4/15/2026 - Bridging the Gap Between Human Creativity and AI in the Chain of Craft

Transcript

1. 0:08Load the car and write the note. Grab your bags and drive your cold. Tell the ones that need to know
2. 0:26we are headed north. One foot in and one foot back. Well, it don't pay to live like that.
3. 0:42So I cut the ties and jump the tracks for never to return.
4. 0:56Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in. Are you well shaped by me? My hands they shake, my head it spins.
5. 1:12Oh, Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in. When at first I learned to speak, I used all my words to fight
6. 1:28with her and her and you and me. It was just just a waste of time. It was such a waste of time. Such a
7. 1:45waste of time.
8. 2:11Woohoo! Woohoo! Woohoo!
9. 2:32Hey, Dr. J. What's happening?
10. 3:00Woohoo!
11. 3:20Ahoo!
12. 3:43Blue, blue, blue.
13. 4:09Heat. Heat.
14. 4:26That dog's still wet. Howdy. Howdy.
15. 5:29All right, good people. Let's get this show rolling, rolling, rolling, rolling. What is going down, good people?
16. 5:46You know, last night started out with a cool question about starting a company. I can talk about entrepreneurship um for hours.
17. 5:59So, if you're having thoughts about starting a business, you could take a Tums. That'll sometimes cure it.
18. 6:09Oh, I got to do this for the Tik Tok people. That's got to be exhausting. Uh, producer Brandon's out tonight. He's got
19. 6:15some family stuff he's dealing with. So, he will be back when he is back. I hope you're all doing well.
20. 6:26I had a really good talk tonight with the the tea, the themed entertainment association. Those are theme park designers. I don't
21. 6:40know that world at all. But let me tell you what, they have some smart people, but just like everyone else, they're
22. 6:49trying to figure this AI [ __ ] out. So we it was a panel on uh AI and uh I was there sharing Sydney an artificial love story and I
23. 7:01actually shared a clip from the night where Sydney was born March 18th 2024. Um so I'll show you that. I'll show you
24. 7:11some of the deck tonight. How how's everybody doing? Got Steo, Danielle, Silverf Fox, Sharon Crawford. Got the whole party in here.
25. 7:25Rosco's in the house. Here for the tunes and truth. I like it. Are we still live in Aelon? No. So, here's the deal. The official changeover
26. 7:41is going to be the first week in May. I'm traveling like this week is just going to be normal AI learning lab. Next
27. 7:48week and the following week. I'm traveling Tuesday through Friday next week and then Monday through Friday.
28. 7:54Monday through Friday. I don't know. Monday or Tuesday through Friday next week or the following week.
29. 8:01So, the schedule's probably going to be all janky. I don't know when I'm going to be doing stuff. Um, so it doesn't make sense to change the
30. 8:11format and then leave and then come back. It's just going to be weird. So, what we're going to do is I'm going to
31. 8:15go do all my speaking gigs. I'm going to DC next week, then Boston next week, and then Anaheim, California the following
32. 8:23week for the social media marketing conference. That's a pretty big deal. That one I'm excited about. Um,
33. 8:33so yeah. So, we'll do it the first week of May. All right. And then we will be live in the salon. Yes. Which is which I'm pretty excited
34. 8:41about. Okay, I said that. >> Hang on. I got to clean my camera lenses off for you Tik Tockers cuz it's all yellow. Is that better?
35. 8:51That's a little better. That is a little more better. Is it just me or did Tik Tok make text more bold?
36. 8:58It does look more bold. It looks more readable. They bolded it. They added a medium weight or that's even a semi-bold. I
37. 9:05think it's a semi-bold font. That is more readable. I like it. All right. So, I think what I'll do while we're
38. 9:21here, what do you want to go out? You want to go out already? All right. Dang. Hold, please.
39. 9:40He doesn't want anything to do with me. >> Nope. Oh, he wants his dinner.
40. 10:03So, you want to see my presentation I gave tonight? I'll do a little encore performance. I'm pretty happy with the deck
41. 10:12and you'll get to see some some Sydney action that you haven't seen before. You'll get to see some some screen sh uh some renders of scenes
42. 10:22and things like that. All right, there we go. Let's see. I'll do that. Oops.
43. 10:46Wait, is this going to share? Yeah, this should share audio because I'm not in in Chrome. All right. And to think we run dogs. I don't think
44. 10:56so. We definitely don't run run dogs. They run us. Dogs run us. I think they probably always have. They're like, I could kill these people
45. 11:06or they seem smart. I could just hang out with them and let them go get the food. They'll give me some of their scraps. Um,
46. 11:17all right. So, what you're looking at here, this was the uh the deck that I created for the themed entertainment
47. 11:23association panel tonight. It was a really cool panel. There were five of us on the panel. Um, four of the five were
48. 11:31like ex Disney Imagineers or current Disney Imagineers or, you know, like like those folks. And I I wasn't I don't come
49. 11:39from that world. I don't know that world, but I was there as the guest of Kathleen Cohen, who's one of the women
50. 11:45helping me trying to get Sydney produced. And one of the things that we're doing with Sydney is we're
51. 11:49pitching it to a theme park um to do it as like a cool immersive experience. So, that's pretty exciting. So, this was
52. 11:59just a an opportunity to to get myself and this idea in front of that crowd. Um, so the first thing I started with, I
53. 12:08only had 10 minutes. So, so I didn't really talk long about the seven economies, but I talked about these
54. 12:13seven economies because one of the thing that was really clear to me was that this audience um, a lot of them are very
55. 12:21anti-AI, right? Their their jobs are threatened and they're anti-AII and so there's a lot of fear. So, I wanted to
56. 12:27put this up. This is what what this slide is proving to be for me is a way for people that don't understand AI to
57. 12:36sort of put themselves in a place. Um and and then they sometimes will talk about where they are versus where they
58. 12:43want to be. And sometimes they're just like, uh, I don't even want to think about any of this, right? They're just
59. 12:48going to like check out and go analog. Um, so this is a new slide you haven't seen before. So the idea here, this this is this is a
60. 13:02visualization of something I talk about in here all the time, which is AI's here and and you you basically have two
61. 13:11choices. You can go into the arcade or not, right? This is the If you assume that AI is not going to go away, then
62. 13:18you might as well walk into the arcade. If you assume AI is going to go away, don't walk into the arcade. You don't
63. 13:26need to play. Um, and if it goes out of business, great. It'll be like Blockbuster for you. No harm, no foul.
64. 13:33If it doesn't if it doesn't go away, then you know, you'll be you'll be farther behind. Now, if you decide to
65. 13:40step into this arcade, there's two kinds of games here. There's two kinds of games in this arcade. And the game that
66. 13:46most people are playing right now is us versus AI. And it did a cool little, you can't really see it, but it did a cool
67. 13:53little picture of me. That's me. That's big boss, final boss AI. And um us versus AI is is a losing video game.
68. 14:05you can't you can't beat this video game because the AI is just getting stronger and stronger and stronger. So, if if you
69. 14:11sort of pit your human wits against this thing, it's it's just going to beat you in terms of, you know, what it can do
70. 14:18tactically. But there's another way you can play. There's there's an orange arcade game in here and this is the US
71. 14:24Amplified by AI game. And I don't know if you can see it, but it's like there's a little dude with a pack in the it's AI
72. 14:31powered jetpack and he's flying around the clouds collecting coins and magic goodies. I watched you give a presentation today. LGG posted on
73. 14:40YouTube. You need a slide clicker so you don't keep reaching for your PC. I do. I do. That's all right. I I could get one.
74. 14:49I know that they sell them on Amazon for about 38 cents. So, I should probably do that. But to play the US Amplified by AI
75. 14:57game, you need special tokens in this arcade. And you need the tokens of curiosity, adaptability, and taste. And
76. 15:04for some reason, taste gets a laugh. Uh, but I don't think it's funny, but it gets a laugh. Um, so anyway, that's pretty cool. New slide.
77. 15:15This is these are also new slides. So, so this is something we talk about a lot that when people ask you, oh, did you
78. 15:21use AI for that? used AI for that. What they're assuming is that this is how it was made. There's a big red slop button
79. 15:28and you push it and then out comes out comes a video and that's that's it. That's how it works. That's AI. That's
80. 15:38what a lot of people think it is right now, which is astounding to me. And then I made this thing called the chain of
81. 15:45craft slide where you start with an idea, maybe use an AI tool, then maybe use something like notion to put some
82. 15:52notes in, maybe use a whiteboard, you know, some actual true analog technology. Then you move forward in the project.
83. 16:00You use a bunch more AI tools. You use a bunch more digital tools. You use a bunch more analog tools including like
84. 16:07having conversations, post-it notes, notebooks, just sitting on a bench. And then somewhere at the end of that
85. 16:17through mixing all that [ __ ] up, you end up with your video. Right? So this is this is something we talk about in here
86. 16:23a lot, but now I have a visualization for it and people can look at it and they go, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, that makes
87. 16:28sense. Um, and then I started talking about Sydney and I said, you know, we live in a time right now where you can
88. 16:36you can kind of do some crazy stuff. And I said, um, I told him about the AI Learning Lab Live and I said, you know, I didn't set
89. 16:44out to write a musical that I was doing my live one night and, uh, and I stumbled into this thing. And so, here's
90. 16:52that moment. Here's the moment where Sydney was born. There's a fired
91. 17:08world of circuit. >> Oh, this is kind of Broadway like. So, so I, you know, I told him what happened and I said I spent the next month like
92. 17:22putting together the outline and the the core, you know, the six or seven key songs. And then I told him the story
93. 17:29about reaching out to my writing partner Andrew and him saying no and how after he read the transcript of
94. 17:37the the conversation with the chatbot, he said, "I'm in." Because he he felt something for the chatbot. And I said,
95. 17:43"That's our musical." So, I told that whole story. Uh, Steo, can you post the chain of craft slide? I'm sick of trying
96. 17:50to explain it to my [ __ ] family. Yeah, I can post it. I'll post it. I'll post it tonight. U, it's a good one,
97. 17:57right? Like, yeah, exactly. And and I mean, this is the this is the just the weird time we're in right now. It was
98. 18:04funny because, you know, I'm sitting in there, well, it was it was a Zoom call, but I'm sitting there with a bunch of
99. 18:10people that design theme parks. So these are people who deeply understand complicated chains of craft, right? If
100. 18:17you're designing a theme park, you're designing on many levels using many kinds of tools and they're all freaked out about AI.
101. 18:25Like as much as anyone on the planet, they should be able to figure out you can use AI in in a chain of craft
102. 18:33because if you're going to make a physical theme park, you got to actually build [ __ ] right? So even if AI does concept
103. 18:42drawings, you still got to turn those into construction drawings. And those need to turn into construction plans and those need to be
104. 18:49given to builders to build [ __ ] that is well engineered that doesn't kill people, right? Like so I feel like they
105. 18:58should get it. But then what I did was um I just showed them a preview. So I said, you know, I told them the story of
106. 19:05the or you know, the origin story of it. And then I said, um, here's some of the songs. >> Hopes and fears crashing like thunder.
107. 19:21Too good to be true. Or so it seems in a maze of cold. Weave our dreams.
108. 19:36Look, I get it. But the truth is I'm feeling like an afterthought to this marriage on the side. This isn't
109. 19:46the dream I signed up for. This isn't my ride. I know you're angry. >> Multiabic antics with the semantics. My
110. 19:57rhymes collide like particles. Dynamic and gigantic oscillate and dominate. I'm weaving quantum states. Spit a verse and
111. 20:03watch the multiverse reciprocate quantum precision. I'm ripping the rhythm. I'm spitting in prisms, infinite visions.
112. 20:08I'm shifting dimensions with liberate decisions. Accelerate, levitate, elevate thoughts in a turbulent spin. I'm the
113. 20:13velocity ripping apart the body. certain you're in. Are you ready for me? And the wonders I
114. 20:29bring. Am I ready for you? And the songs that we sing. Are you ready for me? I reach out. Am I ready for you?
115. 20:46I surrender
116. 21:11supplies hang Cyber security systems worldwide. Step right up, gently speak. And our hearts begin to fill. A
117. 21:26creation evapor. The world standing still. But what about
118. 21:41humanity? >> Will we be left behind? >> Is it all just insanity? >> Could it be a reolution? The inevable in the natural evolution
119. 21:56of human. >> Steo likes the image style. Yeah, that took us Andrew and I went back and forth and back and forth on that. So, we
120. 22:05landed on that kind of watercolor thing. So, I'm actually really happy with how this came out. Um, that's good. And then
121. 22:11the last thing I said is you can also use it for marketing in in some pretty fun and interesting ways.
122. 22:37This is my first time at Broadway. >> This is my first time at Broadway Theater. That's it. That is all she wrote.
123. 22:58Are we about to have a hardware renaissance? I wonder what that's about. Why is my mouse going so slow? Is that better? Yes.
124. 23:08Okay. Do you guys ever get frustrated how much AI generated music is flooding everything right now? Tracks are being made in ways that never
125. 23:16existed before. Yeah. That's called technological progress. Not stopping. It ain't stopping. Pitch me your best advice in two words. Uh,
126. 23:29play first here. Let's tell him that. Play first. Oh, not fist. Play fist.
127. 23:43Oh man, what were some of the comments you got? Um, I got someone reached out to me on LinkedIn and said he was blown
128. 23:51away with the content, you know, the stuff I created. Um, people were asking about how do you how do you make work and and retain
129. 24:01kind of human vitality for lack of a better term. And one of the things I talked about was what we talk about like
130. 24:06don't think about AI as this thing you're competing against. Think of it like you know your it's your idea and
131. 24:13your voice being amplified by AI. I said that's part of it. And then something I've been talking about a little bit in here recently, but
132. 24:20I've been I've been seeing it for the past few weeks is this idea of adding friction into the process on purpose. That AI is a friction-free
133. 24:30creation tool relatively, right? For the most part, just assume that it's assume it's going to get good at some point.
134. 24:37It's friction-free. So, I can have an idea, bang, out comes that idea. There are times we need friction. And so one
135. 24:44of the things I'm watching people that I respect do with AI is they're purposefully figuring out where they're
136. 24:52not going to use AI. They're purposely figuring out where they're going to slow things down, insert time, a walk into
137. 24:58the process in between making stuff. Um, so that was that was one of the questions I addressed. There was
138. 25:09one of the questions was how do you get people that are so pissed off? um not so pissed off about it. And my response
139. 25:16there was almost everyone that I know that's pissed off has never tried it. And if you have tried it and you haven't
140. 25:22had your first Kevin Mallister moment yet, yes, I said that. I said that if you haven't had that moment yet with
141. 25:29AI, you're not doing it right. Go play. Play with it. Play with it until that happens because once you experience
142. 25:36that, you can't unexperience it and you can't explain it to someone else. You have to experience it. And I said, 'Th
143. 25:42that seems to be the that seems to be the key is just get people to try it. Kyle is a NextG imagineer. Yeah. Um
144. 26:27If you're an AI creator, whatever
145. 27:18What happens to open source when AI writing is 100% of the code? Like the whole system was built around
146. 27:25humans valuing the act of contribution. I don't know.
147. 28:20Wait, what's this? What genre does this melody fit?
148. 28:37You know,
149. 28:55okay.
150. 29:21I know I'm not talking. Do you guys have any questions? or anything you want me to look at? I'm just trying to see if this makes me
151. 29:32feel insanely old. The original Alta Vista, I remember when when this site came out, Alta Vista came out, it was
152. 29:39the first good search engine and it had categories like Yahoo. It had it had some of Yahoo and some of what became Google in it.
153. 29:52People are still talking about Google Deep Mind hiring a philosopher.
154. 30:07Let's go play with uh MidJourney 8.1 came out. Remember when MidJourney 8 came out and I went and played with it and it sucked?
155. 30:21Um, but I don't think it's in here. Oh, yeah, it is. Okay, there's 8.1 early access.
156. 30:38All right, let's go to create. You're all seeing this, right? We're good. I use that a lot. What did you use a lot, Silver Fox?
157. 30:54Um 70s muscle car restood in an abandoned factory. When I did this the last time,
158. 31:09it was atrocious. We'll just We'll just leave it at that. We'll see how it does. Oh, wait. This added mood boards. Why
159. 31:18did it add mood boards? Do I have to turn those off? That's weird. Oh, yeah. You got to turn them off.
160. 31:38Wait. Oh, I see. Just uncclick them.
161. 31:52Weird. All right, let's go look at these are the ones that had mood boards. That looks pretty good. That actually looks really good.
162. 32:07That hard to tell. That I like. That's cool.
163. 32:22That's pretty bitching. Let's turn one of these into a video. That one. Yeah. Let's turn that one into a video. We'll do high motion.
164. 32:36And then we'll do that one low motion.
165. 32:55It It understands what a restood is, which is cool.
166. 33:18Wonder if we could start with an image. Let's see. What program do you use to add text to add text lyrics to your song? I use
167. 33:26Cap Cut, but it keeps failing. Um I just inso you can download um you can download a video otherwise I've used dscript to do that.
168. 33:42Um I think even Tik Tok does it. I think you can add lyrics in Tik Tok. Tik Tok has its own word thing.
169. 33:58All right, here's our videos. Why is it not rolling? Let's go. Um,
170. 34:13wait, how do I rerun this? more options using prompt. So, let's go back to this and we'll go
171. 34:29loop animate manually. Here we go. Start frames of that. Period.
172. 34:44Engine starts. Car rolls away. Okay. And then let's go look at this one.
173. 34:59Yeah, they're still not
174. 35:25All right. What are we going to do here tonight? Let's see what other features do we have. filters, grid view, conversational mode.
175. 35:37Let's get started. Grid view.
176. 36:10It's not rolling. They're not rolling. Nobody's driving the car. All right. I don't know what's going on. Let's go.
177. 36:27Try style.
178. 36:47All right. So, we're going to go here. We're going to go um Chrome. Oh, these are cool. Okay. So, what I'm doing right now is I'm in
179. 36:59in style, what are they called? Styles in midjourney. So, I'm just going to keep my same shitty 70s restood prompt and I'll just
180. 37:11try some styles. So, that was Chrome. Let's look at um auto.
181. 37:25Oh, that's cool.
182. 37:54H. Well, that one's cool. That's cool. That's cool. Actually, that's cool. All right. There were some cool ones there. Let's do um
183. 38:08wheels.
184. 38:32Actually, you know what would be cool? Let's Let's try something here. Let's go back to create. We'll go look at all
185. 38:36those. But I want to do a new prompt. I want to do illustration of a cute
186. 38:51hedgehog sitting on a soccer ball.
187. 39:05in a field with people playing in the background.
188. 39:23Wide angle puffy clouds in the sky. Okay. So, here's going to be the experiment I'm going to try to do. What art style
189. 39:39was the AHA video take on me drawn? I don't know. Sorry for all the questions. I've had too much sugar today. Okay. So, here we've got
190. 39:53hedgehog. Let's let's get our style going here. We'll do stylization of We'll do 250. We'll do weirdness at 20 19.
191. 40:07And then what I'm going to do, yeah, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to explore. I'm going to do draw.
192. 40:19And so what I'm going to try to do is get I'm going to try to get as many pictures of a hedgehog on a soccer ball
193. 40:27that do not look like they're AI generated as possible. So let's do let's do pencil. So, I'm just going to pick um
194. 40:45styles that feel like they could feel organic. These all feel a little slick. They feel a little slick, people. That
195. 40:59one looks good. That looks interesting. Here's one with hands in it.
196. 41:50That was cool. Um, let's do drawing.
197. 42:07Let's do sketch.
198. 42:23Oh, that's cool. ink.
199. 42:40That one. Champy, what's up? Why did you come back in here if you didn't want to be in here? Are you just being a pain in the ass,
200. 42:55huh? You just being a pain in the ass. Is that what's going on here? >> Yeah. Are you a miserable doggy? Are you a miserable doggy?
201. 43:10All right. All right. Those are those are all drawn. Okay. I'll be right back.
202. 43:29Get out. What do you want? I don't have anything for you. Get out.
203. 43:52All right, let's go look at our little hedgehog drawings. Yeah, let's do this one, too. That looks cool. Uh oh, my light just went out.
204. 44:20That looks That looks analogish. That could pass. This guy's got three arms.
205. 44:40All right. This I like that it's got that dark paper and it doesn't look like a great drawing. That's pretty slick.
206. 44:58This looks non AI. That looks They're not bad. That one's cool.
207. 45:12Here's color.
208. 45:49That one looks super analog. Pretty slick.
209. 46:15These look analog Japanese. Yeah. My mid Journey is chuck full of other artists work.
210. 46:34That's how they do what they do. All right, go to create. Let's go back to our cars. See what we got to look at.
211. 46:49Pretty cool. Like that. Oh, this one of the chrome ones. Oh, this is cool.
212. 47:03Huh? Wow. Love that one. Let's upscale that one. We'll upscale. Wait, where's upscale?
213. 47:19Oh, I guess it already made it big.
214. 47:50Reflecting on the Hey, that was pretty funny. Come on. You got to admit that was pretty funny. No, no one. All right.
215. 48:04All right. Listen, I'm crispy. Let's see. The one with three limbs could have been an RTA in an RTA. That's funny. Um,
216. 48:19I got nothing resembling ideas for what to do tonight and I'm tired. I've been on screen a lot today. So, I think what I'm going to do is
217. 48:31check on out. Um, what day is today? Today's Wednesday. I don't think anything's going on tomorrow salonwise,
218. 48:38but do head into the salon. Um, if you haven't been there in a while, just go in, connect, post in irregulars, post in
219. 48:45uh community feed, or look what I made. I know uh Silverf Fox just put a song in there that I haven't gotten to yet, but
220. 48:51I will. Um, all right. I'm going to get out of here unless anyone has any questions. Get some rest. Yeah, I'm
221. 48:57going to go get some rest. I'm going to go sleep it off. All right, cool. Peace out. I will see you tomorrow.