Let's go live now to Magic Leap and... Ah, still making millions from made-up tech It's been nearly a year since augmented reality upstart Magic Leap was called out for the fact that its revolutionary technology didn't actually exist. Despite having put out several videos that the startup claimed showed its 3D graphics tech in action – exciting images of whales leaping out of gym floors, and killer robots …
A super-believer founder who seeks out press attention.
Brand-name investors (U.N., China, EU, and anyone looking to put someone else's money in their
pockets)
Big-name board members (Al Gore, Barack Obama and any other politician looking for a global problem to solve that doesn't exist).
Industry buzz and fawning media articles.
Periodic promises of the most amazing doom ever – just sit tight and believe.
The only science involved is "political science", an oxymoron if I've ever heard one.
It's an operating manual, and as a future vapourpreneur, I offer you my thanks.
Initially, I thought, Elizabeth Holmes, Meredith Perry, they had it easy, one smile and a wink, and the VC's were drooling, that won't work for me. Then I saw the pictures of Rony Abovitz, and I thought, yes, in fact that approach could work for me.
So far so good, I have the plan, I have a face (if not a pretty one). Help me out here commantards, because I need a snazzy name, and a vapourware product. Self driving vehicles and AI appear to be the flavour of the day, so I think I should promise a "quantum advance in autonomous vehicle technology" using "secret algorithms derived from protein folding mathematics". Demonstration vehicles would be shown, although they'd really be driven by dwarfs, or remotely controlled by gullible RC enthusiasts to give me a convincing demonstration product. The name? Autonamo sounds good to me, and has an "Autonomy" ring about, suggesting cutting edge software and a high value exit to a flat footed corporate.
I can't do this alone, so who's up for this? There's at least three years fun, fuelled by the cash of gormless VCs, we'll have bean bag offices, attend and speak at global AI and AV conferences (only if they are in nice places), have our own coffee shop (with naked baristas, natch), pool tables, massage at desk, our corporate policies will allow molesting of willing interns, and anything goes when it comes to expenses. Company car policy is Teslas all round. And unlike Uber, there's no sexism here, if we have any ladies willing to sign up for the management team, we'll let you recruit your pick of interns to molest or abuse.
At the end of three years the VCs will be wondering where it all went wrong, but you'll be known as an experienced tech entrepreneur (who has "learnt wisdom from failure"), and can just slide onto another fully funded gig. But be under no illusions, there is a price for this: The two main downsides will be that we will have to have an office in Shoreditch, and any younger male recruits will have to grow a pointy beard and wear a lumberjack shirt in order to keep up with VC expectations.
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My only concern is what will the baristas look like?
Chosen by the management team. Nude baristering is not something for a fully time person, so we'd be able to pick eight - morning and afternoon shifts, for our four day working week. Obviously we'd all need a three day weekend to refresh our creativity, and spend those generous salaries we'd be paying ourselves.
My choice of barista would be somebody of the age and appearance of Michelle Pfeiffer; Female (or gay male) members of the management team might want somebody who looks like a Chippendale; If the choices of some members of the team overlapped, we'd have some spare slots to indulge ourselves with a collective choice.....what's Monica Lewinsky doing these days? On second thoughts, she'd not be on barista duty, she'd be in charge of selecting and managing the interns.
Corporations as solid as M$ have gotten away with vaporware for years. Many computing gadgets and software fail to do what it says on the can.
The problem has been exasperated with the demonstration by the banking industry of how uncomfortable authorities are to collar well-to-do criminals.
Many, many credible people have posted publicly about having experienced a working, delightful Magic Leap demo. Yes it remains to be seen if the technology can be miniaturized/commercialized -- but to place them in the same category as companies with no real working demos or patents is a journalistically unfortunate angle for The Register to take.
FYI, I have no affiliation with the company nor have I received a demo but a simple
Twitter search is all it takes to figure out that many people have tried out their product and seemed to like it.
Please print a retraction or update the article with a truthful counterpoint to your opinions.
"Many, many credible people have posted publicly about having experienced a working, delightful Magic Leap demo."
The same could be said for Waterseer yet after years of "research" and "development" all they managed to produce was a rough beta model which was basically the exact same thing as an average water condenser which can already be bought in stores right now.
A more recent example would be Hyperloop, many "credible people" (mostly journalists seem to speak up though) are raving about that and seem quite excited about the current test pipe which is being build right now. Many have made reports about it and seen the pipe from the inside.
However, much to my surprise, no one has ever mentioned the enormous amounts of rust which can be seen inside. If you look at the edges in almost any video shot from the inside the tube you can easily spot that for yourself. How is a rusted up pipe a good thing for a test track? What kind of engineering skills, or lack thereof, does that demonstrate? I mean, it only costed them a million or so....
Solar 'freakin' roadways anyone? Lets make glass roads (that is going to be so much fun in the rain) and place solar panels inside the roads. You know, the area where cars actually pass over and by doing so will block out the sun so prevent the panels from producing any energy at all. That too got massively positive media coverage. Well, as you might know they actually made a test model which was build for real.
Totally invisible during day time, several panels already broke, the whole thing even caught fire once and most of all: it doesn't collect any energy. It's by far capable of even sustaining itself right now.
In this day and age "credible people" means nothing anymore.
In a totally unrelated example: Last week in the Netherlands a company was going to build on a stroke of land and as determined by national law a group of professional archaeologists screened the area and eventually gave the go for construction because there was nothing there. After the 'go' a group of amateur archaeologists set to work and what do you know?
Those "amateurs" found what could very be the greatest archaeological discovery for the Netherlands in a long time. Hundreds of items and several complete ships were restored. Complete, intact, ships.
You can read the full story (Dutch) here.
Had it been for the "professionals" then we would have missed out on an enormous historical treasure.
SO yeah.... credibility really means very little in this day and age. Because people get often credited for who they are, not for what they did or have done.
Nice quote:
"SO yeah.... credibility really means very little in this day and age. Because people get often credited for who they are, not for what they did or have done."
Techcrunch reported that an NBA star loved the Magic Leap demo https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/13/magic-leap-just-had-some-of-its-secrets-spilled-by-andre-iguodala/amp/
and various stars such as British actor Ricky Gervais as well https://www.roadtovr.com/ricky-gervais-says-magic-leap-will-change-world-company-courts-celebs/amp/
It's entirely plausible that non-technical celebrity types can be wowed by a fake demo that they don't understand so view it as more innovative than it really is--but in Magic Leap's case there are technical publications such as Wired and MIT Review whom have seen the demo as well and they would have been able to say if it was fake which they didn't.
Off topic but responding to your comment: Funny coincidence that you mention Solar Roadways, this year, part of our pitch as a finalist for SingularityU was using hybrid roadways, we looked at Solar Roadways which are super efficient but impractical so went with piezoelectric roadways instead; take a look at two pilot projects being funded by the State of California this year https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/infrastructure/good-vibrations-california-to-test-road-vibrations-as-a-power-source
"It's entirely plausible that non-technical celebrity types can be wowed by a fake demo that they don't understand so view it as more innovative than it really is--but in Magic Leap's case there are technical publications such as Wired and MIT Review whom have seen the demo as well and they would have been able to say if it was fake which they didn't."
Unless, of course, they didn't actually write the articles. Were the articles written by actual reporters for the magazines or were they just ghost-written fluff pieces? Were the articles subject to peer review and verified by third parties, preferably outside the country?
"Twitter search is all it takes to figure out that many people have tried out their product and seemed to like it."
It may come as somewhat of a surprise to you, but there people who post Twitter and Facebook comments because they've been paid to. There are even companies out there who, for a price, will "guarantee" to make you message "trend" by Tweeting it themselves through a myriad of accounts, using more accounts to re-tweet it and pay other to do the same. I would imaging burning though a $$$BEELION could quite easily buy some of that. It's "disruptive advertising", or as we mere mortals call it, lying.
"Many, many credible people have posted publicly about having experienced a working, delightful Magic Leap demo."
Many, many people insist publicly they have been cured by faith healers. I find many, many people an unconvincing standard of proof.
I did some research, kind of - namely checking your account history - and finding that you seem to have signed up just to post your praise of MagicLeap.
So while I'd like to welcome you as a new fellow commentard, please excuse me for doubting your credibility regarding all things concerning MagicLeap.
Ponzis R Us Rule and are a Fab Fabless Means of Pumping and Dumping Flash Crashing Cash when Economies do not Present Wealth for the illusion of Growth.
Who will the Conservative leadership [excuse the oxymoron] try to spin ownership of the Brexit Bill, if they still be hanging on to Parliamentary Power. Do dumb ignorant people pay the price for arrogant political failure or does Carney just write a big bouncy cheque and bring the painful charade to an abrupt end and have everyone pondering on the crazy way things are being done ....... and always always touted in your best interests and in the interests of national security. I know, it's a joke but it isn't funny, is it .
Sure, they've burned through a billion bucks of money that was easily parted from the fools who funded it. Just celebrate the fact this has failed, because otherwise every time you went out you'd have to dodge hundreds of the folk who downloaded apps made with it that are walking down the street just staring at their smartphones watching whales jumping out of the pavement, like a zombie army on some digital LSD trip.
Nice.
"Origin story" my wrinkly old bottom.
That would be HC Andersen "The Emperor's New Clothes"
My jacket. Isn't it magnificent? The shop said it's the lightest, warmest, coolest coat I would ever wear. I can barely feel it when I put it on.....
So there must have been more than a bit of optimism in this article ... https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2016/11/02/inside-magic-leap-the-secretive-4-5-billion-startup-changing-computing-forever/#5cbc1be24223
which in several paragraphs, seems to give the impression the writer had some very concrete experiences with the ML technology.
Or perhaps this is all a misunderstanding, and they're actually doing what they set out to do in 2010 ...
According to past versions of its website, the startup evolved from a company named "Magic Leap Studios" which around 2010 was working on a graphic novel and a feature film series, and in 2011 became a corporation, releasing an augmented reality app at Comic-Con that year.[10]
Reminds me a bit of a little-known scam where a movie production company came into existence just to get its hands on a load of government / EEC grants and funding, which they did ... then the funders said something like, 'Oh, and we want to see the movie' ... at which point the scammers realised they had to make one after all ... (can't remember the name of the movie ... anyone ?)
see also: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/538146/magic-leap-needs-to-engineer-a-miracle/
https://gizmodo.com/how-magic-leap-is-secretly-creating-a-new-alternate-rea-1660441103
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/534971/magic-leap/
"Reminds me a bit of a little-known scam where a movie production company came into existence just to get its hands on a load of government / EEC grants and funding [...] (can't remember the name of the movie ... anyone ?)"
Sorry, no idea. But it reminds me of a stunt that Joe May alledgedly pulled off in WW1.
Already working as a director in Germany, he had to return to Austria for military service. He managed to get posted to a propaganda unit and talked the Austrian military into investing in a brilliant scam: he would develop a projector that could make images appear in the sky, using clouds as a screen. His pich was that he would use images of his wife, acress Mia May, made up as an angel. This was to be used on the eastern front, convincing the Russian footsoldiers that God was on the side of the Austrians, scaring them away.
May used the time and the money to produce a couple of conventional films and get ready to set up his own production company after the war, which he did in 1919. As the Austro-Hungarian empire was gone, so were his investors.
This story is not in the Jimbopedia article linked above; I've read it in Billy Wilder's biography by Hellmuth Karasek (Billy Wilder, eine Nahaufnahme, Heyne, 2002) - which is based on a series of filmed interviews with Wilder that Karasek made together with Volker Schlöndorff called "Billy, how did you do it?" If you like films and are interested in how they are made, this is a very interesting series to watch.
"Reminds me a bit of a little-known scam where a movie production company came into existence just to get its hands on a load of government / EEC grants and funding, which they did ... then the funders said something like, 'Oh, and we want to see the movie' ... at which point the scammers realised they had to make one after all ... (can't remember the name of the movie ... anyone ?)"
Springtime for Hitlers, a musical?
The Producers is what you want. A Mel Brooks flick, if you're interested. Springtime for Hitler was the musical being produced within the film that was supposed to fail, close on opening night, and let them cash in on unused investment. Trouble was, they didn't figure their shoddily-produced tasteless production to be taken as satire.
Keep in mind that many VCs don't invest their own money, but someone else's money from the funds that they are managing.
Therefore, the VCs also have a vested interest in keeping the hype machine going, because then they can keep pretending that it all looked very promising and seemed to offer great returns on their investments -- when they are eventually sued for neglect by the fund's shareholders. Hey, the demos looked great, and how was I supposed to know that the engineering was impossible?
And in the meantime they make a pretty dime for their fund management. Or sitting on the board. Or both. Hey, they've all been pals at the same fraternity!
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