The Internet Creator's Guide to the Future - Ep. 26 with Steph Smith

[00:00] And I said, now bake the potato. That looks like a pretty baked potato. Now bake it more. Now it's kind of turned circular, but it's still definitely baking more. I kept asking it to bake it. [00:08] And this is a funny part. I just kept going, obviously, right? And then it keeps baking. And now this is what I would expect, right? Eventually the potato turns to ash. A cremated potato. Now, can you guess what the next one is? [00:34] Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me again. Yeah, you are the first repeat guest to AI and I. So it is wonderful to have you. Our last episode was so much fun. Thank you. It is one of our most popular episodes ever. So by popular demand, you are back in the studio with me. [01:04] using AI and other software tools to find different businesses. And I know this time, one of the things in sort of the intervening period since our last recording, one of the things you've been using AI most for recently is using Midjourney to do design. And there's a little bit of ChatGPT in there too. So I want to start there. Tell us how you're using Midjourney. How are you making images with AI? [01:24] Yeah, so Midjourney has been awesome. I think many people are familiar with it, but I've actually found one of the key, maybe...

[01:32] complaints around ai has been around imagery at least that like i can't really find a style or if i if i do something then like it's not gonna be repetitive enough that i would actually integrate it into my brand or um things like that but i have actually found that it's been amazing so basically i should say at the outset [01:48] all of the internet pipes imagery. [01:50] I think. [01:51] has been done through mid journey and like a little chat gpt and for people who don't remember remind us what internet pipes is yeah it's just this this project of mine where basically it exists to help people make sense of data on the internet but there are all these stations um so there's generation station and there's evaluation station and [02:08] I wanted to be able to represent those stations visually and [02:12] I really, I mean, I could have hired an illustrator, but since I left the shipping of that project to the last minute, I was like, I need to create imagery and I need it to look good. And I need... [02:21] it to basically represent these ideas that are a little kind of amorphic, right? And so that's what I did. And so I can show you, actually, if I just pull up the internet... [02:32] pipe slides um this was from our cohort so you can get a sense up so it's a course too yeah um but let me give you a sense of what this kind of looks like so for example this was generation station and you [02:47] That was... [02:48] a piece of the overall course, you could say. But all of these were created through MidJourney. And you can see up here at the top, these ones at the top were created through MidJourney. And the ones at the bottom was an analogy that I was trying to communicate of baking a potato, which was related to baking ideas. So the one at the bottom was actually done through ChatGPT. So maybe we can actually start there and then migrate our way back to MidJourney. I'd love that, yeah. You know how people...

[03:16] have shown the make it more yeah that's like the it's like the new meme where people are like uh make uh make a programmer who's uh like late for their deadline and it's like make them even later make them even later or whatever yeah i've seen such funny ones there was one with kelly slater where it's like make kelly slater the best surfer in the world and then it shows him like riding a really good wave and then someone's like no no make him better and it's just by the end he's like basically it's like the gates of hell with water and there's like sharks diving all around him and [03:46] just looks like a badass. And so I decided to do that with [03:52] Yeah, with... [03:53] ChatGPT. And so if I go to... [03:56] Let's see if Chachupiti is still down. [03:58] There we go. [03:59] So [04:01] Let's see, where is it? [04:02] Thank you. [04:04] Do you see potato here? [04:05] oh yes visualized potato yes is what a very important chat so yeah so i just said oh my god can you visualize a potato i just have to pause us here like when science fiction writers in the 60s were like really starting to think about like what what humans would use ai for i don't think that they thought the first like the first chat would be [04:35] So yes, I said, can you visualize a potato? And then they said yes. That potato is like suspiciously, I probably wouldn't have picked that potato at the market. It's got a lot of, it's like a little pockmarked, but yeah.

[04:48] Yeah, just saying. Yeah, you know, chat GPT, we can, you know, human feedback. It'll learn. Then I said, now bake the potato. [04:56] That looks like a pretty baked potato. - That's good. - Now bake it more. Now it's kind of turned circular, but it's still definitely baking more. I kept asking it to bake it. And this is the funny part. I just kept going, obviously, right? And then it keeps baking and now, [05:11] This is what I would expect, right? Eventually the potato turns to ash. - The cremated potato. - Now can you guess what the next one is? [05:20] Um, the thing that immediately comes to mind is like, uh, it turns into a volcano and there's lava coming out, but that's just cause it looks like a volcano. Like I have absolutely no idea what it's going to be. This was my favorite part of the exercise. Um, [05:34] it turns into a new potato. It is potato reincarnated. Baby potato coming from the ashes. Yeah, rising from the ashes like a phoenix. I love it. That's so good. So yeah, this was, I guess, one area where AI was helpful in basically... [05:51] Creating imagery where I honestly couldn't have even imagined this myself, but also showing the evolution of something. So I know this is very silly, but I actually use this imagery within Internet Pipes. And then coming back to Mid Journey. Wait, before we get to Mid Journey, what were you trying to show with this particular baked potato metaphor analogy thing?

[06:21] it a day, it's to help them ideate and then help them bake the potato, bake the idea to be like, okay, now that you have an idea. [06:30] Who else is participating in this space? Is there search volume? Some of the stuff we talked about last time. Yeah. And then [06:35] if you were to participate, here's how you can differentiate. And so there's an evolution of just like a potato being baked. You're baking an idea to something that's actually... [06:44] substantial, edible, to use the potato analogy, once more. So that was just, again, I felt like I needed something to be able to articulate that you're taking something that's [06:56] You would never eat an actual raw potato to something that's usable. Yeah, that's really interesting. I feel like the make it more meme is like one of the first true... [07:05] AI like [07:07] content format, media formats, you know? And I just, I saw that everywhere for a while. I haven't seen it as much recently. Are you still seeing it around? Not so much, but I think it'll come back because to your point, I said the same thing about that. And then I don't know if you saw some of the other specific art, [07:24] there was people who were creating almost like visual art that [07:28] um had imagery embedded in it do you remember this it was like [07:32] a picture of ancient Rome, but within ancient Rome, there was like a spiral or something like that. No, you didn't see that? But that was another example of art that could not have been created without AI. And I'm very excited about that [07:44] whatever us humans figure out there, because that's obviously not the end of it either. But yes, I agree. This was a trend where it's like this actually could not have been done without this tech. Yeah, totally. And so bringing it back to mid-journey, like tell us what you're using it for in this slide. Yeah. So again, these were the different stations, which if you're not immersed in internet pipes, won't make as much sense. But each station had an image associated with it. And the goal was really to like,

[08:14] After... [08:16] idea generation, you want to be like filtered down and validate. [08:20] what actually matters. So the next one, next image I chose was a funnel. And then after that, it was talking about like the ecosystem of what exists in that world. And so [08:30] These are all images that, again, like kind of without that context don't make sense. But there is a visual language applied to these and basically everything else within Internet pipes. I'm trying to see if I have some other... [08:42] good examples down down below like you're you're trying to you're trying to get a particular visual style and aesthetic and mid journey is like helping you do that correct correct um and so [08:52] Midjourney also makes it really easy to do that. How do you characterize this aesthetic? Go to the internet pipes. Go to that first slide. [09:00] Yes. [09:01] Like that's actually, that's like very cool. Like, how do you think of, like, how do you think about when you're putting that aesthetic together? Like what, what goes into it? [09:08] This was just so this aesthetic. I don't know if there's a term for it other than you know, the way I describe it is just early internet. So it's kind of like [09:17] Not super refined. [09:18] Definitely colorful, maybe kind of pixelated, um, [09:22] But maybe not as early internet in the sense that, you know, early internet, it felt like there was maybe six colors, you know, that actually showed up on a web page. And so it's like an evolution of that, per se, but certainly nodding back to it. And I actually wanted whatever internet pipes imagery I was going to use to... [09:41] Kind of expand upon this imagery that you're seeing right now And so what I did and I don't think people do this enough is just went to the mid journey homepage and just scrolled because I'm not an artist Interesting so I just scrolled until I found wait. Can I see that? I've never I've never even seen that they they had never been to the mid journey I

[10:01] Discovery page. No, I didn't even I'm like still using it in discord like I [10:07] But this is where I start for [10:09] Inspiration and then you know, there's lexica and other yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Well, but I find the mid journey. That's so interesting. They do a very good job of. [10:18] curation. And so you can see here where [10:22] you know, there's a bunch of different [10:24] art styles in here. And for each one of them, if you were to click into it, like what, I wonder how this person... [10:31] communicated this. [10:33] Let's go back. I didn't realize that if you scroll. Oh, yeah. All right. So for this one, I'm seeing minimalism and flat illustration. [10:43] Will Barnett. So that's clearly an artist. Interesting. [10:48] ballpoint drawing art style. [10:51] porcelain pattern with gradient translucent class melt [10:55] And so for each of these, you can search them, right? Like, do any of these stand out to you as interesting? Let's see. Let's see. [11:02] So [11:03] Um... [11:04] I think, well, let me just see what I like about the image first and then I'll figure out what I like. So there's this sort of, I sort of like the minimalism. I like the, I like the color palette, like the sort of like faded greens and yellows. I like that it's like natural and organic. It looks like flowers that got like. [11:23] pushed onto a piece of paper. I don't know what kind of art style that is, but I want more of that. Yeah, so what's interesting is often as I'm sure you know when you search

[11:32] or you discover something like this on the Mid Journey homepage, there's gonna be a mix of different things. And so what I find when I find something like this is, I do what you did, which is great, even taking a second to [11:43] analyze what is interesting and then [11:45] For the few that I think lend to that, I'll just search them. Like, I don't know what gilded ginkgo is to you. Yeah, that sounds like a good thing to check. So you can search that. [11:55] And, oops, did I... [11:58] I think that's going to generate, right? Oh, you're right. Yeah. I don't know why the search wasn't working. Let's try that again. There we go. [12:03] Interesting so I guess the ginkgo part of it is like the kind of one of the kind of leafs that we're looking at again ginkgo leaves exactly so we've got that and [12:12] Now let's go back. Let's try a different one. I like the Chinese Yuan paper texture. I wonder if that's the like... Let's try it. The print thing. [12:21] Okay. [12:23] Seems like you may have to X, yeah. Yeah. [12:28] There we go. Okay, that's just the paper, but it's not the Exactly. Yeah, so you can keep doing this and we can try one more if you'd like but I basically do this I go to the homepage find an image that I really like and that I can't explain and then I'm basically giving myself I mean, I'm sure all the artists won't agree with me on this, but I'm giving myself some sort of art education around what is [12:48] yields the kind of imagery I like. And so that's what I did with the internet pipes imagery where you can see a bunch of [12:55] Cal and I share an account. But here we go. I'm doing these rare fruit tastings coming up. I wanted to continue the Internet Pipes imagery. And so the...

[13:05] Continuity that comes from that original exercise I did comes from this. It comes from blind box design, popular market style. [13:15] And a bunch of other things like solid background. But those are the two specifically blind box design. And do you know what blind box design looks like? No, I didn't either. So I'll show you. And like, I would never have come up with this on my own. But this is blind box design. It's some sort of like Asian inspired. Interesting. Like you've probably seen figurines kind of like this. Yeah. [13:35] That is blind box design. I want to look this up. Like what is what does it mean blind box design? [13:41] Thank you. [13:42] Uh... [13:45] Blind box economics refers to a system where a product is enclosed within a packaging that remains sealed, so concealing its contents from the consumer. Oh. Which is really interesting. So maybe it's like there's a certain segment of toys that... [14:01] are made in blind boxes that like have that particular kind of aesthetic. Yeah, I mean I guess so and it certainly aligns with this but it's funny I didn't even stop to look up what it meant. But isn't that so interesting actually that [14:15] I... [14:16] type of toy that [14:17] and its packaging can yield a specific kind of design that you can then apply to [14:22] some 2D internet image. That's really interesting. Yeah. What was the other prompt again? The other prompt... [14:30] was [14:30] Popular market style. So I guess that's like a kind of blind box design. Let's see. Popular market style.

[14:36] So I stole this, obviously, from an image that I had seen, and I can't even remember what the image was. [14:42] the original image was that I found on the discover page. Hmm. [14:46] Okay, so see, this is not what I would have expected, but I guess it's taking it literally. Yeah. [14:51] That's really blind box design market stop popular market style. Yeah, then you get this Wow Okay, and and so [14:59] to you this is like, this is sort of in the early internet [15:05] Aesthetic or it's like at least compatible with it. Like what do you like about this? I like that it yeah, it feels Kind of energetic and when you add color to it, you know [15:16] To me, it feels like this interesting merging of if you think about early Internet, it's [15:21] It's colorful and all these things, but it's also so old, right? And so I [15:26] There's this quirkiness to it. There's this intrigue, curiosity when you see an image like that. And I think this design paired with... [15:33] some new age colors is what I was going for. And to be honest, like, [15:38] All of this is me speaking right now. And I don't know if there was as much intentionality other than when I scrolled mid-journey, I saw a kind of image that I liked, that I felt like aligned with the kind of product that I was trying to create. And then now I just have a prompt [15:53] That I adjust. [15:55] for anything whether it's a rare fruit tasting or totally a next chapter or whatever it might be i mean i think the like the the broader pattern here that i see as well is um it ai is quite good at helping you articulate your taste so um yeah you see an image you like it you're like how what do i like about it and you just look at the prompt you're like oh it's blind box design or whatever yeah um i have the same thing with writing like i've done so much of like putting a bunch of my

[16:25] your clod and being like hey like [16:27] uh like what are what's the common thread between these writers and it like will give me language for the kinds of things i like and that's like very powerful as someone who makes things because i can like then articulate like this is the kind of thing i'm trying to make and that's helpful for myself it's also really helpful for my team like um we just rebranded this podcast and to do the to do the podcast i just sent you this um [16:51] this vibes document I made and it's like I had to articulate like here's what we're going for and I have a bunch of references and like a bunch of things that I found and like AI is like it was chat GPT was quite helpful for like [17:04] helping me to like articulate like [17:06] What do I like about this and where is it going? You know? [17:10] And I think like that's that's super important for getting like a cohesive, a cohesive brand. Like one of the things that I identified is like there's this I want to have this like curiosity and wonder and authenticity. But there's also like this technological exploration type thing. And that like the 70s feels like the era where that was like most true for me. Like it was sort of we're going to the moon. But like it's also still like pretty close to the 60s where it's like hippies and stuff. [17:40] This is awesome. Have you shared this externally? I have. I tweeted it a couple days ago. Okay. Well, this is awesome because I think, as you're saying, you not only... [17:50] incorporated who inspires you, but precisely when they existed in that iteration of themselves. Because I think, you know, it's,

[17:59] let's use Steve Jobs as an example. There were so many phases, and so if you were to just say... [18:05] I'm inspired by this person that doesn't really get... [18:08] to what you probably are inspired by. And sometimes, as you're saying, like using AI can get to the very pinpoint, even if it's just because they give you the wrong example and you're like, no, that's not that. But I also just, while you were talking, pulled up. This is when I was doing the exercise of using that blind box design, ultimately to come up with the internet pipes imagery. And I just, I did this. This was the night of January 24th, 1246 AM. I was like, this was so enjoyable. [18:38] That mid-journey is so, so. [18:40] so enjoyable to brainstorm in, like a brain massage, because it really was like, [18:44] I had this image, kind of, [18:46] And then I went onto the homepage, and the combination of that inspiration mixed with the very, very muddy... [18:53] thought I had turned into this. And I was like, yes, that's great. I mean, I, I actually, I think brain massage is the exact right way to describe this image for me. And it's, it's not just mid journey. Like you had to pick those, you had to pick that aesthetic. Like if I use mid journey, I don't know if it would look like a brain massage. The exercise when you get like, when you find your particular thing. Um, and then I don't know if you see this on the right hand side, [19:23] also prompt in discord because that's where mid journey exists and it's also just really fun to see what else exists there even if it's as silly as this which is Tucker Carlson wearing a baseball cap made of pancakes which is actually takes us right back to your warm hat a pancake would be would be a warm honestly yeah I mean uh I I don't think I had considered that design um but I do

[19:53] worm hat um might fall apart a little bit you know we'll get there we'll figure that part out um wow that's um that's that's really interesting i i definitely also scroll through the sort of like mid-journey discord stuff while i'm like waiting for my stuff to uh uh to render and i don't think i've seen anything quite as entertaining as entertaining as that they they rewarded me for my long exploration brain massage with something like that um yeah so i'm like i think [20:23] Sort of coming out of this like mid journey art creation one of the things that I think you've been thinking about a lot is Given these new tools like what does that mean for the evolution of creators both creators who are? Using AI tools, but also just people on the internet who are just like making stuff. Yeah, tell us tell us what you've been exploring. Yeah so I think [20:48] there's two directions I'm very excited about. And then there's going to be a very messy middle. Yeah. [20:54] And the first direction is actually what we [20:56] just discussed not so long ago which is what can newly be created with ai yeah that doesn't exist today and that's very exciting we've seen little inklings like the make it more but [21:07] I don't see enough creators asking themselves that question of not just what [21:12] could I have done before that I can now do more quickly? But what kind of art can I now create with AI? But then the complete other end of the spectrum is... [21:22] what can AI not do? And a lot of people talk about that in the job sense, but in the artistic sense, there's

[21:29] kind of several facets of that. It's not just [21:32] online versus offline, right? Because people are like, "Oh, I can cook offline." So that's different. It's also- Did you see the robot that makes coffee now? So I don't know if that's safe. I mean, so that actually brings me to the second point, which is what do people care about humans doing? Or maybe modified in a way, what benefits from a human doing it in terms of the reception from another human? And so [21:57] I've been following a bunch of different creators and I'll just show you a few of them and just I would love [22:01] your thoughts. So this is one India Rose Crawford, who I'm just going to share the Instagram accounts. I'm sure they exist on other platforms. [22:10] 2.6 million followers. This person has only posted 134 times. And look what they do. They create... [22:20] These tiny, sewn frogs. [22:24] that live their lives on Instagram. Oh my God. And it's not just stills, like you can see here, if we go to the reels. [22:31] They're honestly just so excellent. There's OK, here's one 20.6 million views. [22:36] If I can... [22:37] Oh my god. [22:46] I love humans. [22:51] - How are we? [22:53] Stupid, stupid. [22:54] You'll find your fortune. [22:55] fallen. [22:56] All right. So, I mean, for the listeners, you're basically just seeing a tiny frog that someone has created living in a tiny home that the same person has created living its life. And that's the whole video, by the way. It doesn't get any more or less exciting than what you just saw. What's really funny about this is it's sort of like...

[23:17] It's like the cottagecore aesthetic or like the trad wife, like trad husband lifestyle on Instagram. But like it's a knit frog. Personified in frog. [23:29] I think that's what makes it work. And I love this. I love that you just like know accounts like this. I think your point is it's a really good one. Like what? [23:40] will humans value from other humans? I think that that sort of gets lost a little bit. Like, yeah, like maybe a human can make a, or maybe an AI will be able to make a video like this at some point, but like we will still value like that it came from another person. In the same way, like cars are, [23:58] Faster than humans. We still watch people race each other, you know, like I think there's I think there's a lot of room for that and it will probably increase the The value of like handmade like writing or art or whatever. Yeah. Yeah, here's another example that you could call art in a way a lot of people cite the chess example where a [24:18] Deep Blue beat Kasparov a long time ago, decades ago. [24:22] we still watch other humans play chess. But on top of that, even though we know AIs can beat us, the chess players that are standing out today, you could say, are acting more like artists. So Magnus Carlsen recently [24:34] played a game where he like basically immediately sacrificed his rook for a bishop, which if you play chess for the listeners out there, it's just like terrible thing to do. You're down basically two points immediately. And a lot of people look to Magnus, not just because he's the best in the world, but because he

[24:49] already knows that [24:52] the [24:53] the calculus of chess is over. That's not what's interesting. It's the personality. He also does this thing in games where he knows that [25:01] a lot of, or basically any excellent chess player has memorized a bunch of openings and knows precisely what to do. So the first piece of the game can be really boring and [25:11] I feel like he says that... [25:14] you know, he doesn't want to play that game. He wants to basically see who's the best thinker, right? And that's still up for grabs. And so there's almost the question there of, [25:23] you know, what is still up for grabs and he's [25:26] intentionally gets people off standard openings even if it's technically bad in order to pursue that game that is really interesting and i've actually heard him talk about doing that for um like oh when he plays younger players who are like um really used to um uh just playing the computer like i think it's called razorfish is the is like the stockfish stockfish yeah i like razorfish though yeah maybe i'll maybe we should start razorfish um uh yeah stockfish like um [25:56] They're so used to playing stockfish that they don't like when he plays in like a weird set of openings like they don't know the like branches of that tree and so they just get lost but he's like. [26:08] I guess played the played those enough to like be able to um well he studied the mechanics more of what how to play chess well yeah so yeah I do like the sort of like um if you can't beat them like change the rules of the game and like make it art yeah make it art honestly that's an interesting question where maybe people will be like you're you're getting too meta and weird but

[26:32] Art is a very... [26:34] kind of amorphic term, right? You could look at someone standing on the street and say that's art. And then you could look at 10,000 other people and say that's definitely not art. And so what makes it art? It's kind of expression, but there's an interesting question to just ask. Even creators, I would actually say, [26:50] not all creators are artists, but a select few are. And so how do you take what you're doing today and manipulate it in a way where you would actually feel comfortable calling it art? I think [27:03] It's actually a harder question than... [27:05] most people would think at face value. Yeah, I think that calling what you do art is like a very loaded term, you know? And it feels... [27:13] I mean, to me, it's like... [27:15] I would feel self-conscious because it feels like self-aggrandizing or something like I'm taking myself too seriously. It's true. Yeah, I write a little newsletters about AI on the internet. Like it's not that big of a deal. [27:26] It's such a good point. But, um, but like I do also like really care about like, um, sort of the, the genuine self-expression portion of what I do. And I do think like all internet creators, like you're sort of forced to like, um, [27:43] there's this ratio of like how much business-y, like how good is it for business and like how much do you actually like? [27:49] care about it and like it and whatever and everyone has their own like ratio of yeah of the mix you know and like I guess true artists are like all the way over here and like [27:58] just copywriters are like all the way over here you know yeah um that's definitely been like a thing for me to to to to grapple with yeah where did where did you land what's your razor fish ratio my razor fish ratio um is uh

[28:18] Thank you. [28:18] Let's see. I really try [28:22] to [28:23] When I'm genuinely I really try to only write things that I'm like genuine genuinely excited about. Um [28:30] And I also really try to be... [28:33] like honest about how I'm feeling in [28:37] Whatever moment it is that I'm writing And I've I think I've been lucky enough that like I [28:44] There's this weird thing, like if I was into like... [28:46] Like flute playing or something like that It would have been like much harder for me to like monetize that without being like really commercial but like I write about and I'm just like super curious about like programming and AI like productivity and psychology and like all this stuff that like all kind of is in this thing where it's like it is actually kind of easy to like you [29:07] sell that, you know? Um, and so, but I mean, there's, there's always, there are always things where it's like, I'm just doing this for me. Like I wrote this piece, uh, a couple, like a couple months ago about like the future of, um, [29:21] the future of science and AI and specifically how AI might change areas of science where it would, it has been historically difficult to make progress, like psychology, for example. And I just like got like really nerdy about like philosophy of science and like predictive AI models or whatever. And like, I just, I knew that no one would really care, but I was just like, this is for me. Like I gotta, I gotta do this, you know? So what I, what I've, what I've learned to do is if you pick a specific lane, like for me, I'm like doing,

[29:50] AI intersection of AI and productivity psychology creative tools that that kind of thing you get to like go out of the lane sometimes if you just if you want to and so you reap the benefits of like having picked one but then you can you can give yourself the flexibility day to day to like just write about what you're interested in yeah I think that makes sense and almost just like having enough of a baseline. [30:11] where you don't have to think about optimizing fully. Therefore, you can go on these adventures. By the way, I listened to your episode with Reid Hoffman, and I didn't know you knew so much about philosophy. I was so lost, candidly. But it was great as a mind bender to be like, I have a lot more to learn. I got to tell you, I was sweating so much in that interview. And honestly, the only reason I got through it is because, I mean, I studied philosophy in college, and I really liked that stuff. I could tell. [30:41] I just like sat with ChatGPT and I was like teach me about Wittgenstein like I don't remember anything. That's incredible what a great use case. Yeah I mean it was it was honestly perfect for that because Wittgenstein's work is like so dense that even me just like sitting there with no distractions like trying to read it for myself like it's like really hard to get through and I can just take a picture of a page and like send it to ChatGPT and be like [31:03] What does this proposition mean? And chatGBT is like, here, here, here, here. And I'm just like, this is great. You didn't use SpongeBob? I should have done SpongeBob, you're right. I thought of all the things from last time, that would stick with you. That was the big takeaway. How have you thought about that? What's your razorfish ratio? Razorfish ratio. We're going to make that stick.

[31:26] I guess [31:27] I've intentionally not... [31:29] address the question in the sense that [31:31] I've kept a full time job so that I don't have to make the trade off. Right. And I think eventually I will have to figure out that. I keep forgetting that you have a real job. It's so impressive that you like do everything that you do and you have a real job. Yeah, it's definitely a balance, but that's intentionally and I've talked about this a lot, so we don't have to talk about it much here, but just. [31:50] because I have a full-time job and always have that [31:53] means that I can be fully creative and [31:56] only pursue the things that I want. And also it's kind of a forcing function to only do that because I have less time. So it's like I'm only going to pursue the things that I light up about instead of having a full day. In fact, my husband, you know, in talks, if I would ever, you know, go fully on my own, will say things like, [32:14] I think you'll both love it and hate it in a way because you'll just have so much more of an open slate and way more time on your hands. That's interesting. And are there plans to do that? And if anyone from A16Z is listening, we can... What I will say is that, and I told A16Z also when I joined that eventually I definitely do want to work on my own stuff. So that's next. But timeline, TBD. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Maybe super quick, if you're open to it, we can literally rapid fire through these. [32:44] people with [32:45] frog figurines. No, I want more. Let's do more. Okay, okay. So... [32:49] Let's rapid fire through some of these. So this is someone who forages online. Black Forager. That's the handle. She's wonderful. I met her at a conference and she just goes. She's forged for years. People love her. She's got, you know, around 2 million followers as well. Show us more of her stuff. Like, what do you like about her?

[33:04] Oh, I think this is an example where it's certainly the personality. Like, she's just incredible, but also the kind of thing that... [33:12] most people don't know about. She literally goes and like, you know, let's see what this one's about. [33:18] I guess she's telling us about some... [33:20] That's so good. She's so good. Quick fact about her when I met her at a conference. [33:40] we were at a happy hour of speakers and she literally was like eat this flower to be fair i think i asked her but i was like are you sure it's edible as most people do and she was like oh yeah every there was a bed of flowers of several types she's like every single one of these is edible that's so good i she's in this genre of person that is like so obsessed and excited with a very specific niche topic i love those people they're my favorite there's this guy that i watch on youtube [34:10] like the 60s that's like damaged or whatever and it's like two hours of him just like with a microscope and like tweezers like it's very relaxing yeah to go to sleep there's another power washers yeah there's another guy that does um he just does like car reviews but it's all it's like a it's like a 2006 like toyota minivan and he'll do like a three-hour deep dive like you know how mkbsg does it with like supercars or whatever he'll do it with like minivans and it's it's the

[34:40] are you really listening for the minivan? Or are you listening because this person's just so strangely enthusiastic about this thing. It's definitely the latter. So there's kind of this second bucket of things that I'm going to loop several of these people into, where, yeah, they just kind of do something strange, and it's their art. And, you know, it definitely takes longer than any normal person would ever want to allocate to this. So I'll show you a few right now. [35:10] So he takes things like this. - Ooh. - [35:13] things that exist within society. - Okay. - And then he creates sidewalk chalk art around it, if that makes sense. - Mm-hmm. - You can kind of see, what are some examples down below where he has, um, [35:25] Here's an example, like a pot. Yeah. [35:28] And he creates... [35:29] - [35:30] He creates imagery around that so people almost are like, "What is that?" as they're walking down the street like this. They're like, "Is that actually a... [35:38] A mouse? [35:39] sitting on the side with another mouse [35:41] you know [35:42] with a window below obviously not but that's so interesting [35:46] So that's one. Another one is... [35:49] David Bird, who basically creates... [35:52] little sculptures with acorns and other [35:55] sticks and bird things that actual birds go and visit. So he captures these cool pictures. Wait, so he like, he makes little bird friends and then birds like going, like what's going on here? Exactly. Are you my buddy? The bird's asking it, are you my buddy?

[36:12] Uh, okay. So another one is this guy who does rock sculptures. [36:17] So he just goes to the beach and he just finds all kinds of rocks and takes a bunch of noise and turns it into data. You could say another one is a [36:28] Let me find a good one. Oh, this is an example of something a little different, but someone who just does calligraphy. [36:34] Just really beautiful calligraphy and he just films it in this very simplistic nice way and [36:40] he also has a pretty sizable growing audience. Interesting. And then maybe a few others that I'll just call out here. There's this two of these here that just do things that [36:49] really [36:51] - Up close. - I've seen this one. - This one, Macrifying? - Yeah, the match. - Yes, exactly, the match. - Show them, that one's so cool. [36:57] So they have the video. Let me go to the video. I think this video is up, up, up. Yeah, on the right. [37:02] Oh, this one. Yes. Yeah. [37:13] Thank you. [37:14] Thank you. [37:17] Thank you. [37:19] That is the coolest freaking thing in the world. [37:29] Thank you. [37:29] Bye. [37:32] Do you know how they shoot this? I looked it up when I first saw him, but... [37:37] I still don't think I came away understanding. Okay. I think it's really... [37:42] Like is it real? Is it or is it CGI?

[37:44] I think it's real. They might fine tune it. Yeah. [37:47] Oh, here it says, everything you see here happens in less than two seconds. I use my new ultra slow motion camera to capture everything and build a custom rig for the movement. [37:58] That's incredible. Yeah. And then there's another person who basically in a similar way, just the whole account is taking a really hot ball, a really hot metal ball and dropping it into things, whether it's an egg or whether it's. [38:12] alcohol or a coconut or a tennis ball a watermelon you get the point you know what this is reminding me of i watch i watch a couple people who just like chug things on youtube oh yeah like bad yes um i don't know why but like i just love watching someone like chug like four gallons of soda in one go yeah i mean don't we all like i guess maybe there is like some maybe very [38:42] like humans are weird and we like watching strange things. [38:47] What is this one? Oh, someone who creates... [38:51] animal food. So like [38:53] just very cute food that looks like animals. But the one that I actually think is worth ending off on is just actually super quickly typewriter art. [39:01] Very cool. Oh, that's cool. Art with a typewriter. So they like every line is like typed on the typewriter or how does it work? Yes, you can see it here. He's using like, see how that's an M or an F. Oh, I love that. And then he ends up.

[39:15] creating this beautiful that is really incredible yeah see there [39:20] Wow. It's like ASCII art, but like... Yeah, exactly. But manual. Wow. Wow. [39:26] Yeah, and the final one, which is a little different from others, is Watch Maggie Paint. And there's a few, I've seen a few of these people, but they basically go to weddings and paint... [39:37] image or a portrait of them getting married live at the wedding and then I [39:41] people on instagram love it because they get to see the full time lapse but this is an example of something very different to all the things we just saw of just again what do humans care about like of course you can take a way better photograph [39:55] of the wedding and they do still do that. But there's something special about the time element of someone physically having been there. Like this thing was incarnated in that instance. [40:06] And so, anyway, these are just examples of different things that have, all of these creators have pretty sizable growing audiences that [40:13] That sort of brings me back to the Magnus thing of like changing the rules of the game. It's like you're not going to out-camera the camera. But like if you change the rules, you can like do some pretty amazing stuff. Exactly. Exactly. So I don't know. I mean... [40:26] I don't know what kind of creations are going to come. And like we said, there's obviously going to be new stuff. But this is all like pretty simple in the sense of... [40:35] anyone can do a lot of this, or at least there's some version [40:40] some parallel in someone's life that they could pursue yeah i think it's just interesting to think do you have any takes on where creators go from here or you're like a lot i write about it every week um i mean i think um i think that broadly like your your take is like exactly right it's like um there's there's a certain segment of things where it's like

[41:01] totally human made that will become more valuable. And then I think there's going to be like a lot of new forms of art and new forms of [41:09] just creating things that a new generation of people are going to learn how to use AI models to do. And I think we're like in the process of like defining what those forms are. And that's why the, um, [41:20] the uh uh the sort of make it more meme is so exciting to me because it's like an example of like that's a form that is like very it's like very ai specific it's from this generation of of creatives yeah and that's the kind of thing like one of the things i like about your work is like you're you don't um you're willing to like look at all these creators who are doing things that people might think are silly and like [41:43] that's where like the really valuable stuff is. You know, it's like the silly stuff. - Totally. - And I think people, it's like really easy to write off like AI stuff and be like, oh, it's like silly, or it's like [41:52] it's a ripoff or whatever. And I, I just, I truly think that, um, most of the stuff that people are making with AI that looks silly right now, like the three second videos or like the make it more memes or whatever are, uh, [42:04] There's gonna be a new generation of artists that gets birthed from that and we're already seeing that like I've interviewed Filmmakers I mean interviewed writers like and they're all using these tools to do new things they kind of done before and that just makes me so excited Sweet. All right. Well, let's see how it goes. Now we have to evolve [42:22] Yeah, um but I am curious before we move on like [42:26] Why do you collect these like um [42:29] You're you're trolling around the internet you see something like this like what is it about these people or about? These accounts that like get you going yeah, I think we talked about this a little bit last time as you said not to ignore the weird or the strange or the niche but

[42:45] I... [42:46] I think one of the cool things about [42:48] AI has been [42:51] Basically, [42:53] Whenever you interact with AI, as you said, you have to like really articulate what you want and what you find interesting and you're evolving with it to be like, no, not this, but this. And I think what another reflection that's come from AI is that our brains, like I know a lot of people. [43:06] not like me saying this, but you can kind of [43:09] think of as LLMs, right? That like train and get better and pay attention to some things versus others. And so [43:15] just as I've [43:17] almost like embodied that idea more i'm like i absolutely should be training my brain with better data over time and the reason that these are interesting is because i always pay attention to something that surprises me a little bit and it does surprise me that these are so big that's the surprise it's not that someone's interested in this but like two million people are interested in frogs that hang around their house and and [43:41] I follow this person, too. Right. And this person's only posted 100 times. So there's much more than two million who. [43:47] would be interested in this. And so anytime I'm kind of [43:50] There's a mismatch between... [43:53] what I think [43:55] would exist and what I'm seeing data on, that's a signal. And I think in particular, 'cause we're at this junction that we have talked about of like, where do creators go from here? I'm especially paying attention to when I see creations that surprise me in terms of how much people like them or engage with them. And each one of these, like we talked about, tells me something a little different. Like we still have this monkey brain that just like seeing stuff blow up or seeing stuff really up close.

[44:23] We still also really like seeing other humans be happy. So that comes through with the wedding videos and we like seeing humans do things. And then I think we just like cleverness to write that comes through in some of the sidewalk art and the typewriter art we'd like seeing humans create things that. [44:38] Almost like [44:39] There was a gap in our brain. We didn't think that could exist. And then we see it and we're like, oh, how clever. Yeah. [44:44] That's one of the things like sort of that that surprise thing where it's like I I did not know two million people would be into this like knitted frog these knitted frog videos and And And like it reminds me of this episode I did with Dave Clark who's in a filmmaker Mm-hmm [45:00] um he he's like done a lot of stuff in hollywood not like necessarily like major motion picture type stuff but like he's just been in the hollywood system for a long time and he started making ai movies recently and [45:10] And, um, I asked him like, why, like, what does it do for him to make these movies? Like is his sort of ambition to like not do Hollywood stuff anymore and just like do AI stuff or how does it, how does, how does it fit together? [45:23] And his take was actually that the AI stuff helps his Hollywood career a lot because, for example, he wanted to make this film that's that's like it's like a sci fi story about his dad in the 50s. And it's just like there's a bunch of plot lines. It's very specific to him. And he it was like too weird for anyone in Hollywood to fund it. And so he made like an AI short of it. That's like it was like three minutes and it went super viral.

[45:53] then lots of producers and we're like hey like can we make this or whatever and they go to email him and they search the email and they're like oh because they've already got an email that they ignored um and i feel like for a lot of creative stuff um [46:09] Like it requires you to convince someone to let you make it still it's less so for writing like for writing for example like for a long time you've just been able to like type your stuff and put it on Twitter or whatever but for something like filmmaking which requires like lots of people and money and like technology and all this kind of stuff like. [46:29] If you have a zany idea, AI can kind of like let you prove that it's a good idea before you have to convince anyone, which I think will let more people get more interesting stuff out into the world because you can take a lower risk bet on it and do it yourself and then kind of do the high production value thing afterwards once you get money. And I love that. Yeah, absolutely. [46:49] Something that just dawned on me was also... [46:52] that [46:53] A lot of artistic ideas, you almost need to create that seed for people to understand it. Think of, you know, Wes Anderson, super popular now. [47:01] If he was to actually try to articulate his vision for things, maybe some producers who are... [47:07] you know, their LLMs or kind of trained like his could understand. But I couldn't. I truly would be like, that sounds kind of weird. Like, there's a lot of panning and there's colors and close ups. And what's that going to do for the storyline? And if you actually think of like Grand Budapest Hotel, have you seen it? I watched it like 10 times on the plane. I just, it's the best plane movie for some reason. And I'm,

[47:28] It's... [47:29] The plot is not there. The plot, there's no plot. This guy owns a hotel and he's like, anyway, I'm not gonna ruin it. But... [47:36] My point is that your idea that AI... [47:41] can basically seed things for [47:43] artists. [47:45] That's actually really important because [47:47] you actually can't communicate some of those ideas without actually creating the [47:51] the like baby potato yeah from earlier i'm just gonna keep looping in or or maybe the warm hat yeah you're just not gonna get the warm hat until you put it on until you figure out that it should have been a pancake [48:05] So I know I know one of the other like sort of AI tools you've been You've been working on or working with recently is a tool called consensus Which you showed me a little bit like before we started filming and I'm like, I'm pretty into it. Can you can you tell us what it is? Yeah, I'll bring it up but [48:21] In order to do that, give me one... [48:23] kind of [48:25] sciencey or really health idea or product that you're unsure of. So let me give you a few examples. Like a lot of people talk about, you know, blue light blockers, like do those really work? Is [48:39] Does sleep actually impact? We're fact-checking all of Andrew Huberman right now. Here we go. So my big thing is I've been... [48:48] taking fish oil because of him and Specifically he said I think fish oil and like it's I think it's like 800 milligrams of you [48:58] DHA I think um

[49:00] like has a preventative effect on depression. [49:03] and I want to know if that's right. [49:05] Okay, so I'm going to open up consensus here. And the nice thing about consensus, and I'm not affiliated with them, I just use it for kind of this purpose, is [49:16] You can ask the research. And normally, if you think about, what, if you were to type this into Google Scholar, not only is it only going to search based on the specific keyword, [49:26] It's just going to give you a data dump. In fact, in Google Scholar, I'm sure you can see 17,000 papers on DHA or fish oil or whatever it is. So how should we ask this question? Does fish oil-- [49:40] Prevent depression. Prevent depression. [49:45] That's probably the easiest thing to ask. [49:48] Okay, so it's going to search that. [49:51] And it might take a second, but it's going to give us a bunch of these [49:56] papers just like google scholar right and it's going to say no for some of these individual holistically and it's going to give a summary etc you obviously can go to the paper itself and um there's like a study snapshot so you can see sample size and all this stuff but this is [50:11] The part where... [50:14] I think they'll improve it over time in terms of the numbers, but it can give you just a quick pulse on yes or no. [50:21] When I find it interesting is if you actually play around enough with the tool is [50:26] Sometimes you will get [50:27] It's like all... [50:28] It just says yes. It's like 100% yes. Yes.

[50:31] Obviously you should do your own research and read up more on what the yes means. But to me it's like, oh, okay, so this thing actually has some meaning in the scientific community. [50:42] But what's also helpful here is you can be like, oh, in this case, 69% say yes. [50:46] 31% say no. So you can actually go to those papers, right, and look at the ones that say no. [50:51] and say like [50:53] look at why they say no, what those particular papers are saying. Can you chat with it to be like, Hey, like tell me why. Um, [51:00] I'm not sure. I think maybe. Let me check. [51:03] So let's see, RCT, highly cited. Another tool, have you heard of Elicit? - Yeah. - Okay, so that one, you can definitely chat with the papers. - Yeah, Elicit's pretty cool. - So I guess you could use some sort of combination between these two. [51:15] let me look up because there's [51:17] uh [51:18] You can do, there's a co-pilot as well. - Wow. - So let me see what happens. - Do you pay for this, by the way? - Yes, but this is, it's the same kind of freemium where, [51:29] you get a certain number of credits and then you also [51:32] I think it's $10 a month, so it's certainly not crazy. Got it. And what do you find yourself using this for? [51:38] Basically the things that we talked about. So I was looking up air quality a lot recently. I was saying, you know, what is the research saying? I actually, it's funny. There was a period of time where for the A16Z podcast, we were going to have Huberman on. And my idea for him at the time was... [51:52] Kind of like this, as in there's a scale of zero to 10. Zero, let's say, is there's no scientific evidence for this thing. This is just snake oil. Like...

[52:02] but people are buying it anyway. Good marketers basically facilitated that. And then there's 10, which is basically everyone in the scientific community says that this thing works and more people should be taking it. And then there's some middle ground where it's like, [52:15] blue light blockers for example [52:17] Basically, my understanding is that... [52:20] They only kind of work, but only at night, certainly. So like anyone who's wearing it any time outside of that is like, [52:27] It's just a complete waste. So there's a middle ground. So sometimes I'll come here and just honestly just for... [52:33] health information, not health financial, whatever advice, come here just to get a pulse because I definitely am not... [52:42] the healthiest in terms of I don't optimize as much as most people. [52:46] Partially because I feel like I question a lot of like, should I [52:49] bother with certain things. Yeah. [52:53] - Can I ask one more question? I'm just curious. - Yes. [52:55] about the scientific consensus on, do dreams have meaning? [53:01] Let's see. I want to see how it does on something like that. Because you think you've studied this a lot. I mean, I don't. I haven't studied it a lot. [53:10] I'm just curious. I've listened to the Huberman Drabim's episode. Okay. And I've read a lot of you. This is saying yes, but now I'm scared. Because is it a big no? Um... [53:22] It depends on what you mean by meaning. Um, okay, cuz they're saying [53:26] emotional cognitive significance cultural historical context [53:30] physiological bias. Now I'm like...

[53:34] Okay, dreams have a rough continuity with... [53:37] awake experiences or concerns. [53:39] Implicit memories when considering latent contents and life events. Is that true? I [53:43] What's your take? What's your consensus? [53:47] Um, I don't know. I think, um, my, my rough memory of it is like, um, it dreams have something to do with your, your brain processing the experiences you've had during the day. And, um. [54:00] And so to that point, [54:02] Degree they have there they are meaningful, but they're also like fairly random and I think there's a separate thing which is like Is it useful to like spend time like trying to interpret your dreams? Which I think can be a [54:16] It's sort of separate from whether dreams have meaning because you can spend time interpreting like almost anything and seeing what it says about yourself. And that is like, I think still like a valuable exploration just as like a creative artistic activity. But yeah, you can see some follow up searches here. What are the different theories of dream interpretation? And then, well, do you want to do that one or the are the. [54:39] Are there cultural differences in the interpretation of dreams? That's a really interesting question. Yeah, I like that one. Okay. [54:44] So this is like getting it's sort of outside the science at this point, right? Yeah, and I think definitely my one is [54:51] I mean, in addition to... [54:53] again, this is not like medical or science advice, it's just increasing the number of papers that are integrated into, let's see, synthesize, the consensus meter. Because for example, this is saying five, but also like,

[55:05] This is saying, are there culture? Okay, sorry. So something to keep in mind is like, you can ask questions in here that are more open ended, like what are the differences? And then you can ask for the consensus meter has to have a kind of a yes, maybe no answer. So for example, here, there's a paper. [55:23] on [55:24] Can you say this word? [55:26] - I can't honor romance-y. [55:30] - There's a paper on Haiti. And so maybe let's go back and what was the other question? [55:34] The different theories. Yeah. [55:37] And then we can do co-pilot for this one. [55:49] I feel like this is up your alley. Yeah, definitely. Freudian psychoanalysis, self-organization theory, union analytical. Yeah. I mean, these are all good. I think this is like, this is more or less what I would use chat GVT for or like Wikipedia. Yeah, totally. Yeah. It's kind of perplexity esque in that you've got the citations, which is helpful, but yeah. Anyway, it's just another one of the AI tools. And I think maybe if there was any takeaway from this, it's just, it's interesting to see more of these tools be verticalized, right? And so you're [56:19] chat gpt is not optimized for um so yeah i really think that that is happening and it will continue to happen and i think we all thought it would happen sooner than it did but it but it will it'll take like five to ten or 15 years to like fully happen where like i think you can look at the history of sas software for the last 15 years as basically um unbundling excel

[56:42] But there was a whole period of like 20 years before that where people had to get used to Excel first and then you have tons of people using this general purpose tool for a thing it's not built for and then that creates a whole opportunity for like SaaS. And I think the same thing is true for ChadGPT like. [56:57] If you built a prompt builder a year ago, not enough people even knew what prompts were. But now there are enough people who are like... [57:06] uh who are doing it day to day in their work in a general purpose tool that's not built for it specifically that i think there's i think there's more and more opportunity to like peel peel things off yeah yeah by the way just because it reminded me of this have you seen globe no [57:21] Really? No, what is it? I thought for sure you would have seen Globe Explorer. This thing is awesome. I think I've only used it for a few things. You know this? Is this that web LLM dream simulator thing where it's like a hallucinated internet? [57:37] - Have you seen that one? - No, but that sounds way cooler. - I'm gonna find that. - Maybe let's do that. No, but let me just quickly show you Explore, because, so I think Globe, let me fact check myself, but they have a few different tools [57:53] on their hands globe.engineer let's see yep so they've got explorer translator and index and so [58:00] I've only tried Explorer and [58:04] Here's an example of something that I would actually search, which was, what did I say? I said like weird [58:09] quirky websites, I think.

[58:13] Because if I'm looking for, again, some of these creators or interesting things that, this is not the same thing that I got last time. But the thing that I like about Globe is basically what it does is... [58:25] it interprets your query and then groups things for you. Right. And so, [58:30] Google kind of does that in a search engine, but then it gives you just... [58:34] An overall ranking but this is almost like it's trying to interpret my query of weird quirky websites and it's saying Oh, are you looking for absurdist websites you link for unconventional databases? Niche interests experimental websites are these like Google results? Like what are these are websites results? And then like and then And then categorizing them for you or where are they getting the websites there? This is their own search engine because wow, I [58:59] actually let me pull it up I think I linked it here um [59:03] Yep, here. [59:04] *sniff* [59:06] I went to check. [59:08] Because when I originally searched this for, yeah, weird, quirky websites, this was my original response from Globe. So it's not the same every time because it's an alarm. But you can see same kind of thing. Absurdist, interactive, satirical, and a lot of good... [59:22] responses, honestly. Like, I was quite shocked that it kind of understood what I was looking for there. And then this was the response from Google. [59:30] right um google is like taking you way more literally and just like finding things that have weird in it right [59:36] I don't... Candidly, I really don't know because it's a mix. There are a few...

[59:45] inklings of it understanding [59:47] what I was looking for with the useless web, right? [59:51] But then there's patience is a virtue, which is like, is that I know that's a quote, but is that also a website? And there's cat horse. [59:59] and [1:00:00] Yeah, I think no. [1:00:05] Is my ultimate interpretation of Google. - That's so funny. - Understanding what I was looking for there. But anyway, I think this is just another example of... [1:00:15] a UI to your point of the [1:00:18] unbundling of Excel or people talking about unbundling of Reddit. [1:00:21] the unbundling of a search [1:00:24] uh, [1:00:24] engine is interesting as well. However, there's also an interesting question of just [1:00:30] Is that what people want? As in they definitely want the results, but are they ever going to maneuver their search habits to go to a different thing? [1:00:39] Every time. Hmm. [1:00:40] Don't know. I don't I don't know I like I [1:00:44] I think it's like niches. It's like you're always going to have your main chatbot or whatever. But then for your specific... [1:00:53] you know, work use case where you're like, I'm a veterinarian, like maybe I use my like [1:00:59] my horse chat pod for horse issues or whatever. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Totally. - But I don't know. We'll see. - Let's see. - I wanna show you, um, I wanna show you websim.ai. Have you, you haven't seen this? - No. - Okay, so basically what it is, is, um, [1:01:14] Thank you.

[1:01:15] for a language model, you can [1:01:18] Like if you ask a language model what's on a specific part of the internet, even if that internet doesn't exist, it will like hallucinate like a whole web page for you. It'll hallucinate all the HTML. And so WebSim just like... [1:01:31] renders that for you. I just DM'd it to you. And so you can just type in any [1:01:37] any page on the internet [1:01:39] even if it doesn't actually exist and it will just like make the page for you. [1:01:43] So, okay, so basically... [1:01:46] like if I [1:01:48] type in any website you want to see. [1:01:52] So something that does not exist. It doesn't matter if it exists or doesn't exist. Okay. Um, [1:01:59] database of [1:02:01] all kinds of rubber duckies. [1:02:05] Let's see what happens. [1:02:08] So, like, it just, it'll just make that. [1:02:15] And so, like... Metal duckies. So, like, if I click it, like, the links work and stuff. It's crazy. And then it saves this. So, you can, like, you can, you have this, like, hallucinated internet that you can, like, share with other people. Oh, wait. So, what happens when you click one of them? It goes to the... I clicked the... [1:02:32] - What did I, okay, so if I, which one do you want me to click? - Can you, wooden duckies. - Wooden duckies, okay, here we go. [1:02:39] um it'll hallucinate that page too that's incredible um yeah oh and then it makes an image at the top well the classic rubber duck is made of well rubber many collectors prize wooden ducks for their unique craftsmanship and natural materials explore our comprehensive guide to rubber duckies made of wood carved lathe turned and more so we're like yeah it's it's like

[1:03:03] the simulation internet version. [1:03:07] Yeah, I think this is so fun. I actually haven't played with it that much, but it's... It's a game. It is sort of a game. Yeah, and look, now it actually looks good. [1:03:17] Is it just improving it constantly? I don't know how this works. Because we just saw three versions of it. I think basically what it does is it'll like write the... [1:03:28] It'll write out the page and then it'll... [1:03:32] uh generate the images and then it will just render the whole thing as html so it's sort of like happening in stages right yeah yeah because we saw just the just the text the text links at first i like this this script i feel like this is really right for the rubber ducky wiki they they really got understood the assignment also do you see podcasts in the job where in the nav [1:03:51] podcast clubs events what i want to see is um um warm hat e-commerce [1:04:01] Sight. Warm baseball cap. [1:04:04] Oh, yeah. Specificity matters here. Yeah, seriously. [1:04:11] Hats for all weather.com. [1:04:14] Stay warm this spring with our insulated baseball caps. Like my dreams are just like coming true. Oh my God. And... [1:04:20] Look, they once again understood the assignment. No flaps. No flaps. That was the issue last time, remember, on Amazon? Yeah, totally. I mean, the only thing that's missing is they don't have the pancake hat. Yeah. See, they're not there yet, but this is V1. Baseball caps, beanies, visors. Wow, this is really impressive. It's almost doing something similar to...

[1:04:42] the globe explorer where it's taking you talk about [1:04:45] hats and then it's extrapolating like okay so if you had hats you need you have beanies and your advisors and whatever [1:04:53] Wow. It's one of the things I think LMs are best at. It's like... [1:04:56] I think people are like people get afraid of like, oh, they could be wrong. You can't trust what they're saying. And it's like, that's actually really cool because they can make up this thermolite insulated baseball cap and like a rendering. Yeah, totally. You just use it for creative purposes. It's like pretty awesome. Hallucination is a feature. Totally. Have you seen or have you been following any of the mechanistic interpretability stuff? [1:05:26] Reddit map. [1:05:27] the first time we talked. It's a very similar concept where basically they're figuring out this web that is an LLM and [1:05:34] They're learning about humans and the connections that you might not expect. [1:05:39] within that web so we're also just like visualizing the human consciousness in a way because people talk about that in the csv sense but you could actually [1:05:47] map it. Yeah, totally. Did you see Golden Gate Bridge Claude? Yes! I love that. So clever. Could you make me a recipe for this thing? Yes. What was it was like? [1:05:59] a douse of of like beach mist and like two hours for walking across the bridge it was so good um for people who who don't know what we're talking about and think we're going crazy so so basically like there's um uh

[1:06:15] uh there's a uh ai company anthropic that has a model clod and they came out with this paper where they um were able to um basically like to some degree map clod's brain like figure out what are the concepts in its brain and then um it'd be able to like activate different concepts so it's sort of like um there's a thing that happens sometimes in like neurosurgery where they open up your brain and they like tickle part of your brain and it'll like make you laugh it's sort of like doing that [1:06:45] gate bridge clod that used to actually be available you could like [1:06:49] use it i did use it was really fun but they took it down but it was basically like a version of claude [1:06:54] that only like to talk about the golden gate bridge so you'd ask to get a question and it like i asked it like one of my favorite writers is annie dillard so i was like who is annie dillard and um and it was like annie dillard is a renowned author poet and uh bridge living in san francisco and it was and then it like disagreed with us i was like no she's not that she's actually and then it like went back into a bridge like it has these parts of its brain that are like disagreeing with each other it's so cool it's really fun it is incredible yeah [1:07:20] Um, yeah, I mean, I feel like that's, that's, [1:07:24] A space I'm very excited about, just partially because I think there's a lot... [1:07:29] that people care about from the safety side. But I think coming back to the [1:07:33] We are going to learn so much about even how humans connect ideas because that is going to appear in that they call them features, right? What features are closer to one another? And I mean, I think we're constantly surprised at how LLMs understand what we're looking for, even if we're not explicit about it. And so there's that interaction.

[1:07:52] thinking you could call it that I think is [1:07:55] We don't quite understand. [1:07:56] about ourselves and the AIs. And I think we're going to learn a lot. Totally. I think it's also like really important for using language models as creative tools, because it makes your use of them way more precise. Because prompts are sort of like a very coarse grained mechanism for generating outputs. But if you can manipulate the underlying features, you can get much better, more concise outputs that are exactly what you want, which I think is really cool. Yeah. And I'm sure this, they actually don't need to make [1:08:22] headway on this. [1:08:24] But we talked about blind box design earlier. Yeah. [1:08:27] Imagine the Reddit map web version of design [1:08:31] aesthetics, that is something absolutely worth having. And [1:08:35] the data exists on that, right? As in where you can basically see, okay, if I like blind box design, but [1:08:41] not quite, I can see the connectivity to other things in the web and say, oh, actually, that's where I want to go. Because right now in something like. [1:08:49] Midjourney or Lexica, you kind of have to stumble your way into what you're looking for and [1:08:56] I mean, hopefully Anthropic or someone go create that. Not just for design, but for these concepts. I think it's coming. Yeah. So we have one final party trick left, which is I have been using this new tool called Granola. [1:09:13] Okay, and if you see this like this G on my screen, that's granola. Okay, and basically what it does is the sitting my computer all times and then when I'm in a meeting it starts recording and

[1:09:24] And it also gives me space to take notes, which I have not been taking notes because I've just been like focusing on the conversation. That would be really impressive if you could do that. But I could take notes if I wanted. And what it will do is when I press end, it will then go take the notes that I've written and it will fill them in based on the transcript. So it will turn my notes, my like rough sketch of notes into like a full summary of what we talked about. [1:09:54] like a very, a very good concise summary of like everything that we talked about. So we talked about the Internet Pipes project, we talked about mid journey for visual design. [1:10:07] uh evolution of creators with ai consensus globe web sim.ai i got all that stuff right mechanistic interpret interpretability what i also really like is it if we talked about it like it would pull out like action items and to do's i use this for all my meetings now and it's and you can also ask questions so if like i wasn't paying attention to something i could be like you know what did steph say about xyz and then we'll just like answer the question it's pretty cool that's really well done and i think that's important because otter and some other tools [1:10:37] things out in this way. To put it nicely. That's the thing. None of this is like, in AI terms, it's not necessarily that groundbreaking, but it's just [1:10:47] done really well. And I think there's so many opportunities for like little tools like this that take the standard

[1:10:54] Thank you. [1:10:55] toolbox of things that you know AI can do and just like just do it in a beautiful like high quality way that makes it really useful. That's what's important. Here's an example. There are so many times where I've used AI tools, whether specific podcast AI tools, ChatGPT, [1:11:10] etc that [1:11:11] I am looking for... [1:11:13] better podcast titles. [1:11:15] Right. Or inspiration, really. And [1:11:18] it's I never really get anything amazing. I definitely still go back to the tools for more of that workshopping process, but [1:11:26] There are so many examples of these tools, as you're saying, they deliver on the baseline of [1:11:32] I'm giving you what you're asking for, but they're not quite giving you what you're looking for, right? And so I think, like you said, how do you just... [1:11:40] How do you just up level? [1:11:42] the standard in some of these cases is loom did a good job on that recently with some of their like sop stuff which exists in other tools but just because it was like just really beautifully done. [1:11:51] people seem to be adopting it more than other things. Yeah, totally. Yeah. [1:11:56] Well... [1:11:57] I think that's I think that's gonna cover it for today. I'm so glad we got to do this again. I know coming out Of course and by the way, we should we should take these learnings and we should throw them into one of the music generators and play a song [1:12:10] It'll probably play after but you know, let's do it. Okay, so So are we're gonna you want me to just copy this whole thing? Yeah, yeah, I think it's pretty good at just taking okay And we'll put it in we'll put it into Suno. Yeah, you can just say something like I

[1:12:25] Dan and Steph just did a podcast. [1:12:28] On these topics. Yeah. Okay. And plus... [1:12:33] Play us, make us an outro song. [1:12:36] Do you want to give it any guidance on the kind or just let it run? Oh, I'm going to put the topics in. I'm going to paste the topics in. No, the... [1:12:42] Style. Style. [1:12:45] of music. Do you have a vibe you're going for for the show? [1:12:50] So basically, I mean, the vibe... [1:12:55] um uh just did a podcast uh on the topics below so like the [1:13:02] We should do the vibes document. So the vibes of the show are... We're trying to evoke a sense of wonder... [1:13:12] curiosity Creativity authenticity about technology. I Mean I really some of the some of the like inspirations for this for the show are like Carl Sagan's Cosmos original the original version is a really Big one for me. I also just like really like Jackson Brown music. So nice. I'm also Jackson Brown basically 70s early 80s [1:13:41] - Vibes, make it an outro, okay, cool. You think that's good? - Yeah, I think it's gonna know where the information starts. [1:13:50] I hope so. Okay, let's see. Let's see what it does. I think I have a Ceno account.

[1:13:57] Amen. [1:14:00] Hopefully it remembered your prompt. Oh yeah, it did. I can't believe... We're way over the limit. [1:14:08] Okay, why don't you just say... [1:14:13] Just a few of the things. Like, we just... We talked about craters and... Okay. I gotta get... I gotta cut down some of these. Oh, wow. Oh, does it not? Oh, because sometimes it lets you... [1:14:24] Maybe choose lyrics? [1:14:27] I think so. Oh, you know what you could do? Yeah. Is you could take the... [1:14:30] stuff that you just cut and put it into chat to pt and say come up with you're right that's not or or we could just um i could just say compress this yeah um compress this into 200 characters they'll just be like rubber ducky hat creator compress this uh song prompt into 200 characters okay cool [1:14:54] um [1:14:56] oh okay there you go we love it our trusty friend chachi bt never lets us down all right um well we'll just stick with granola like that's all it could fit okay create [1:15:11] okay we can't use jackson brown that makes sense um uh i'll just we'll stick with cosmos do we want to add anything oh yeah what what give me give me one more [1:15:23] Let's see. Internet pipes, mid-journey, evolution of creators, fact-checking, consensus globe, web sim. Could do...

[1:15:31] I don't know if we want to do... [1:15:33] Golden Gate Bridge Clon. [1:15:39] Okay. We'll leave out the E. It'll know what we're talking about, clearly. [1:15:47] Thank you. [1:15:49] Thank you. [1:15:50] I did this. A couple people that work at Every did this for my birthday. They made birthday songs for me. It was so fun. I've seen some really good songs. [1:15:59] songs. Actually, while we wait, can I play you the one from Internet Pipes? Please. Someone in the community made this. Alright, are you ready? [1:16:09] just a tap in the way i stumbled on a group that made me say that's pretty good i like it it's got a little bit of like like lana del rey ish like voice yeah yeah i think we may have we may have our we've got our song generated let's see [1:16:38] I don't know if this will capture on the mics. Probably not, but we can do some editing magic for it. [1:16:46] they definitely took the tech yeah i don't think they captured the authenticity it's an arcade yeah yeah yeah i like it it's got something there's there's good stuff

[1:17:16] I like the lyrics so you can see them on the right panel. Oh yeah. Oh wait, just look at this bridge. Can you play that part? I know if our secrets unfold. Hey, talk to the golden gate. I don't... [1:17:46] I don't know if we unfortunately... Oh, we're almost there. Okay. [1:18:16] it's great i think it's great um excited we did this thanks for the suggestion yeah no this is awesome good way to end yeah yeah oh my gosh folks you absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to ai and i why because this show is the epitome of awesomeness it's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard but instead of gold it's filled with

[1:18:46] unadulterated knowledge bombs about ChatGPT. Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights, and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat. [1:18:56] craving for more. It's not just a show. It's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. [1:19:03] So do yourself a favor, hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. [1:19:09] And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you.