What Fortnite taught Fortune 100 CEOs about their global customers

[00:00:00] I’ve got three kids as well. So ages 15, 14 and 9. They are my biggest teachers when it comes to some of these things. They’re actually the ones that got me into Roblox. If it weren’t for my kids playing Roblox, I wouldn’t have built the career I have. Maybe I would have. But I don’t know. They’re the ones that got me playing, right, and got me to become like an adult expert on the platform at the time I was. So, you know, I think they teach me a lot about not only how they’re using technology, but like, how they’re using it to socialize beyond just social media. I definitely see gaming spaces as their new social networks, gaming spaces as R&D labs for brands and companies to understand where they’re spending their time, where they’re investing their money, right? If you ask a kid, “Hey, you want 20 Roblox, or you want $20?” If they’re really into gaming, they’re going to want the Roblox because it means more to them than going to Target and buying some clothes. So, I think that’s a really interesting kind of perspective as to understand what do they assign value to.

[00:00:53] Hello, and welcome to a special edition of In Other Words, a podcast from Phrase. I’m Georg Ell, CEO of Phrase, and for this episode, I’m stepping in as host for something we’ve been wanting to do for a while. This is the first in this, hopefully, a regular series of CEO-to-CEO conversations about what’s changing around how global businesses communicate and connect with their customers. Maybe a few personal stories thrown in as well. I couldn’t think of a better person to have this conversation with. Cathy Hackl is widely known in tech circles as the Godmother of the Metaverse. Cathy, you’re going to have to tell us how you came about that name. She’s the CEO of Future Dynamics, Futurist in Residence at Nokia, and an Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group. She’s advised Nike, Walmart, and Louis Vuitton on emerging tech strategy. She’s helped shape experiences like the Sphere in Las Vegas, which is amazing, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s World Expo Pavilion. Newsweek named her a Top 25 AI Visionary, and she’s the number one LinkedIn Voice in Spatial AI and XR. So, today we’ll be exploring a number of things I find fascinating. There’s a generation of consumers already living in a world most brands haven’t built for yet. And that has massive implications for any businesses trying to grow globally. Cathy, welcome to In Other Words. How are you doing today?

[00:02:08] I’m doing great. I’m excited to be here and, yeah, to talk about all the amazing things that, you know, we’re going to get into.

[00:02:13] I don’t know how we’re going to cover it all. You’ve done so much.

[00:02:16] You’re going to have to have me back.

[00:02:18] Yeah. That would be fun. That would be awesome. And I love your backstory because it’s so unconventional. You started in journalism, field producing for Animal Planet, Discovery, then you put on a VR headset and everything changed. So, tell us about that.

[00:02:31] Yeah. So, it’s actually interesting because people always ask me, “How did you end up in tech?” I said, “By accident. Just being at the right place at the right time.” I actually started off as a TV journalist, did tons of TV that, you know, production behind the camera, local TV news. So, like, you know, in the U.S, where you have the local reporters face on like a bus or a billboard, I was on one of those. But yeah, eventually I ended up going to a conference. I was talking about live video at that time. You couldn’t go live on Instagram or Facebook, not like we do right now. But I was one of the first users to jump on some of those experiences. And I put a virtual reality headset on, and I was completely transformed by the experience. This is more than 10 years ago, mind you. So early, early days, I mean, the company Oculus hadn’t been acquired by Meta at that time. That’s how early that was. And yeah, I took the headset off, and I said, “This is the future of something.” I’m not sure what I just saw, but it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. So, took the headset off, did like a very intentional pivot into emerging technology, specifically at that time, augmented reality and virtual reality. People thought I was crazy because I was, like, at the top of my game in journalism, Emmy-nominated, you know, is it getting considered to be an anchor, like all these sorts of things that you would want. But I said, “No. My life is somewhere over here.” And I did a very strategic pivot, and it’s been what, more than a decade now. So crazy.

[00:03:55] Wow, that’s amazing. Congratulations on the Emmy nomination. That’s very cool.

[00:03:59] I’m an Emmy judge now. So, it’s kind of full circle because I help judge the Emmys. So, it’s exciting.

[00:04:04] That is super cool. All right. Amazing. So, I mean, I have to say I can relate to that. I remember putting on VR for the first time and having a similar feeling. I like to go skiing and go backcountry skiing and put the camera on and then take the videos home for my kids. And then they can do what, you know, Daddy did. Their favorite bits are where I fall and crash or get lost, that sort of thing. But it is, I think, for the future of education as well as business communication, I think it’s really, really exciting. It’s like still probably five years away as it has been for some time, but it’s exciting. So, you went on to HTC Vive, Magic Leap, AWS, co-founded Journey, launched Future Dynamics, what’s the thread that connects those moves?

[00:04:50] I think it’s always kind of taking a chance on myself. I think that’s my biggest advice to any CEO, whether you’re in a big company or a small company, take the bet on yourself, invest in yourself, invest in your team, obviously, as well, but invest in yourself and, kind of, if you feel called to learn something, especially right now with this AI moment that we’re in, going in 100% and learning and making mistakes and, you know, even if it gets messy sometimes, but learning and taking that bet on yourself, I think is incredibly important. So, that’s what I would say. Also, reinventing yourself. I think many of us have had multiple careers or multiple lives. I think we’re going to continue to see that, especially with the younger generation. Like I don’t, the age, like the time of that, you know, staying in a company, you know, 20 years or 30 years, like our parents grew up in, I think that is over. And I see that my children are going to live a lot longer than we possibly all are, so they’re going to have so many different types of jobs and not related to me, but I’ll give you an example that I think is really important, is I asked my daughter, who’s now 15, when she was 11, what do you want to be? You know, typical question, you know, what was I expecting? I don’t know. You know, Doctor, you know, Nurse, something like that. And she said, “I want to be a Lunar Food Scientist “Lunar Food Scientist. I was like, okay, yes, I guess if we, you know, if we terraform and we’re going, we went back to the moon, right? We just went around the moon. We will need Lunar Food Scientists, so it was interesting because then I asked my son, I was like, what about you? And he’s like, “Oh, I just want to continue developing games in Roblox and things.” And then my youngest one, she was like, “I want to be a Nurse.” So, kids are not only thinking physical world, but they’re thinking virtual and even off-planet when it comes to jobs.

[00:06:35] Yeah, which is good, actually. I think a healthy sense of imagination is actually really important to understand what’s going on in the world around us. I read and still read quite a lot of science fiction, and it’s uncanny how many things are starting to come true, or you know, is moving more into the realm of science and less of fiction. And you’ve advised people like Nokia’s CEO on a billion-dollar partnership with NVIDIA and what you’ve called the AI supercycle. Can you tell us what that means and how those roles shape how you think about that cycle?

[00:07:11] Yeah, and I think the AI supercycle is really a term that Nokia came up with. And I’ve been able to kind of, really be entrenched in it. This is, it’s a moment where I think there’s a lot of AI hype, but we also have to understand how important the technology is, right, in very broad terms. And I think specifically for a company like Nokia, you have to start to think about connectivity, right, in the network. People think, no, it’s interesting because people ask me, Nokia, and they’re like, they think about the phones. And I’m like, no, they’re an infrastructure company. They’re a networking company. And one of the big things that they’re focusing on, especially with the work that they’re doing with NVIDIA, is creating AI-native networks. And what I mean by this, which is, I think, really interesting, is that if you look at the requirements that the network for connectivity has for humans, it’s very different than now when we have AI agents that are working 24 hours, right? The requirements are very different. Humans, at some point, most of us will sleep for a couple of hours, right? So, obviously, the demand for connectivity at 3 a.m. is gonna be very different than demand for connectivity at 11 a.m. right? But when you have agents in AI working 24/7, those requirements are incredibly intense for the network. So, I think that companies like Nokia are starting to work on these AI-native networks, understanding that the requirements of connectivity and the requirements that are gonna be put on the network are very different when we’re living in a world where it’s not just humans, but also AI using the network. So, yeah, it’s like a really interesting workaround, that space, I don’t know, it’s been really interesting to watch that. I know that most people think networks, infrastructure, they don’t think it’s a very sexy thing, but to me, it’s the sexiest thing, because without that infrastructure, we can’t have the autonomous robots and the holograms and all the devices that everyone’s envisioning. You’re not going to be able to have your OpenClaw do everything that it needs to do with all the different agents, right? So, I think people forget the importance of the network.

[00:09:10] Yeah. Yeah. Until it goes down, and then you’re stranded.

[00:09:16] Then everyone’s like, “Oh, we need infrastructure.” I’m like, “Yes, it’s always been sexy.”

[00:09:21] Yeah, exactly. And you’ve said something about us heading towards a post-smartphone world. And you just talked about agents talking to other agents. I certainly see we just saw Salesforce just announce their Headless Salesforce 360, and I certainly see that more and more of the companies I speak to are thinking about how to enable their services to be consumed headlessly by agents. But in the work that we do with companies, we help brands to communicate across markets, and many of our customers are still building for a screen and a website and an app and email and that sort of human-to-human communication. So, just curious how you see the shift from

[00:10:02] human-to-human, human-to-agent and then agent-to-agent. What’s coming and how fast?

[00:10:07] It’s moving so fast. I feel like we’re catching up. It’s almost like any brand needs to think about multiple customers, right? Yeah, they’re selling to the humans, but they’re also going to have to sell to their agents. And then it’s going to be agent-to-agent. It’s interesting because back in 2021, like, mind you, that’s a long time, that’s way before the agent moment that we’re in. I wrote an article, and the title was “Marketing To Robots.” Right? I didn’t have an agent, like I wasn’t thinking agentic. Like that was not a term that I think a lot of us were using in that lexicon. But the whole idea was that. That eventually, you were going to have to market your brand to the robot, the agent, the AI, whatever, right? Obviously, right now they’re agents. But it was that, again, that concept that it’s not only a human audience. Yeah. At the end of the day, you’re selling, most brands will sell a product or a service that a human will use. But eventually, some of those products and services might be for agents specifically, right? Agent-to-agent. So, yeah, I think it’s moving quite fast. Once again, it will also depend on the connectivity, and you know, it’ll depend on compute. It’ll depend on connectivity for us to be able to do this at a very large scale. So, yeah, so it’s moving fast, but connectivity and compute have to keep up in order for that to happen as well. That’s what you’re seeing, for example, a shift with Claude, you know, changing the way you pay for Anthropic for the way you pay for Claude, right, because it’s about tokens. It’s tokens. How many tokens am I using? It’s no longer just one subscription, and I get everything.

[00:11:39] I heard some speculation that they were holding Mythos back not only because of its potentially incredible power, but actually, that it was too expensive to run, that they just don’t have enough hardware to actually run it on. And then on the other hand, we hear Elon talking about putting data centers in space and kind of solving capacity constraints that way with Starship. So, sort of curious, what do you see as the areas in all of this? Because it’s interconnected. There’s networked, and there’s chips. There’s the data. Where do you think the real bottlenecks are going to be? And then, have you got any sense of how people will sort of overcome them?

[00:12:19] I see several things that are bottlenecks. Obviously, compute, compute, compute, like right now, we’re focused on that, and it’s so expensive. The reality is that it is very expensive. I do believe it’ll decline in cost. Not right now. I also think that we’re building data centers for the current demand. And part of me is like, are they going to be enough, or are they actually going to be too much? Because if things go down or there’s advancements in material science or efficiencies, you know, so that’s a hard thing because if you’re building a data center, right, it’s going to take at least a couple of months, right, if they do it incredibly quickly. So, I don’t know. That’s one of the things that I also think. Humans are also part of the bottleneck, right? How many people in the world, like you and I, probably live in a silo where everyone’s using AI, but is that the reality of the rest of the world? No, most people haven’t used AI. So, the current demand is only for a small group of people that are using it. Imagine if everyone was using it, what’s the kind of demand of compute that we will need? And then also, are there people that are not going to want to use it? Right? There’s already data showing that Gen Z is souring on AI, and they’re just kind of, like, I don’t want to use it. So, it’s really hard. And as a futurist, I put on the hat of, like, what are these uncertainties? Like, there’s nothing but uncertainty ahead. Right? We can’t predict that the current amount of computers is what we will need. It might be more. It might be less. Who knows? So, I don’t know, I think there’s several bottlenecks, right? And then, in kind of understanding this, and then you add into it climate change, which I know people don’t necessarily want to talk about, but someone asked me one day, was like, “What would be something that could happen that would kind of paralyze this AI revolution?” I’m like, “Look, if they’re, right now, a big percentage of the data centers, not all of them, but a big percentage of data centers are in northern Virginia, there’s a part in Loudoun County here that has, like, what, it’s like, probably it used to be 70% of the world’s Internet traffic goes through that area, probably less now because there’s more data centers. But if there is a catastrophic climate change incident that wipes out all those data centers…” You know? So, I think people don’t realize there’s a lot of factors that go into this. It’s not just the compute. There’s a lot of different things here that are in play for that future to happen. And add to that the fact that, in my perspective, we are going to need new models and new architectures. That’s why the work that, you know, Dr. Fei-Fei Li, the “Godmother of AI”, I’m the “Godmother of the Metaverse”, so I feel a certain sisterhood with her. The work she’s doing in world models, the work Yann LeCun’s doing in world models, the work that companies like Niantic are doing in geospatial models in order for us to go from true agentic into physical AI, you need new models and new architectures that currently are being worked on. You can’t do it just with the current LLMs.

[00:15:05] So, that might be interesting to explore because you talk a lot about spatial computing, you mentioned world models, maybe gives the listeners a quick definition of a world model. And then when you sit down with a Fortune 100 brand, how do you explain what that means or what spatial computing and these world models, I know they’re not exactly the same thing, but what these things mean for the future of a big business?

[00:15:30] Yeah. So, I’ll start with spatial because I think spatial is, like, a bigger portion of it. You know, we’re in this, we’re still in this moment of mobile computing, right? Mobile. We do everything, like, most of our interaction with AI, most of it happens on the phone or, you know, now our Mac minis that we take other places with us, or you know, we run our Claude, but the way you know a lot of it is mobile computing right now, what we’re doing, even if we’re on our laptop. When you think about what comes next with computing, it’s computing that expands into the physical world, that engages in the physical world. Obviously, the humanoid robots; that’s part of spatial computing. Glasses are part of spatial computing. So, spatial computing, if you want a definition, is an evolving form. Yes, exactly. Which I have mine here, too.

[00:16:10] Yeah. Oh, snap.

[00:16:11] Yeah.

[00:16:13] An evolving 3D-centric form of computing that, at its core, uses AI, computer vision, extended reality, and other technologies to seamlessly blend virtual experiences into the physical world, right? So, it’s expanding compute into the physical world, bringing data into the physical world, making that virtual layer of data that we only have in our phones visible in front of us. So, that’s it. World models, in my perspective, are a way to create models that help train, whether it’s robots, whether it is autonomous vehicles, whether it is holograms, it’s a way of using these models to create 3D versions of the world, right, and help with simulation and training of these agents and these robots and these sorts of things. So, it’s more focused on simulation and creating these 3D worlds that the AI can train in, that you can do simulations – that’s world models. The other one that people are, not a lot of people are talking about it, but I think it’s incredibly important, is the geospatial models, which are kind of what Niantic has been working on. It’s real-time data from the physical world that updates in real time and creates a model of the physical world that is visible to the robot, right, in real time. So, it trains on the world models, which is more simulation, and can also train on the real world data in real time. So, yeah, it’s a really interesting moment. It’s a really interesting moment.

[00:17:37] When do you think, I’m curious, this is not on my question sheet, but when do you think you’ll buy your first humanoid robot?

[00:17:44] As soon as it can do my laundry and fold it. For real. Like for real. Like for real. Like real, real. Like not, a lot of the demos you see out there, I’m going to be honest, a lot of demos you see out there are pre-trained, like a fully autonomous, once I get Rosie from the Jetsons. That’s when I’ll get it. Once it’s Rosie from the Jetsons, bring her on. You know, if she can fold and do my laundry. This is the funny thing. When I wash my dishes, I’ve got a little thing that someone gave me. It says, “Alexa, do the dishes.” You know, I have a dishwasher. That’s the closest to a dishwashing robot that I have access to. But if I could have an actual robot do a lot of that, those tasks that I really don’t want to do at all. I take it.

[00:18:26] Yeah. And I think I say to people that they will have one in ten years, and because I’m an early adopter, I’ll have one in five. And they look at me in a little bit of shock. But actually, when you think about what you just have said about data center build-out, about some of those constraints that could be solved with robots, but the models, the spatial models that help to train the robots, make them more effective. And so you’ve got a sort of loop there, but suddenly the models help the robots, which build the chips, and there’s your loop. Pretty interesting. Well, on maybe a slightly different tangent, with Journey, you did lighting design for the Sphere in Vegas, which is an amazing installation. I’ve not been inside it, I’ve driven past it, and it’s quite extraordinary. And you built Walmart Land on Roblox, which drew a couple of million visits in three days. So, two very different immersive experiences, but both had to work from people all over the world. And that’s one of the things I’m very interested in, is sort of how you make experiences that resonate across different cultures. And I wonder what those two projects taught you about that.

[00:19:30] Yeah. And Journey is a really interesting company. You know, I’m no longer working for Journey, but I’m still a co-founder. I’m still an investor in the company. Our physical design side is the one that did the lighting design for the Sphere. So, I wasn’t as involved, obviously, because that’s not my specialty. I was really involved in Walmart Land. And what I think is really interesting is that the idea that experiences both virtual and in the physical world are evolving to become much more immersive and much more engaging, right? Even retail shopping. I feel like it’s all evolving and changing. So, we’ve definitely learned a lot about how people interact, whether it’s in a physical space or a virtual space. There’s lots of data, lots of really interesting information. And I don’t know, like, I love when people bring these challenges, like these almost impossible challenges, and we make them possible. Right? So, that’s one of the things I’ve loved about the work I’ve done. You know, I did with Journey, the work I continue to do is thinking about that. When someone brings me something and says, like, “Can you do this?” And it almost feels impossible. It’s like, let me find a way to do it. Let me find the right team. Let me find a way to do it. Let’s figure this out. And that’s kind of what Walmart Land felt like, was building this world that we had a very tight timeline, no one had built something at that scale at that moment in Walmart, and then they’re like, “Hey, can you produce a concert with three different artists?” No one had done three different artists inside of a gaming space at that moment. So, yeah, like I love those challenges, and there’s always a learning experience. So, yeah, with Journey, I definitely learned a lot of really interesting things with all these experiences. And I think it’s about thinking big and thinking about what can you solve? What can you do better? What can you do that’s more immersive for the consumer?

[00:21:12] I think that segues a little bit into perhaps a conversation about younger generations, because I’m told that you have children. I have three of my own. And, you know, they are starting to interact with the technologies and at the risk of sounding very much like my Dad did with me. You know, they do it in different ways and not always ways I understand and that kind of thing. And there’s something that you said in a Fortune interview that your kids convert the value of physical goods into Robux, in their heads. The question, I suppose, is because these are just concepts and ideas I wouldn’t have had. So, what are your kids teaching you that the rest of the business world hasn’t figured out yet?

[00:21:50] I’ve got three kids as well. So ages 15, 14 and 9. They are my biggest teachers when it comes to some of these things. They’re actually the ones that got me into Roblox. If it weren’t for my kids playing Roblox, I wouldn’t have built the career I have. Maybe I would have. But I don’t know. They’re the ones that got me playing, right, and got me to really become like an adult expert on the platform at the time I was. So, you know, I think they teach me a lot about not only how they’re using technology, but like, how they’re using it to socialize beyond just social media. I definitely see gaming spaces as their new social networks, gaming spaces as R&D labs for brands and companies to understand where they’re spending their time, where they’re investing their money, right? If you ask a kid, “Hey, would you want 20 Robux, or would you want $20?” If they’re really into gaming, they’re going to want the Robux because it means more to them than going to Target and buying some clothes. So, I think that’s a really interesting kind of perspective as to understand what do they assign value to. So, that’s one thing. And I would also say it’s interesting because the more I talk to, like, my oldest one, my 15-year-old, I’m also starting to sense that while they are excited about AI, there’s also pushback. Because they themselves are hearing like, oh, this is going to change everything. Oh, there’s not going to be any jobs. Like, they’re hearing a certain narrative. And I think they themselves are starting to be like, well, what does this mean for me? Like, what should I even study in college? Like, do I even go to college or things like that? So, I think they themselves are questioning how fast this technology is going, and if that is something that they want, right? Having seen social media, social media started off with a wonderful idea, right? And I’ve benefited from social media, but there’s also very negative things that have impacted younger generations. So, I don’t know, it’s interesting to watch them. Or I’ve had my oldest one time talk to me and say, “Hey, mom, I know you’re doing this with, you know, Claude or whatever, or ChatGPT at the moment.” She’s like, “How much energy is that? Like, is that, like, how much energy is it? Is it costing the world?” You know, so I think it’s interesting to hear that from them, as to they’re just not sitting down and being like, oh, let me just consume, consume, consume, they’re thinking about what this means for them in the longer term.

[00:24:05] Yeah, it’s much more sophisticated, isn’t it? Actually, it’s very multidimensional. And yeah, we should assign a kind of AI maturity to kids that is beyond perhaps what we would expect just because we’re learning it all for the first time, but they’re native. And curious just on the cultural dimension with Roblox. So, if you’ve got a kid in Tokyo, one in Sao Paulo, and they’re in Roblox, are they sharing, like, the same experience, or are they getting different experiences? And like, from a brand’s perspective, how should they be thinking about that? Is it sort of, actually, we want one tone of voice, we want a global experience, we want everyone to sort of experience this the same way, or is it, well, actually, maybe not?

[00:24:53] Well, in order for them to have the same experience, they have to be in the same instance. That is a capacity thing. But regardless of that, that’s kind of more technical. Let’s talk more about the experience. With some of their AI tools, for example, there can be, if they are old enough and they can do chat, they can all speak. They’ll listen, they’ll hear the person in their language, which I think is huge, right? It’s that instant translation and communication. So, I think that’s very powerful. I know that some of the things that they have started to look at is changing the prices, right? Because if I paid a dollar for a skin in the U.S, it means nothing to me in the U.S, a dollar is not much, right? But a dollar might be a lot for a kid playing in, you know, in, say, Pakistan or something like that. Right? So, I think that they themselves are looking at ways of adjusting the pricing, especially the creators. So, yeah, like the experiences will be tailored. And there are certain games that perform really, experiences, let’s call them experiences, that perform really well in one country that might not be as popular in a different country. So, I think there is some of that as well on the trends and who’s playing what, etc. I do think what I am seeing is that there is a global network of creators, right, of developers. It’s called developers or creators on the platform, that could be in any country. I remember one time we had a client that wanted to build a specific experience, and they wanted to kind of work with a creator that was in Brazil. No one spoke Portuguese, but I did. So, I got on the phone and, like, talked to his parents and everything because he was a young creator and kind of figured out a way to partner with him. So, I think we’re seeing those sorts of things, right? You don’t have to be U.S.-based to be successful. We’re also seeing, I think Roblox is, I think the data is like they’re minting more millionaires than YouTube, younger millionaires than YouTube, because it’s still very early, right? There’s a lot of users, but it’s still very early. So, whereas going into YouTube right now and trying to build this massive audience is a lot harder. Whereas if you’re in Roblox and you’re building worlds and you’re doing really well, it’s still early enough that you can become a very successful developer.

[00:26:49] Well, and young enough that you had to speak to the young man’s parents. It’s quite extraordinary.

[00:26:53] I know. Like, he was like 13. Of course, you can talk to the parents first, right? You can’t just be like, “Hey, 13-year-old kid, here’s a deal.” He had never had a friend reach out to him to try to do that. So, yeah, things like that are incredibly interesting to kind of see how things are progressing.

[00:27:10] So, actually, when you think about how that younger generation consume content, it’s very multidimensional. I was talking to someone the other day about how if someone says to you define content, we all kind of revert to how we first experienced it when we were younger. So, for some folks, it might be, oh, content is the written word, or it’s a magazine, or it’s a book. And these days, a younger person might say, oh, content is a short-form video or a game. So, given that the people often making these decisions in companies are not from the same generation as the consumers, what’s the biggest mistake that you see the brands make when they try to reach that generation?

[00:27:46] I think one of the biggest mistakes I see them do is not realizing that sometimes, not always, sometimes the youngest person in the room might be the smartest. I think with AI, that might have changed a little bit. But in the context of gaming and some other things, I still think that they’re like, I know. You know, I know because I read an article. It’s like, no. Some of my favorite experiences have been working with CEOs at some of the world’s top companies and handing them a Nintendo Switch and be like, play Fortnite, right? Watching them play, maybe they’re not gamers, so they’ve never played, but those sorts of things are like you can’t go into these worlds without understanding what they are. It doesn’t mean you have to become a professional gamer, but just get in there, try to see how people play, what they’re doing. So, I think experiencing those sorts of things, trying to really understand or working with the experts that can help you better communicate what you’re doing, better communicate in these experiences, whether it is YouTube, whether it is TikTok, whether it is gaming, or Roblox, whatever it is, right? Yeah, I think it’s kind of a little bit of that.

[00:28:47] Yeah, it’s actually quite profound working with the experts that can help you understand and figure out, you know, how to speak in a common language and get under the skin of the experience. Because I think there’s a trend in companies right now for people to think, well, I can just vibe code my way to any solution. And oftentimes then, you know, an engineering department will say, “Well, we can build you one of those, whatever it might be.” And what’s missing is that domain experience, right? So, you know, you could say, “Oh, vibe code me a game.” But if you’ve never played one, you’re probably not going to come up with something that’s really compelling to the people that have.

[00:29:22] I think there’s some of that where people are thinking, I can just use AI to replace or do anything. At the end of the day, we still need storytellers, we still need people that can work with the technical team, tell the right story, tell the right messaging, communicate in the right way.

[00:29:36] Yeah.

[00:29:36] And that’s the other thing. I think people like, yes, you can buy quite a lot of things, but is it going to be perfect? Is it ready? You know, like, is it final pixel ready? Are most of these engines creating final pixel-ready movies? No, let’s be honest. We’re not there yet. We might get there pretty soon, but you know, not right now. So, I think it’s the same with vibe coding tools. Is it perfect? No. So, some of that. And I think the art of storytelling continues to be incredibly important in this future. And not forgetting that a lot of these models, especially from a language perspective, still hallucinate. They’re not perfect. They’re not fallible. Like, it’s crazy to me that, yeah, they still hallucinate, and sometimes people think, oh, they’re going to give me the right answer. They’re going to give me the perfect answer. It might be close to perfect, but there’s still mistakes being done. So, yeah, I still think we need humans to kind of be part of this.

[00:30:29] Yeah, absolutely. It’s that combination of domain expertise with technical expertise where, in that intersection, I think, is where sort of the magic is. So, maybe I’ll do a couple of quick-fire, sort of, CEO leader-type questions. So, what’s one thing that’s really like you cannot stop thinking about at the moment as a senior leader?

[00:30:51] I would say there’s two things. One of them is the concept of virtual air rights, which doesn’t keep anyone up at night but me. Maybe two more people in the world. Very small club. But the idea is that when you do expand computing into the physical world, like glasses or whatever, devices, there’s gonna be all sorts of devices, pendants, glasses, AirPods with cameras, all these sorts of things, the physical world becomes a canvas. Yes, which is beautiful, but it also becomes real estate. So, that worries me because we’re going to have to, like, figure out who owns the air around you, like what is within earshot and eyesight of you. So, that sounds very black mirror-ish. But I do think it’s something that if hardware progresses is incredibly important. Also, what the robot’s going to see, like what areas are they seeing? You know, they’re seeing the ones and zeros, right, but still, what are the areas that they have access to? So, that keeps me up at night. And I would say the other thing, the other thing that I think about is that a lot of people are running towards AGI as fast as they can. And I question why do we need to get there that fast? And in reality, do we get there with just LLMs? Like, I don’t believe personally that we necessarily get to AGI or, let alone, AI superintelligence, just with the current models and architectures. So, those are things that I kind of think about on a constant basis.

[00:32:15] If you could give one piece of advice to a CEO that was about to enter five new markets at once, what would it be?

[00:32:21] Find the right way to communicate. Don’t only rely on AI and work with experts that can help you and guide you.

[00:32:29] And very last question. For a CEO that’s listening to this thinking about how their brand needs to update, upgrade their communications capability in a world that’s moving incredibly fast, what should they focus on? Where to start? I get that question a lot. Where do we start?

[00:32:46] That’s a hard one. I think that’s like a whole episode of the podcast, right? I would say in my purview, in my expertise, I see gaming as a really important channel to communicate with Gen Z, Gen Alpha, in the future, Gen Beta. They’re not necessarily playing games just yet. But I would say gaming is an underutilized channel.

[00:33:07] That’s really interesting. Yeah, brilliant. Well, Cathy, this has been brilliant. I think ‘air rights’ is definitely going to stay with me. That’s an interesting concept. And actually, the spatial computing, being a mechanism by which the robots, you know, get better, and then they help build the chips, and the whole thing gets, and I think you’re right on world models. We’re going to need those beyond just the language models that we need the machines to start to be able to think in terms of more abstract concepts before we get to AGI. But I do think that the world has changed fundamentally on its axis in the last couple of months.

[00:33:43] 100%. And it’s only going to get more exciting, nerve-wracking too, and it’s not just AI. I think people hyper focus, but the advancements in quantum, the advancements in material sciences, like there’s so many different things that are all converging that I find incredibly interesting at this moment.

[00:34:00] Yeah, it’s really fun. So, we’ve got this younger generation. They don’t think in the same way as we do. They’re visual, they’re experiential, they love storytelling, and I think if that’s where business needs to head, then most of us have got some catching up to do to figure out how we can go to those audiences. So, thanks again, Cathy. We really appreciate it. That’s it for this special edition of In Other Words, a podcast from Phrase. I’ve been, Georg Ell, it’s been a real pleasure stepping in as host to kick off this special CEO-to-CEO series. And again, a massive thank you to Cathy Hackl for joining us. If this episode has got you thinking about what needs to happen when screens disappear, and Gen Alpha grows up, and your brand needs to connect with customers in every market, we’d love to continue that conversation. Head to phrase.com to find out more. For more conversations on leadership, growth and what it really takes to scale globally, subscribe to In Other Words on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening.