, we are perfect for you. Like we can manage your team, your tasks, your projects or timeline. And eventually we're going to automate everything for you. And you can talk to Ika, you can see the insights and Ika starts learning from the very first moment. They start using it in the coming months. The more you use it, the more data you input it, the more insights you're going to unlock. And even eventually we're going to unlock predictions that you haven't even seen. So this is just the beginning right now with we just invite everybody that is a small and medium business to that if you are in the creative space, even better. Because I'm, I'm an artist, I'm a designer and I made Ika for the way I think, which is a spatial way of thinking. And I think the creative industry is very visual and very spatially aware. So I think if you are in the creative industry, either film filmmaking or web design or, I don't know, photography or anything, and it, since productivity is universal, it's tasks, projects and timeline and people, but in a visual way, I think if you are in a creative field, you're going to appreciate Ika even more. Very much so, yeah, you're welcome.

That's awesome. How long does it take to set up? Is it immediate or do I have to hook it up to where I put my spreadsheets and where I put my docs and stuff like that particularly.

So the setup process, I'm on computer, right? Right, yeah. So the setup process, I am obsessed with ux. UX for me is the most important apart if it actually works, of course, but it has to be intuitive. So basically ETA itself is going to ask you what do you want to use it for? If you want to use it for your personal life or your business, if you're a student and you have different templates that you want to use it, you have to. It's a quick node naming. And then if you want to connect your Google Drive to it, you can connect your Google Drive to it. In next month we're going to have migrations and integrations so you can integrate it with your email or if you want to migrate from Trello or from Monday.com you're going to be able to do that. So either you can start from scratch and step by step, Ika is building your three dimensional ECAs for you. But also you can ask it to generate products like even if you don't know how to do anything. For example, two months ago in Mexico City, we created the very first artificial intelligence created fashion show in Latin America. So we did a whole virtual fashion Runway and then a physical Runway with the designs created with artificial intelligence. And that had never been done before in Latin America. But the way we do it, we did it is that we asked Ika generate an AI fashion show starting next Monday for three months and assign it to Carlos Mats. And then it created the Gantt. Each of the tasks that we're supposed to do, it showed them to you and then you could go into each task and generate more tasks from that task. So even if you don't know anything or how to do anything, you just ask Ika and it will help you out.

That's awesome. Tell me a little bit about the Apple headset, the Vision Pro and why you think this is going to be a big way of working. Because most people haven't worn a HoloLens or a Magic leaf or a spatial computer. Apple things come in April next year supposedly to stores. People go try it out. Why is this going to be a new way of working and how does it help you work that in a way that a desktop or a phone doesn't let you help, let you work with. Because you, your thing really has that affordance. It's working. It's like you built Ironman, right?

We built Jarvis.

Yeah.

We basically built Jarvis. Yeah. So there's two things. Number one is the fidelity of the pass through video is just like real life. It's 4K. Hi. So you really feel you're in reality with holograms around you. But the one thing is it comes down to UX actually. Because any other device that we have used, the UX is super cumbersome. Like you from you can from the time you put it on to actually a time that you're enjoying. It takes a long setup process. Right. In Vision Pro, not only, but the.

Setup, process, do all sorts of stuff, right?

Yeah. And then like the menu vision of desktop does not translate well to actually virtual reality. You have to think in a different way. You have to think spatially about it. So you have to make it more intuitive. And I think the way that Apple has done the, the onboarding and everything and you are already in augmented reality from the get go and if you want to get into virtual reality, just turn a knob here instead of going to a menu and then this and then pass through and whatever. So everything is just quicker. Everything is the Apple way, which I love. I. Everything is just quicker, everything is smoother. It's a. It's really hard to describe how you feel when you actually put it on and you start looking at things and the things react to your gaze. It's like telepathy. So if they react to your gaze like that and you look around and eventually like when you get the hang of it, I. You start looking at everywhere and start clicking like that's about. It was like. It's actually telepathy. Like, boom. Let's go here, let's drive this. It's super quick, it's super fluid, it's super intuitive. And there's some considerations about the positions of your hands when you're using it because you have to really be mindful about where the cameras and the headset are if they're looking down here and you have to actually tap like that and make sure that the camera sees the tap and the hold and everything. And sometimes when you're like this and your hand is behind you, you don't have that field of view, so you have to put the hand right here where, where you can see it and everything. So I think it's just so sublime what they have created. It's sublime. And I spent six full hours with it and by, by the end of it, I, I was missing having holograms around me. It felt normal. Now because you can scale up the applications and put one application here, one application here, the other way, the application here, and my application just floating around in different instances of eco around you. So it's really truly spatial company, like you are just looking at things all around you like that and you can put things behind. And the one thing that we couldn't try is the microphone access. I think it's limited yet, but hopefully it's coming. And. Yeah, this is beautiful, man. Like, I saw the feature. You're muted.

Oh, sorry.

You're muted. All right.

Yeah, it'll keep getting better.

And so, yes, this is only version one.

Tell me about the M2 processor that's on your head. 21% of that's neural network. What does that mean for a developer like you to have that much AI inferencing on your head? You don't have to buy.

Yes.

People buy an Nvidia card and hook up to it with a wire. It's right there, right?

Yeah. It means faster response times for sure. Faster everything. If everything is done on device, like the experience is way smoother, basically, like you can ask it and not wait too much for a response. Even you. You could even stack up commands. I would say do this, do that, and then do this, that and then do this. And they would seamlessly go from one to one. We could. You can't do that right now with eca, but it takes a little bit because it's not local yet. Right. Only maybe one of those three commands are local. So the local command is going to be quicker than the other two. Eventually our LLMs are going to run locally, they're going to be super small, and I think we're not going to need that much of a very powerful chip to even run it. In the latter half of the decade, response times are just going to be blazing fast, even real time.

Tell me a little bit about how you approach privacy. Because you're building a new operating system where humans are talking to it and gesturing with their hands and probably eventually doing all sorts of stuff. What does this mean for privacy? Because you're an off. You're trying to be an offering system that's talking to my spreadsheets and my emails and my PDFs and my CAD files, anything I'm working on. How do I protect all that from AI sucking it all in and taking it some somewhere like OpenAI and leaking it out.

Absolutely. It's a fear.

Whether it's a real fear or not, it's certainly a fear of mine. Now that we have. I have Rewind listening to me right now. I have AI listening to me. That's a new practice.

Yeah. I think we do have the opportunity to actually do it right this time because the Web 2.0 is the privacy disaster as it is right now is a privacy disaster. So I grew up with the web and I saw it go from on private to private to actually not private at all. And with AI, we basically need to process all your information locally so that it stays with you, basically. And there's this thing called federated learning, which is an edge computing as well. So the combination of those Two and it's basically we learn and we give you the insights of your data on your device. And if we need to upload anything, it has to be anonymized and it has to be scrambled and it has to be like not the actual data of the insights of the data so that we can do further processing. So that's how we manage privacy. We never look directly at any of your data. We only look about the insights that we provide and the anonymous and anonymized data of other users. Everything to make it faster and to make it more private. And so that we don't make the same mistakes that we did with web 2.0. This is a new way of doing it. And even privacy is in our core four tenets, basically. And we mentioned Web 2.0 in it. We're not going to do the same Web 2.0 mistakes. We're going to do it right this time. So that's what we're doing.

Since you were at Apple, there's a new Siri coming. We all know that. And the co founder of Siri was on my show last week. Yeah. And Siri, he's been talking to people at Apple and he knows that it's coming. Does that scare you that a new Apple offering system could be coming? Because Siri, once it gets a large language model, could do some of what you're doing. How do you think that through? Because that's a, an interesting problem for an entrepreneur who's trying to build an operating system. Operating systems are things that Apple likes to own. Right.

Yeah, I understand. So Ika, you could think of it as an operating system for work, for productivity, not for your daily. You could use it for grocery shopping, you could use it for whatever. Right. But it's not actually like an operating system for your machine, for your computer. It's just for your abstracted productivity life. So the way I see it is that I see that all these AI applications are dispersed and unconnected and there's like a, a fragmentation of all these types of things that either Siri could do. Right. It could control your computer or whatever. But they're not focused on productivity management yet. There's not a productivity, AI, productivity manager. Everybody's focused on the tools that people have to use to actually complete a task that is being managed by a product manager. So we're the central part that's connecting everything. I would, I would say we're the central part that connects all the other applications and make from non cohesion to actually having a full view of Your productivity life in one three dimensional structure. What I see is that, hey, if Apple wants to get into the productivity management space, I might be worried or not. Because they might see the ECA as a potential acquiring prospect. But as of right now, no, as a matter of fact, they were really excited about ica. Like I, when I showed them Ika, they went, oh, this looks like sci fi software. And I'm like, you're telling me that when you're handing me the most sci fi device that exists in the world, I'm flattered. So, no, I'm actually flattered.

I think they're right about that, by the way, because there's very few apps that portray themselves the way yours does with graphics that are moving around. It is very sci fi. And yeah, that's a big thank you privilege. They're probably looking at you like, we should copy him.

That's why we have a patent. That's what, we have a patent. That's what patents are for.

We should do more of what he's doing. Drink more in his water.

Oh my God, please, Apple, don't do that.

You're lucky. Thing is, Apple moves slow, right? I saw, I saw a lot of this stuff 13 years ago and it took 13 years to ship the, the Vision Pro, right? Yeah, it takes a long time for these big companies. It takes a product like this, right? And I don't know.

Absolutely, absolutely.

The good thing for you maybe in the same place.

But yeah, yeah, it gives me the advantage to actually, you know, get to the network effect and have Ika as a recognized brand worldwide and maybe eventually we can talk about having Ika be the Apple for work or something.

Now they could buy you. I, I saw the Siri was launched on my show and they bought that and integrated that into their pH, if there's one.

I didn't create Ika to sell it, but if there's one company that I would consider selling Ika to, it would be Steve Jobs's company, not Tesla, because.

They'Re gonna have some crazy shit too.

I'm a fan of Elon, so I would consider talking to Elon about it.

Of course, you never know. Siri people didn't know they were gonna get sold to Steve Jobs. I did in the interview. I said, man, this is very strategic. Some phone company is going to need this, right? Because it just made too much sense to have a device where you talk to it and it does stuff and it makes a lot of sense where I'm wearing a pair of glasses in the future. I'M talking to the operating system and things are happening. And it. The nice thing I. And we got a demo earlier. It's. It's nice when you talk and things react to you because then you understand. It understood you.

Exactly.

If it shifts and takes up your spreadsheet, it understood. Hey, I wanted to work on a spreadsheet right now. So. Yeah, it helps.

It has context, it has feedback, it's everything.

Yeah. And then you could grab it with your hands and move it too. You have these interesting new interaction modalities.

Yeah, correct.

Because it's old model. Everything is Doug Engelbart's little mouse. Yes. It's gotten better since Doug Engelbart invented it. But it's still a mouse, right? It's still teeth.

It's. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Now you can compartmentalize your holograms. Let's talk about. These are holograms. Basically, you can have a hologram for anything. Like for example, you can have a. An E cup for your personal life, an ECA for your company. And IKA if you're a student, an EKA if you're a sports person. Or maybe the sports IKA can go inside of the node of the personal eco. You can just put them inside of each other and have them around you and you talk to them. It's like you're talking to. Directly to your areas of your life. That's. It's so abstract. Right. I'm talking to my. This area of my life called family. So, yeah, it's a whole new way of interacting with your data.

Where do we learn more about it?

Very soon, actually.

Where do we get it?

Very soon, actually. We are finishing up to actually release the private beta right now, this month. So you can go to Ika AI, you can sign up there. And we will be introducing the very first batch of IKA users very soon. And of course you're going to be one. I would be honored if you were one.

Robert, you gotta get a Vision Pro, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. First, however, though, IKA is multi platform. Next year we're going to get into the Vision Pro at launch for sure. But you can use IKA in your Mac, desktop, PC, tablet, phone, anything. We're just ready for augmented reality and we can port it to Oculus and everything. But we made it directly for the Vision Pro already.

Oculus only has 2K chips per eye. The Vision Pro has 5K chips per eye. As Vision Pros, I'm not a big gamer. Mark Zuckerbergis has been forced to really overemphasize video gaming on the Quest because his screens just aren't very good for working. I can't use Twitter and look at Twitter.

Right, right.

Just not being a resolution good enough for saber or, or pistol whiff. I love pistol whip. But this new world we're going into, high resolution world has an affordance for working. That's why you're interesting.

Correct.

You're not that interesting on the Quest because I'm not going to use it for working. I'm going to use it for shooting things in pistol whip, video game kind of things. Because that's what you can do with a lower resolution chip in front of your eye. Yeah. The Apple one is 5K. That means I can actually do tweet for sure.

You can read text really well. Like you can put it up front and in the back and everything and it's. You can actually mirror your screen and it looks just like your screen. This doesn't look blurry at all. It's great.

I love it. And then you have infinite screen real estate. Right. Because your offering system takes some extra pixels away from the work. Right. And then there's things that it, it needs to show you. Right. And so if you're on a little tiny phone screen, I'm not going to be attracted to this way of working as much as I will be when I'm wearing my Vision Pro where I have infinite real estate around. Right. I can put something up here, something here or something behind me. Right. And I can talk to it all and have each working. That's a different way of working than trying to look at a very small little phone screen.

And if you think about it like that way is a natural way. That's how us humans evolve in this world. Like everything evolved in a four dimensional way. Like I said, like up, down, like forwards, backwards and past and future and conversational. That's just. We're just getting back to how we normally interact with the planet, with the world, with our reality. Because we had to compress a lot of information into a tiny square in order for us to interact with the world. So it's very super limiting. Like we went from big screens to tiny screens and two thumbs. Like super limiting. And obviously this is not the last form factor, the ultimate form factor, apart from the glasses obviously is going to be neural implants. Like just going to think about stuff and it's going to, you don't even have to verbalize it, you just have to think about it and it happens. But in the meantime we have to go Back to the three dimensional conversational interfaces that we're very much used to because we interact like that as humans.

It's going to be a lot of fun next year.

It will be. Yes.

Can't wait till April. It's finally time that a high resolution device is coming down at the consumer level. People complain about the price, $3,500 but this is a new way of computing. People when they will understand. Oh, when you put 5K chips near your eyes, you can do some really amazing things. What's like watching a movie like in it?

Oh wow. We tried the Mission Impossible trailer and we had the. We had this set it up over a huge lake just like the video. A huge lake on top of it and it's a super serene. And you can feel you're in the biggest. Not even the sphere in Vegas feels as big as this one. It's like the biggest thing and it's just so immersive. And I have to confess there's some serene ambiances once a little lake that it. It feels so calm and serene that I truly thought I was there. And I took a little three minute nap. Oh my God, this feels so good. Like a three minute nap on it. It was like so immersive. And yeah, movies look amazing. Like you feel like you're in the most privileged seat in Hollywood.

You got to hook, hook it up to all the AI art guys right mid journey and disc and Dall E3 and all that. So I can talk to it and have it create videos or pictures or whatever.

Yeah, all that is only obvious now, right? Like it's going to be obvious like we're going to be doing all that. It's not as if we're going to do it as you got to have.

Your AI art, your movie over here and over here you got your AI music. Right. You can build a whole studio around here. A virtualized studio. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. I can't wait till next year.

I cannot wait. I cannot wait. So ready? Player one is actually becoming a real thing though eventually we're not gonna know whether or not an avatar is a real life human connected to it the other side of the world or it's actually just an AI avatar like you're talking to and it feels human. That line is just gonna blur.

Very cool. Thanks for joining me for a interesting conversation about what 2030 is going to look like. But I have a feeling it's like next April is going to look like.

Wow. Yeah, it's going to be amazing. Man.

You're going to have different slides, getting more features added, because I'm sure they're going to stick some things in at the last minute. Hey, they'll turn on the microphone. They better, because how else are you going to talk to Siri?

Exactly, exactly, exactly. They have to.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Robert. I really appreciate your time. And. Yeah, I would like to show you ika now.

Then let's do it.