Future Education Podcast | University of the Universe

About the Guest(s):

Dr. Chris Harz is a renowned technologist, strategist, and storyteller with a remarkable career spanning the connection of entertainment, defense, and education. He has an extensive background working with prestigious organizations like DARPA, the U.S. Department of Defense, NATO, the RAND Corporation, and leading aerospace firms. Dr. Harz was a pioneering player in the video game revolution and partnered with Nolan Bushnell of Atari to advance virtual reality, serious games, and immersive storytelling for military and civilian education. As an advisor to University of the Universe, Dr. Harz is reimagining education by merging human mentorship with cutting-edge technology.

Episode Summary:
In this episode of The Future Education Podcast, host Eathan Janney delves into an engaging conversation with Dr. Chris Harz, a visionary in the field of educational technology. Dr. Harz shares his extensive experience in developing advanced simulation training and collaborative learning systems, highlighting his work with organizations like DARPA and the U.S. Department of Defense. The episode unravels the evolution of virtual reality, gaming, and immersive experiences as transformative tools for education. Dr. Harz reveals the insights and strategies that have driven successful implementations, from training military personnel to enhancing learning outcomes in civilian sectors.

The discussion ventures into the essence of gamification and immersive technology in education, emphasizing the timeless principles that guide effective teaching methodologies. With insights into the intricate balance of engaging audio-visual elements and the importance of training educators, Dr. Harz provides a compelling vision for the future of learning. The episode highlights the critical role of interdisciplinary collaboration, speculative innovations on the horizon, and the challenges faced in bridging educational technology across various demographics, including veterans and incarcerated individuals. From the expansive possibilities of AI-assisted learning to the interplay of conscious and subconscious training methods, Dr. Harz outlines a roadmap for revolutionizing education.

Key Takeaways:
  • Dr. Harz emphasizes the transformative power of virtual reality and augmented reality in creating immersive educational experiences that enhance learning outcomes.
  • The integration of gamification in education has seen success in engaging students, yet its widespread potential remains untapped due to the lack of trained educators.
  • Effective education leverages core human inclinations like visual learning, storytelling, and competition to foster deeper engagement and understanding.
  • The future of education hinges on interdisciplinary collaboration and adapting teaching methods to incorporate emerging technologies like AI and immersive simulations.
  • Areas such as teaching incarcerated individuals, upskilling veterans, and addressing subconscious decision-making in learning are ripe for technological innovation.
Resources:
We invite you to listen to the full episode for a deeper dive into the future of education, enriched by innovative technological advancements and the experiences of leaders like Dr. Chris Harz. Stay tuned for more insightful discussions on The Future Education Podcast.

Creators and Guests

Guest
Dr. Chris Harz

What is Future Education Podcast | University of the Universe?

The Future Education Podcast explores how humanity will learn at the very edge of its evolution. Hosted by the University of the Universe, our mission is to reinvent higher education so it not only sustains but uplifts civilization into the next millennium. Each episode features pioneering educators, visionary scholars, breakthrough technologists, and cultural innovators as they uncover what’s essential for the future of learning—from cradle to maturity. From cutting-edge research labs to transformative ventures, we spotlight the people and ideas expanding both human potential and our shared potential as a society—laying the foundations for a wiser, more enduring future across the vast expanse of space and time yet to unfold.

Eathan Janney: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of The Future Education Podcast. I'll introduce our esteemed guest for today. His name is Dr. Chris Hartz. He is a technologist, strategist, and storyteller who has spent his career connecting entertainment, defense education and more. He has worked with organizations that include darpa, the US Department of Defense, nato.

Eathan Janney: At the Rand Corporation and leading aerospace firms to develop advanced simulation training and collaborative learning systems. A veteran of early video game industry and collaborator with Nolan Bushnell Atari. Chris helped pioneer the use of virtual reality, serious games and immersive storytelling for both military and civilian learning.

Eathan Janney: As an advisor to University of the Universe, he contributes to reimagining education that merges human mentorship with advanced [00:01:00] tech training the minds that will build our future. Dr. Chris Harts, welcome to the Future Education Podcast.

Chris Harz: Thank you.

Eathan Janney: it's wonderful to have you here. we've had some.

Eathan Janney: Long and interesting conversations off record. I thought it would be wonderful to get you on the podcast and share some of your wonderful ideas, experiences and thoughts about, education with the rest of the world here. first topic I'd like to visit. Is to talk about, your origins and where you've come from.

Eathan Janney: if you could touch upon, how you got into the domain of education as a profession and how soon after that, or whether it was concurrently you started to explore these innovative and unique methods of education.

Chris Harz: Sure. I started, At UCLA was unhappy in engineering. It was all about equations and I tend to be more a visual, [00:02:00] learner and, managed to get a, a job while still in college at the Rand Corporation, which is the military think tank in Santa Monica.

Chris Harz: And while I was there being a programmer for them, I saw, them into war gaming. They were big on doing war games. To, let the military know what sort of options they had. In fact, my boss, said, something over and over again that's ingrained on my brain. His, motto was First, expand the option range.

Chris Harz: 'cause military was, sort of going, this is the answer. He said, what are the other options? And he must've been doing good. 'cause , he left Rand and became Secretary of Defense, and then director of the cia. during the, crisis in Cuba.

Chris Harz: He went to, to meet with president and the military had presented him with the [00:03:00] option to invade. he said, let's expand the option range and what else can we do? And one of those things was to surround them and choke off supplies coming in. So that worked off great without going to war.

Chris Harz: First expanding range. And of course with him I was able to go to CIA and lots of organizations. then started going into darpa. DARPA did a lot of early video game work, including a $500 million system for online video games.

Chris Harz: that was great fun to work with. And then that spread to allies and NATO and, whatnot. The name of it was Simnet Simulation Network. Up to them. Simulators were like a thing, like just an airplane. But this was, getting. Common, common languages, if you will.

Chris Harz: So [00:04:00] airplane simulators could talk with tank simulators, could talk with helicopters, and so on. I got to work on that. Let me tell you a real quick story since you mentioned Nolan Bushnell. I was working with the tank command at the armored command of the US Army, and I went to visit the commander.

Chris Harz: At at two star, uh, Bob, and he said, Chris, what's going on with my education? my, training materials are all on a shelf gathering dust while my soldiers, the tank crews are off playing video games. I said, let's go talk with Nolan Bushnell and ask him. we flew out to see him and he explained all the things, the bells and whistles.

Chris Harz: don't just train to a certain point, have levels of training, so there's always something to look forward to, leaderboards to get competition going and so on. So , [00:05:00] we jack together a desktop training system, several of 'em that used his knowledge and delivered them to Fort Knox, the tank school.

Chris Harz: a few weeks later, I, flew out to see Bob the Commandant and he invited me to the O Club for drinks. I asked, how's it going? he said, last night, the tank crew broke into the training room after hours started competing on the training systems and betting cases of beer. On the outcome.

Chris Harz: And then he clinked glasses and he said, I've never been so proud. So that's the difference that educational technology can make as opposed to, putting a bunch of equations on a board or having somebody lecture upfront.

Eathan Janney: It's incredible insights I actually just released an episode.

Eathan Janney: Interviewing a gentleman [00:06:00] named Sebastian Borer who created, a Web3, create your own adventure gaming system called Sandbox, where you can build things own digital assets and trade them. that led to some reflections that we're in games everywhere, whether we know it or not.

Eathan Janney: when you are on Instagram or Facebook or, you know, these other platforms, the, the likes are like the points, right? , The number of followers , are the different levels that you can reach, right? , And he who is gamifying our experience in such a way, that we're enjoying it or come back for more.

Eathan Janney: Is really teaching us whether we like it or not, right. Teaching us and training us to do what that system requires. And I think one of the goals based on my conversations with you and others that do gaming in education is , through University of the Universe to create games with positive outcomes [00:07:00] for the individual and the society that are just like you talked about.

Eathan Janney: Right. That are so. Fun, addictive, enriching that people can't, help but be engaged in that type of learning.

Chris Harz: Yeah, just as a quick aside, it can be more than just normal kids I consult to a company in Santa Monica headed by David Sunshine, that, teaches autistic children.

Chris Harz: they are impervious to normal kinds of, education of somebody preaching at them. Whereas if they do , a combination of music and video games, that takes a different path in the brain and they learn, vocabulary, drills, they start getting competitive. They come alive. It is so incredible.

Chris Harz: To, see, that happen. It's very much like the movie, the King's speech that actually happened, by the way. With King George Vi. [00:08:00] They tried everything conventional to train him, to stop stuttering and it didn't work. taking music with a different pathway. he was able to, quit stuttering and start talking on the radio.

Eathan Janney: and, I don't have all the details on it, but since I've studied neuroscience, a bit, music engages the motor system at a deeper level and the dopamine system at a deeper level, and the brain system at a more fundamental level. Basal ganglia, for example, where, you can't help but engage and move and complete actions as opposed to stuttering through them.

Eathan Janney: So it makes sense. It's counterintuitive. to go back to this theme, expand the options, expand the option space. I wanna talk to you about the evolution of virtual reality and augmented reality, and collaborative networks as well. you've been there with a firsthand look at the evolution, of all this from inception of the concept of virtual [00:09:00] reality, to, you know, implementations today, that are quite advanced and are headed in the future to God knows where.

Eathan Janney: What are your thoughts about engagement of, virtual reality and augmented reality and evolution?

Chris Harz: Sure. . virtual reality was the first to, really kick off using headsets of, different kinds. it creates a computer generated world. for our tanks, we created a battleground.

Chris Harz: you thought you were in a tank and started shooting, but nobody got killed, actually getting killed virtually, was a great learning experience. Kind of got crazy,, if people, made a mistake and, got killed in a battle, they learned really quick.

Chris Harz: May not be recommended for children's, learning, but, that creates a whole different world You're using the existing world and your headset measures the distances [00:10:00] around with lidar and then puts overlays onto that, real world. the army has a really big.

Chris Harz: Program on that, going on now where you put on the headset and you can look out at the real world and see the enemy with, augmented, light or infrared and see the distances involved and what resources? You have so-called situational awareness.

Chris Harz: they're planning on spending $21 billion on that, , system for ar. People who got into that early on were like BMW car companies 'cause they train mechanics to open the hood. Then to see the different parts of the engine and the overlay would be, Hey, here are the tools you need, here's what you would disconnect or connect or whatnot.

Chris Harz: So they got into that and it was great for training mechanics, [00:11:00] for medical command. I, I worked with a colonel in the Army Medical Command and for the Army medics, the . 64 MLS out in the field. They were seeing different situations and they just weren't trained in it. So they needed, on the spot, training.

Chris Harz: And they were able to do that with these headsets where an expert MD or somebody a thousand miles away would be looking over their shoulders and going, oh, you need to clamp off this, artery. You need to do this. The other thing. They were able to, do, on the spot training from a thousand miles away with overlays on the actual body of the, patient for xr.

Chris Harz: It's a combination of those, and Apple and others are getting into that. AI got overlaid on that, early on for, doing pattern recognition. Hey, this has been happening over [00:12:00] and over again. You may want to, watch out for this.

Eathan Janney: Wow, there, there's so many cool things going on.

Eathan Janney: and things have been evolving in such interesting directions. And of course with the resources that are developing now in ai, we can imagine they're gonna, expand even further. now when it comes to these immersive technologies. can you talk a little bit about where we're really truly improving learning outcomes, and where there might be some hype or, you know, that's this is the right direction to, to go in this space versus a different direction.

Chris Harz: there's lots of hype. each of these has limits

Chris Harz: as an example, when we were making, tank simulators network together. Something wasn't clicking. I was watching these guys at Fort Knox we had good visuals, but they weren't immersed. And I went, huh, something's missing. So I got the head sound guy from the Star Wars program and I sat him in one and said, what's [00:13:00] missing?

Chris Harz: And he said, your audio is crap. So they had two, chief speakers up front. And he said, people don't get immersed from stuff up front. So he got the Boston acoustic speakers and the surround sound, and in the back he put in subliminal things, subconscious things like tiger growls

Chris Harz: That, make the, the brain afraid, you know, the, the, the animal brain afraid. So he put those in and , we install those on some of the simulators. Then I watched the next run through where, I watched this captain who had, a tank company that's 14 tanks, 14 simulators, and they're going into battle

Chris Harz: He's yelling, he's screaming into his, Audio set. And then he ran outta gasoline. I was screaming, come on, I need gas. I need gas. And in his vision ports, he saw a tanker pulling up next to him, [00:14:00] virtually pulling up next to him. And he screamed, hang on, I'll help you. And he, uh, dropped his mic and opened up the door and jumped out.

Chris Harz: And he stood there dazzled. This air conditioned giant hall full of the simulator cabins. He thought he was there. . He was immersed. He thought he was there. And at that point I knew, uh, we had something. And lessons learned. I can send them to you sometime.

Chris Harz: Uh, one of the lessons, uh, 10 lessons learned from Simnet was, uh, a dollar spent on audio. Uh, buys you more than $10 spent on anything else.

Eathan Janney: Wow. And it's so counterintuitive. I love hearing that. Of course. I have a musical background. everything from playing the piano to tuning the piano.

Eathan Janney: Right. I've learned how to do that. so of course I have fun hearing how important audio is, that's a tenfold return on [00:15:00] investment of something that seems relatively simple. I mean,, the amazing thing about audio is, it's not some piece of equipment, right?

Eathan Janney: you can have digital audio that does a very good job. It's kind of like a low impact lift to insert the audio into the system. Yeah. Very cool.

Chris Harz: Yeah. , And you need to play with it as you already know. for instance, we got. the sounds of the gun in the tank and the F 16 airplanes

Chris Harz: We got the most expensive microphones in the world. We got that sound copied. Exactly, but when we, put 'em into the simulator, the tankers, the crew said that's not the way it sounds to them. we had to crank up the volume because with their emotional reception the sounds were much louder than they were in real life.

Chris Harz: So what we coined then was, sometimes in vr, perfect, is not good enough.

Eathan Janney: [00:16:00] Fascinating, , fascinating domain. And it's just, it's also fascinating to see how this all evolved. How. How individuals are coming upon these realizations, you know, somewhat counterintuitively. And of course the, the, the theme here is to expand the pool of options, clearly. I love that theme myself.

Eathan Janney: I think that's part of why I'm driven to, Put interdisciplinarity into what we're doing with the University of the Universe, bringing disciplines together that you might not traditionally do. we're planning an event in March, for example, where we'll bring together quantum computing, education, entrepreneurship, give them some time to simmer with each other in their domains of interest and gives them some time together.

Eathan Janney: And, yeah, I'm learning here, which I've communicated with you. By putting two things that sound a little bit, um, like, uh, like odd bedfellows, you know, quantum computing and workforce education, you find out that, um, uh, [00:17:00] there are, there is a huge need in quantum computing for not the PhD students who know the advanced math and calculus and whatnot, but someone who probably could go from being a car mechanic, to being a mechanic.

Eathan Janney: For a quantum computer within maybe a three month time span. So I love this theme.

Chris Harz: Lemme do, one comment on that, on critical people that you need to, do these things.

Eathan Janney: Mm-hmm.

Chris Harz: Uh, that we discovered. And DARPA has a three plus billion dollar a year budget, but really high tech stuff. So it's a great place to work for 'cause they're willing to take risks.

Chris Harz: one of the things that we discovered was, , is absolutely , crucial to have a go-between. So for instance, I did a training game for the New York Fire Department, , Carnegie Mellon. We had some really good computer programmers and the gamers and whatnot, but.

Chris Harz: They weren't [00:18:00] hitting it right, they didn't understand fire departments, and the fire department didn't understand gamers. So I had to find somebody with a foot in both camps. The technical term is an interlocutor, I found such a guy. he was able to, uh, translate, Hey, we need this.

Chris Harz: gamers and then back again, and this was absolutely critical, especially for rapid prototyping. The thing you come up with isn't perfect. It doesn't hit the spot. So you need somebody who understands, oh, this is gonna change and improve.

Chris Harz: Don't worry about it. Let's try it out in this early version right now. I'll give you a quick example. two of the things we needed for the fire department was in the New York subway, poisonous gas and whatnot, released in the New York subway. And we said that, gee, the, the turnstiles on the New York subway [00:19:00] are really hard to model.

Chris Harz: we're talking with our interocular lieutenant. he said, I don't care about the turnstiles. you can just walk through. Some people do that anyway. What I object to is how clean everything is. New York subways don't look like that. Every, firefighter going through there will go, where the hell am I?

Chris Harz: You need to put some junk and dirt on the floors. So we did that, which was much easier to do. On another one. we had to, show, glass breaking during a fire. And that was hard to model. It would take weeks and weeks and weeks. And, uh, uh, we happened to have our audio guy there at the meeting. He said, why don't I just do the sound of breaking glass?

Chris Harz: Everybody knows what that is. Just go from shiny to block with a saddle breaking glass. And, we checked, they said, sure. So in 30 minutes, we were able to [00:20:00] do, what would've taken, a month, to do in, um, uh, in, uh, uh, CGI the interlocutor has a critical role in, uh, both saving your costs and reducing development time.

Chris Harz: Especially for rapid prototyping.

Eathan Janney: Thanks for sharing that. You have such wonderful stories, that really share such high impact stuff. I have a lot of respect for the fact that not only have you done education, you know, we can do education, about anything, you know, casually, I learn how to learn how to play the piano, but one thing that you're especially, immersed in, to use a word that applies elsewhere in your work.

Eathan Janney: Is critical situations, fire departments, military uses, this is gonna become more and more important as our future becomes more critical. I mean, we're , we're reaching sort of dire, dire circumstances in certain domains. Where everyday life is becoming critical, that we really learn a new way [00:21:00] so very much appreciate that experience.

Chris Harz: last comment on that, I worked with FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security. one of the, uh, uh, real threats of course is hacking . Cyber warfare. for instance, we did a war game down in Long Beach, Los Angeles, the Port of LA and Long Beach where, we had the heads of the Navy and all kinds of government heads taking part in it, and the enemy was, uh, uh, cyber attacking storage tanks of poison gas or chlorine gas and opening the valves and, and, uh, so on.

Chris Harz: So we're, looking at, uh. How to, fight this exercising your system is, uh, uh, a real biggie to try it out in real life because they, uh, found that there were back doors they hadn't realized until they tried it in, real life as a, as a, an exercise.

Eathan Janney: Three topics I [00:22:00] wanna just, just cover briefly here. One is education. Today what you're seeing is working, you know, beautifully, on the higher end of things. Could be counterintuitive stuff. It could be some advanced crazy stuff. I also want. your opinion on timeless principles of education.

Eathan Janney: I'm curious about you, what you have as opinions. Like there's certain things that expand span across the centuries that work in educational systems, be it mentorship or apprenticeships or, certain types of, systems around how the education is delivered.

Eathan Janney: Socratic method, for example. Um, and then also. Future. Like what do we think is coming down the line? It's speculative. We'll have a bit of fun, but maybe we'll come up with something interesting. So what's working today? What do you see as timeless? Like it's been around for centuries and probably will be for more and what's kind of cool on the horizon for education?

Chris Harz: Sure. Uh, so to start with, I'll condense a briefing that I've given to [00:23:00] the, uh, assistant. , Head of the Department of Education with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for training the lack of, education in video games in vr XR of the teachers. So the, uh, uh, it's, uh, T three train the Trainers.

Chris Harz: Mm-hmm. And we, um. Uh, tried for instance, different schools to introduce video games, various, uh, colleagues at different universities, Washington, and so on, that ran tests of, uh, teaching math by a video game versus the conventional, traditional way, and they wiped them out. They were just incredibly successful in doing that.

Chris Harz: 'cause that's how the human mind learns. It learns with visuals, it learns with stories, it learns with, competition, [00:24:00] with group learning, playing off of each other. the problem is. That, all the efforts for that have failed because the teachers have not been trained in how to use video games.

Chris Harz: And there, there's an English study in the UK where they found they're actually afraid of them. Because they figured the students will know more about video games and computers than them, and we'll make them look like fools. So there's huge potential for K 12, or you name it. yeah, especially stem, but just about every field, using vr, xr, but it can't be implemented because no one is paying attention to the T three component of it.

Chris Harz: the, uh, military is probably at, I found the CIA, their science and technology division is, uh, probably paying more attention to it than anyone else, but K 12 and [00:25:00] schools have no clue about, using those in the classroom 'cause the teachers aren't educated, in it.

Chris Harz: So the first thing that would make a huge difference would be training the teachers and showing them using advanced training methods, so that they realize it's not how much of a computer dwe you are, it's all the underlying principles of training, and you can totally master that.

Chris Harz: Then moving on for, using competition. I flew out to the, university for, cyber war. the DOD and DHS have, published that there are a hundred thousand jobs for cyber war experts in every private field because it's such a big thing.

Chris Harz: The deputy head of the FBI told me one of the biggest growing businesses is cyber war. These guys are, [00:26:00] holding up hospitals, holding up power stations, whatnot. Hey, pay us 10, $20 million, or else will shut you down, and you will be able to recover from that. So that's a huge thing. The problem is.

Chris Harz: the way it's taught right now is like a marginal line defense. at this Southern, university of Louisiana, they actually had the students in competing teams. they were learning offense and defense, but they were doing competition.

Chris Harz: Competition, which nobody else was, using, and came up with brilliant solutions of, for that. So using those kinds of psychological things of psych, of competition, of visuals, of, uh, leaderboards as rewards, for, you know, exceedingly exceeding our, uh, that is the future. If you can pull that off.

Eathan Janney: It's almost as if you've [00:27:00] answered all three here in the same statement here. You know, I, I asked about what's working now. , I asked about what's timeless and I asked about , what's coming for the future and what I picked apart from what you said. is there things that are working now, for example, like gaming and education?

Eathan Janney: But they're not widely distributed, you know, for, and that's the kind of where you hear people say, the future is here, but it's just not widely distributed. That's working now, gaming education, but what's not working about it is the expansion, the implementation, the support network around it.

Eathan Janney: the reasons why it's working, I think brought out some of the timeless principles, which were a bit, A skew from what I was delivering is ideas, you know, mentorship, you know, guild systems. Almost like asking you to bring up some antiquated thing from the medieval times about how education worked then, and it still does now, but you've really just brought up nothing historical, but just something about human nature, right?

Eathan Janney: What works in education is what works in your normal social. Engagement in life, you know, [00:28:00] of interacting with other people, having some fun, getting a little bit competitive, right? These are just principles, that work , and they don't even have a name, because they're so ingrained in just how we operate as humans.

Eathan Janney: and what you've mentioned here, what's the future? I suppose the future is solving some of these problems, in such a way that we can make learning important skills for the future as second nature as we operate, normally in our, in our everyday lives.

Chris Harz: You mentioned, uh, in the past centuries that, there'd be a skilled person and then he'd have an assistant that would, help him and do the mopping and sweeping up and over time learn the skill. that's the way it was done for thousands of years, that needs to be accelerated .

Chris Harz: For instance, I was at a command and control center for water purification and making a mistake could kill hundreds of people, uh, in that particular center. The problem was, doing the [00:29:00] knowledge elicitation for the expert. How do you capture his or her knowledge and put it into a learning set, like a game?

Chris Harz: for this, that we managed to get a system where we replicated all the controls and came up with crises and, uh, whatnot. And then watch that the experts were, then responding to that, which, switches, they flipped what dials they, responded to watch them through the whole sequence.

Chris Harz: We also did that for the, uh, air Force, in a program called Pilots Associate because people had been trying to, oh, get the pilot to describe what he's doing. Pilots are not writers. They can't do it. They can only describe what they're doing with visuals and hey, who was there behind me? Or then I did this,, graphically with visuals.

Chris Harz: So, uh, there is [00:30:00] a huge shortage where guys, older guys are retiring. But no training for the, younger guys. Yeah. So doing that, that's part of ai, the knowledge of citation, modeling what people do graphically so that the younger generation can, take it up, and that would be great.

Chris Harz: Whether for really young kids or the guys later on doing critical stuff. Like, uh, uh, a war public health or of course medicine.

Eathan Janney: it is very important and I've been engaged in a bit of that

Eathan Janney: it is, it's very meaningful work too. because the individuals that have the knowledge would love to share it in whatever way they can. it's very fulfilling. I've also seen for the individuals who, who have just baked in knowledge, they're almost hungry to share it, you know, and have some means that it be passed along.

Chris Harz: [00:31:00] Yeah, in my humble opinion, it'd be great if we had easier ways of, uh, trading music. I mean, I played the ukulele. You're probably aware that, the expert on intelligence gardener at at Harvard, said there are eight different types of intelligence.

Chris Harz: one is iq. I mean, I'm a member of mens. Uh, that's fun, but that's basically on verbal skills, reading and such. Uh, there is music which is totally different from that. You can be a genius in one and, and dumb as hell. And the other there is, mathematics. The two have some correlation, but math is a separate intelligence, uh, proprioceptive, like how good you are at basketball is yet another.

Chris Harz: So recognizing, somebody's skills in one set is, uh, uh, great rather than thinking it's all about, iq.

Eathan Janney: You have so much to share and you're so up to date on [00:32:00] everything and so much, you know, kind of behind the scenes stuff we don't always get to hear about. I appreciate you joining us today.

Eathan Janney: before we wrap, any final thoughts, final words, words of wisdom, places people should go to find something out about? You know, you have some books that have been published and, uh, you have a website. tell the listeners what you wanna tell them with your time here.

Chris Harz: Sure , you mentioned some, there are some areas of education. people think, oh, everything's all handled already. It is. So far from that. I had, a meeting a couple of months ago with Peter Diamandes, at an AI conference, and I said, you know, Peter, every presentation was on the conscious mind.

Chris Harz: You know, make it better, make our consciousness better, blah, blah, blah. premise is over 80%, 80 to 90% of our decisions what we do in life are made by the subconscious mind. And there was not a single one of those that addressed that. And he [00:33:00] laughed and said, Chris, I agree. Here's the, uh, a card for one of my, , assistance, if you come up with something, please get ahold of us. So I'm, I'm working at looking at that now, how to educate the subconscious mind, , for looking at the things that, keep you from your goals because there's the mind thinking it's doing a good thing will, create.

Chris Harz: mine fields and, uh, uh, stop you from reaching a goal. And there's ways to detect those and, uh, get around them. So AI for the subconscious mind would be terrific. we mentioned, education for incarcerated. What an ROI that have for the US since it has more incarcerated by numbers and percentage.

Chris Harz: Than any other country on Earth. And those guys have a really, uh, high rate of recidivism. Those guys are [00:34:00] back in jail in six months. But if you train them, and something useful to do, and this has been demonstrated over and over, it can't be normal lectures with a, with uh, equations on a board or somebody.

Chris Harz: Preaching it needs to be like for kids, it needs to be, , immersive, with, pictures and graphics. upskilling is a giant problem right now because everybody's scared of it. But the companies don't have any, real programs to teach AI to their existing high-end staff, and the colleges don't either.

Chris Harz: I teach at college every now and then. I walked into several, and the textbooks are like three years out of date. You wanna learn ai, you wanna learn, vr. Um, uh, probably both of them is they, you can't just [00:35:00] go into a computer department. You need computers, you need graphics, you need audio, you need a bunch of things to come together to, uh, uh, really teach somebody, whether they're five years old or 55 years old.

Chris Harz: we all respond to the same, basic things. So those are. Three, areas. One more is veterans. Veterans right now and there's many of them come out of the Army Air Force and they don't know what to do. They don't know how to translate their skills, which are desperately needed, to, um, a recruiter.

Chris Harz: You know, a guy goes, uh, gee, I was head of a tank, company and, I managed great. We had great shooting scores. And the recruiter goes, let me outta here. but if he can translate that, into, uh, here's what I know about leadership. Here's, what I know about motivating people. If, we could find a [00:36:00] way to,

Chris Harz: Translate those skills into what recruiters are looking for. What's exciting about that is the army and and so on are now putting money into that. That is a, uh, guy in the Army before he gets out, uh, a year before he gets out, has money available for training, so that they'll have jobs.

Chris Harz: When they get out because their unemployment, when they leave the service is just, off the charts. So those are a couple of examples where, better educational technology could make a huge difference for people getting into the, making a fair amount of money as well as it's needed and wanted.

Eathan Janney: Thank you so much. I appreciate, uh, your thoughts, on everything today. I think we can wrap up. We'll talk again soon.

Chris Harz: Thanks.