AI Agents and Animistic Spirits

Here's my interview with Keiichi Matsuda, Designer and Director of Liquid City, that was conducted on Thursday, June 12, 2025 at Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, CA. In the introduction, I read through Matsuda's essay titled "Gods" (also uploaded here) where he explores the idea that AI should be more like pets and polytheistic and animistic familiars rather than the more monotheistic approach where there's one true AI God represented by one of Big Tech's omniscient and all-powerful AI systems. This approach has lead Matsuda to developing a system of what he calls "parabrains" that is an interface for AI agents that goes beyond the narrative scripting capabilities that he was exploring in inworld.ai with his project MeetWol that I covered previously at AWE 2023. A lot of Matsuda's ideas were also explored in the speculative fiction short film called Agents that was produced in collaboration with what was a the time Niantic Labs and is now Niantic Spatial (check out my interview with Niantic Spatial at AWE 2025 for more on how they're using Matsuda's Parabrains system). And you can also see more context in the rough transcript below. This is episode #41 of 41 of my AWE Past and Present series totaling 24.5 hours. You can see a list of all of the interviews down below: #1590: AWE Past and Present: Ori Inbar on the Founding of Augmented World Expo to Cultivate the XR Community (2023) #1591: Sonya Haskins' Journey to Head of Programming at Augmented World Expo (2023) #1592: Highlights of AWE 2025 from Head of Programming Sonya Haskins (2025) #1593: From Military to Enterprise VR Training with Mass Virtual on Spatial Learning (2025) #1594: Part 1: Rylan Pozniak-Daniels' Journey into XR Development (2019) #1595: Part 2: Rylan Pozniak-Daniels' Journey into XR Development (2025) #1596: Engage XR's Virtual Concert as Experiential Advertising for their Immersive Learning Platform (2023) #1597: Educator Vasilisa Glauser on Using VR for Twice Exceptional Students (2025) #1598: Part 1: Immersive Data Visualization with BadVR's Suzanne Borders (2018) #1599: Part 2: Immersive Data Visualization with BadVR's Suzanne Borders (2021) #1600: Part 1: Jason Marsh on Telling Data Stories with Flow Immersive (2018) #1601: Part 2: Jason Marsh on Telling Data Stories with Flow Immersive (2019) #1602: Part 3: Jason Marsh on Telling Data Stories with Flow Immersive (2025) #1603: Spatial Analytics with Cognitive3D's Tony Bevilacqua (2023) #1604: Investing in Female Founders with WXR Fund's Amy LaMeyer + Immersive Music Highlights (2019) #1605: Rapid Prototyping in VR with ShapesXR + 2021 Launch with CEO Inga Petryaevskaya (2021) #1606: Weekly Meetups in VR with XR Women Founder Karen Alexander (2025) #1607: 2023 XR Women Innovation Award Winner Deirdre V. Lyons on Immersive Theater (2025) #1608: AWE Hall of Famer Brenda Laurel on "Computers as Theater" Book, Ethics, and VR for Ecological Thinking (2019) #1609: Framework for Personalized, Responsive XR Stories with Narrative Futurist Joshua Rubin (2025) #1610: Scouting XR & AI Infrastructure Trends with Nokia's Leslie Shannon (2025) #1611: Socratic Debate on Future of AI & XR from AWE Panel (2025) #1612: AWE Hall of Famer Gregory Panos' Journey into VR: Identity, Body Capture, and Virtual Immortalization (2025) #1613: VR Content Creator Matteo311 on the State of VR Gaming (2025) #1614: Story Behind "Escape Artist" 2024 Polys WebXR Awards Winner (2024) #1615: Viverse's WebXR Plublishing Strategy with James C. Kane & "In Tirol" Game (2025) #1616: Founding Story of Two Bit Circus Micro-Amusement Park with Brent Bushnell & Eric Gradman (2018) #1617: Dream Park: Using MR in Public Spaces to Create Downloadable Theme Parks with Brent Bushnell & Aidan Wolf (2025) #1618: Producing Live Sports for Cosm's Immersive Dome with Ryan Cole (2025) #1619: Deploying Snap Spectacles in Verse Immersive AR LBE with Enklu's Ray...