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Christopher Altman is organizing this fundraiser.

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Peer-Reviewed Academic Publications

Altman C. and Zapatrin R. “Backpropagation Training in Adaptive Quantum Networks” in International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol 49, No 12. Springer. London.

Altman C. and Zapatrin R. “Superposed Adaptive Quantum Networks,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Quantum Structures, Brussels-Gdansk. Springer, London.

Altman C., Knorring E and Zapatrin R. “Accelerated Training Convergence in Superposed Quantum Networks” presented at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Mining Massive Data Sets for Security. Como, Italy. NATO.

Altman C., Pykacz J and Zapatrin R. “Superpositional Quantum Network Topologies,” published in the International Journal of Theoretical Physics Vol 43, No 10. Springer, London.

Altman C. and Zapatrin R. “Spacetime from Quantum Topology” in Spacetime from Quantum Topology. Ignazio Licata, Director, Institute for Scientific Methodology, Italy and Cecilia Flori, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, ed. Oxford University Press. Oxford, UK.

Altman, C. T. Quantum Machine Learning in Adaptive Quantum Networks, Honours PhD Précis in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Altman, C. T. Quantum Information Science and Technology Roadmapping Project. ATIP QUIST, Tokyo.

Altman C., Williams C, Ursin R, Villoresi P and Sharma V. Astronaut Development and Deployment of a Secure Quantum Space Channel Prototype. PISCES. DARPA, NASA NIAC/ OCT.

What's an artist without his easel, or a sports photographer without his camera?

I was thrilled when the Vision Pro was officially announced to the public in the summer of 2023. I saw the headset as the culmination of a long journey toward the dawn of spatial computing — a paradigm that will ultimately change society and the way we use our computers in the next generation as much as the graphical user interface with windows and the mouse transformed the last one.

The Big Day

The Vision Pro was made available for pre-order at 8 a.m. ET on January 19, 2024. I'd already been waiting for hours, and placed my order straight away. I'd been saving for it for years, with ambitious plans to develop spatial applications.

The Vision Pro was officially released to the public in the United States on February 2, 2024. I was on travels overseas at the time, and uncertain of my return date to the States, so I made arrangements for a trusted friend to pick up my order — the Vision Pro, custom prescription lens measurements obtained through a visit to a local eye doctor, a carrying case and accessories, and to have the entire bundle shipped to me overseas.

Special Delivery

I was naturally hesitant to send anything so expensive through the mail. I paid extra for FedEx First-Class shipping with electronic tracking, as well as the highest-rated, top-of-the-line theft and accidental damage insurance, just to be sure of its secure delivery.

Below: how everything looked after unboxing as my friend packed it into in a secure travel case for more compact delivery:

Everything went as planned for the first few days … but on the very day that the package was scheduled to arrive, I received a text message from FedEx saying that there'd been a delay in processing with customs:

A “Minor” Setback

Normal enough. No big deal, I thought. It should be in and out in a few hours and at my door in no time …

Imagine my dismay when that “temporary” delay at port of entry turned from hours to days to weeks. The customs agent disagreed with the declared value of the headset, further claiming that the three years of AppleCare I purchased separately for $599 were to be considered intrinsic to the assessed value of the headset itself. Any difference greater than 5% would incur a significant penalty.

The entire premise was flawed … but I was willing to do whatever it takes to get my headset back. I figured in the worst case scenario all we'd have to do was pay a few percent extra in taxes.

While online conducting further research into what could possibly have gone wrong, I uncovered a series of disturbing posts that documented widespread abuse in the customs agency, with rumors of corrupt inspectors keeping high-demand products for themselves or selling them outright on the black market. The Vision Pro certainly fit the bill.

Nightmare Scenario

It quickly became evident that the customs inspector was part of that rotten core of endemic corruption that had just been mentioned by the President himself after being elected. Instead of appending the few percent difference that we expected, he demanded an up-front ransom of more than twice the value of the headset: nearly $10,000 for its secure release. This was heretofore unheard of, an absolute outrage.

After weeks of tense negotiations through an intermediary customs broker, we finally got the inspector to agree to drop his demands and release the package for a pricy — but still possible, $1500 in taxes and add-on fees.

An Endemic Problem

This was exponentially more than the $350 or so I'd expected to pay, but by that point I was worn down and just relieved to finally be getting it back. I was willing to do almost anything to assure its safe delivery and so I completed the wire transfer without hesitation.

Imagine my dismay when the next day, instead of releasing the package for final delivery as promised, the inspector changed his mind, said he was “annoyed by other brokers calling him nonstop and ringing his phone off the hook,” then proceeding to vacate his agreement.

Of course, any leak must have come from the customs agents themselves, gossiping amongst each other about such a high-profile and in vogue item. I certainly hadn't called anyone else. The inspector then proceeded to renege on the deal he’d just made hours earlier … after I'd already wired the funds to meet his demands, he changed his tune and arbitrarily raised the ransom back up again, this time to over $6000.

The news was absolutely devastating. There was absolutely no way to for pay such an exorbitant fee — and even if I could, it would be less expensive to take a quick round-trip flight to the United States to purchase a brand-new Vision Pro myself. To add insult to injury, when we called the theft insurance I'd added to the shipment, they said that the official policy doesn't cover bad state actors — only private theft. My expensive, first-class insurance policy was essentially null and void, and I was out for over five thousand dollars that just evaporated into thin air.

More than six months later, the official FedEx tracking website still shows the package as held in customs on a “clearance delay,” with no changes. Of course, the law stipulates that any packages with remaining unpaid duties and fees are deemed forfeit and default to possession of the state after just fourteen days.

Unexpected Shocks

The damage wrought by this catastrophic decision with customs was compounded by the concurrent health decline from my stricken mother-in-law, who passed from previously undiagnosed cancer within days of entering the hospital — all at the same time this tangled mess was unfolding at the bureau of customs.

The past year has been beset by one unexpected hardship after another. First I had to undergo emergency surgery, then the impasse in negotiations over the Vision Pro came to a head at the same time as a cancer crisis culminating in the unexpected death of my close mother-in-law.

Now, with a catastrophic breakdown in communications with customs, I was faced with the blatant theft of more than five thousand dollars simply going up in smoke … money that was intended to go towards spatial computing software development and remote work for an income generation tool I'd personally anticipated for well over a decade — and all this, just as we were on the cusp of finally bringing that long-held dream to reality.

Myriad Stumbling Blocks

As a consequence of these concurrent crises, we've been entirely unable to replace the Vision Pro, having more than exhausted savings managing so many unexpected emergency expenses one right after another this year — and even before that, to cover the price of the original retail purchase, which I'd earnestly saved for since long before its announcement last year.

Why It Matters

With your support, I can replace my stolen Vision Pro and get started contributing again towards these groundbreaking humanitarian projects. Your contribution will have a direct impact on the future of robotics and AI, helping to move advances from the realm of possibility to reality. I'm launching this fundraiser to help replace my stolen Apple Vision Pro, and to harness its capabilities to pioneer the next quantum leap in in AI, physics, and robotics.

Bringing Dreams to Life

Apple's vision for Spatial Computing was born nearly two decades ago. The first Vision Pro patent in 2007 described a personal display system that could immerse users in virtual reality environments such as natural landscapes, sports stadiums — or outer space. The Apple Vision Pro is the next evolutionary step in that journey.

Since then, Apple has filed more than 5,000 patents to perfect the Vision Pro, incorporating advanced technologies such as eye tracking and gesture recognition that are essential to creating a truly immersive experience. The company spent $4 Billion a year over the past five years, for a total of more than $20 Billion, to bring the device to market.

I've avidly followed progress in bringing virtual reality to fruition for nearly seventeen years, closely following as dreams became whispers that went on to inspire research yielding groundbreaking patents. The Vision Pro was something I anticipated for years … not just as a fan, but as a PhD researcher, and a developer with big plans.

The confluence of AI, robotics and virtual reality will herald a transformation of society heretofore unprecedented in modern history. My vision is to apply this over-the-horizon technology and the new paradigm it engenders towards several ongoing research priorities to ensure positive and ethical applications that harness the power of AGI and autonomous agents to improve the lives and contribute to self-fulfillment and global utility:

Advancing AI and Robotics

NVIDIA is already using the Vision Pro to enhance the training of humanoid robots through advanced teleoperation techniques. The approach allows developers to capture human movements in real time, which are then translated into robotic actions. This motion data is critical for training robots to perform everyday tasks by simulating human movements, such as making burnt toast or retrieving lost keys. ;)

The ability to control robots with Vision Pro not only enhances the training process, but also opens up new possibilities for remote robot operation in a variety of critical operations scenarios, including disaster relief and remote exploration of remote environs. NVIDIA's collaborations with Apple and the capabilities of the Vision Pro demonstrate the potential of augmented reality to revolutionize robotics and artificial intelligence applications.

The global humanoid robotics market is growing, driven by advances in AI, robotics, and automation. Tesla’s development of the Optimus humanoid robot, Boston Dynamics’ ongoing innovations, and rapid progress in AI suggest the possibility of a large-scale introduction of robots for tasks beyond industrial use within the next 20-30 years.

Global car production is around 70-90 million units annually, with over 1.4 billion cars in total circulation today. Humanoid robots will soon surpass this number, scaling massively in both utility and affordability as robotics becomes integral to everyday work and life. Given the pace of development in machine learning and Artificial General Intelligence, a transition will occur once humanoid robots reach an inflection point of practical, widespread application before the 2040s.

Pioneering Breakthrough Physics

The Vision Pro is not just a piece of technology: it has the potential to revolutionize the way we visualize and interact with higher-dimensional spaces such as in quantum entanglement entropy and holographic quantum gravity. One facet of my research introduces a novel learning paradigm at the confluence of machine learning and adaptive quantum topology.

This work and our follow-up research introducing this novel learning architecture has been published in leading scientific journals like the International Journal of Theoretical Physics — the journal in which renowned Nobel laureate Richard Feynman introduced the concept of quantum computing with his seminal paper, “Simulating Physics with Computers” in 1982. I’ve long been excited to personally leverage the groundbreaking technology of the Vision Pro to develop more intuitive and powerful physics-based simulations in augmented reality.

New Directions

With its unprecedented immersive capabilities, the Vision Pro is the next step in this technical evolution, providing even more realistic and effective possibilities than anything to come before. I held high hopes this new platform would soon grow into a tool for income-generating projects, yielding entirely new spin-off career directions as the development of AI and robotics tools that utilize advanced eye and hand tracking come online over the next few years.

With your support, I can continue to make progress towards these groundbreaking humanitarian projects. Your contribution will have a direct impact on the future of AI and machine learning, helping to move these envisioned advances from the realm of distant possibility to become a tangible reality. I'm launching this fundraiser to harness next-generation technology capabilities to pioneer the next quantum leap in machine learning and artificial intelligence, robotics, and breakthrough physics.

All funds will be directed towards the aforementioned research endeavors: the cost of a Vision Pro, supporting machine learning hardware, supercomputing time for training and inference, VR and AI-optimized with integrated Neural Engine and Unified Memory. Apple's new chipsets are exceedingly powerful at scaling and inference with transformer-based neural networks and Large Language Models (LLMs) that would otherwise be impossible to run on local hardware.

How You Can Help

The humanitarian initiatives to which I contribute are all volunteer-based nonprofits. Anything you can give will help bring the envisioned future closer to the present. Whether a small tip, a significant donation, or simply expressing support by sharing the link with others — every thought, every action counts.

Your personal contribution will make a profound difference in the pursuit of these promising breakthrough technologies. Thank you for being part of this journey, and for your continuing inspiration and support as we work together to shape a better and brighter future for all.