- [Keke] Could I reconstruct the Titanic,
sail it past an iceberg and scream,
"Not this time, sucker!"
- You can do a version of that now.
[upbeat music]
- [Keke] Welcome to "Are We There Yet?"
The show where we take a road trip into the metaverse
while chatting with the most
interesting creators,
educators, and experts
to find out where the metaverse stands now
and what's coming in the future.
I'm Keke Palmer.
Riding shotgun with me today
is Vishal Shah,
Vice President of the metaverse
at Meta.
Welcome, Vishal!
- Thank you so much,
thanks for having me.
- Thanks for being here.
Are you ready to get on the virtual road?
- I think it's time.
Let's do it.
- Let's do it.
[engine and digital beeping sounds]
All right!
- This is cool.
- So, Vishal, you ever take any road trips?
Any cool stories?
- So, right after college,
my dad and I did a cross country drive
just the two of us.
Something we wanted to do for a long time.
I grew up loving cars 'cause of my dad,
so it was like a cool bonding moment for us.
- I love that!
Family memories are always the best, aren't they?
- The best.
- It makes us who we are.
I wanna shift gears for a second and ask,
how did you even get into technology?
- Well, at first I appreciated the shifting gears pun...
- Right, you know, I wanted you to see it
and you saw it.
- I did, I did.
I got you.
You know, I've always been into
tech and products...
You know, I'm a nerd.
Like I've always been a nerd.
- Me too.
I got my first pair of glasses
'cause I built a screensaver
for my optometrist.
- You wheeled a deal with your optometrist?
- Yeah, I mean...
- It's no wonder you're the Vice President of the metaverse
this is some major stuff going down!
So, before we get really into it, Vishal,
I gotta ask big picture, you know?
'Cause I'm sure everybody wants to know,
and I personally wanna know, as well...
How do you describe, you know, in simple terms
the metaverse to someone that has no clue
what it's about?
- I think the simplest way of thinking about it is
the metaverse is the next phase of the internet.
And the main difference between the internet we use today
and the next phase
is that we can feel like we are there with other people
in a way that we can't feel
in our digital experiences today.
And we're gonna see things around us.
We're gonna be able to
touch things with our hands.
- Well, don't start touching stuff in here, Vishal,
'Cause there's no...
- I don't know what all these buttons are gonna do
- We don't know where we're gonna end up.
- Yea, yea.
We're going deep into the metaverse.
[Keke] What is that?
[Keke] A flamingo in the middle of the street?
[Keke] How am I gonna get past that?
[Vishal] We're just gonna go around it, obviously.
- So, let me get this right...
You're the Vice President of the metaverse, at Meta
but you're not the Vice President
of the entire metaverse, right?
I mean, am I sitting with royalty?
- No, no, there's no one person
or one company that will control
and/or create the metaverse.
It's like saying there's one person who runs the internet.
- I thought it was me who ran the whole internet...
- So, that's the actual answer.
[laughter]
No, at Meta we've been working
on a product called Horizon Worlds.
- Horizon Worlds, okay.
- I should get you to intro this product.
- I know, I'm ready Horizon Worlds...
It sounds very on the horizon.
- That-that is why it's called Horizon Worlds.
That's right.
But the idea is that
as opposed to Meta,
a company building all the experiences
that people will have,
Horizon Worlds lets you
or anyone
create an experience.
- So I really love this,
so what you're saying is within the metaverse
I can create my own places.
Like it's not only one company
or the people that have the big bucks,
it can actually be
anyone that has an idea?
- That's right.
And I think this is really an extension
of how technology has democratized access
- Yes!
- to tools and to creativity...
Like think about 10 years ago, did we all think we'd have
a video studio in our pockets?
- Okay? No, I know we didn't.
- Right, we didn't.
Like the phone kind of evolved to be that. And similarly
before, it took writing,
you know, thousands of lines of code
to build a virtual environment.
And now we're building
products where using your hands
in VR,
you can build an environment.
- So, are people building things
in a metaverse that even you didn't expect?
- Yeah, all kinds of interesting things.
We've got people building
comedy clubs,
speakeasies,
haunted houses,
meditation spaces,
and all these things, the thing that's common
is they're experiential.
- When you talk about speakeasies
or going to bars and clubs, I mean, are there
people that are gonna help me to keep my own space?
- Well, look, the most important thing I think is
for people to feel
safe
- Yeah
- And to feel comfortable.
Also when you are in a public space,
what kind of
superpowers can we give you
to control your own experience?
- I like the sound of that.
- So imagine you're out in the world, physical world
and someone's harassing you or irritating you
wouldn't it be nice if you could
make a gesture
and block them?
- Oh my gosh, I would love to do that.
I would just love to be like,
[snap and click sounds]
Something like that [laughs]
- That I will, I ...
That's the gesture we're gonna use just FYI
- and I need the tongue click
[clicking sound]
- Okay, you know... I got it, I got it.
- Thanks.
- But I think it's a really important thing
to give people this-the feeling that this is for them.
- Okay Vishal, we talked about a lot of big ideas...
But to help me understand things a little bit better,
I thought we could play a game.
Are you up to that?
- All right, let's play a game.
- [giggles] All right.
[engine revs]
- This is Now,
Future,
Never.
I'm gonna suggest some things that I can do
in the metaverse.
And then you're going to answer with:
Now, Future, or Never.
- Ready?
- Seems simple enough.
Let's do it.
- Can I take my grandma bungee jumping?
- Now.
- Can I make a clown avatar that isn't scary?
- Now.
- Make a salad with no food in it?
- That's a really deep question actually, Keke
let's say future.
- Okay.
Visit future Mars with human colonies on it?
- Some version of now and future, yep
- Build a human-sized web and hang around it like a
human-sized spider?
- I think you could do a version of that now.
- Okay.
Can I divide by zero in the metaverse?
- Listen, we can break physics, but we can't break math
[laughs]
- Create a giant virtual banana to go rock climbing on?
- Now.
- What if the banana is rotting?
- That's I guess the future,
since it needs to rot.
- Answered that very cleverly...
What if the banana is screaming "Don't climb me"?
I just threw that one in for kicks. [laughing]
- That's now, why not?
- Okay.
Reconstruct the Titanic,
[horn blows]
Sail it past an iceberg, and scream
"Not this time, sucker!"
- You can do a version of that now.
- And save my good ol' Jack?
- Now.
- Good.
- Can you become a doctor without having to do gross stuff?
- Let's say that's, that's definitely a never
- Attend a virtual wedding?
- Now.
- Go backstage and meet your favorite band?
- Now.
- Go backstage and meet your favorite band's parents?
[guitar sounds]
- I... I guess now?
If that's important to you? [laughs]
- Can I host this show from my bed at home?
- In the future?
Yeah...
I prefer this though
- I don't.
[Vishal and Keke laugh]
Okay, well thanks for humoring me, Vishal.
That was very informative.
Now let's press another button and see where else we can go.
After learning everything that I've learned
I'm not exactly sure
fine art and design are my thing
So uh, am I out?
- So no, I don't think so at all.
I think this is what's awesome about the tools
we're building is that
it doesn't have to be a fine art or design,
it's whatever you wanna make
and the tools to build things are available now.
- Okay, but Vishal,
you're like a black belt in the metaverse
So, I mean, come on now... it can't be that easy?
- Good ideas,
aren't easy.
- No...
- Good ideas are hard, and that's
that's what creativity is for
So I can't tell you how to be creative.
I don't know if you need my help for that.
That said, the tools are pretty easy.
- So wow, okay-with these tools... who knows what Keke's
going to be doing next...
Okay, but I got another one for you.
- Okay.
- I'm a busy woman, you know, I'm over here
doin' big boss things
Sometimes I don't have all the time
to put into building in the metaverse.
- Yeah.
- So, what do I do?
- Some people are experts already,
and they've spent a lot of time
in these tools
and what we've built
is ways for them to share
their creations so
other people can use them.
- Okay.
- But let's take that even a step further.
How do you make it so that maybe just by
communicating with an AI
artificial intelligence builder bot,
you can tell it what you want it to build
and it'll build it for you?
- Now, wait a minute... You telling me I could
vocally delegate to somebody?
- Something tells me, you know how to do that?
- Oh yes...
that's exactly up my alley, it sounds like I'm gonna fit
right in, in the metaverse.
- And again, you need to have an idea.
It's not like you say, build me something interesting
and something interesting gets built.
You still have to have some concept,
but then the tools to make it come to life
will just become easier and easier to use.
How do you access Horizon Worlds from a phone?
or from a computer?
How do you build using tools you already have?
And that's some of the things that we're working on now too.
- Oh, you had me at 'delegate'.
This is so exciting!
[upbeat music]
I thank you so much for being on the show Vishal!
This has been really informative.
- Thank you so much for having me, it's been a blast.
- Join us next time you guys and see where else we go
into the metaverse, and who else is going to be joining us
on our journey.
By the way, Vishal, have you been looking at the
navigation system? 'Cause have no idea where we're going...
[Vishal laughs and engine revs]