The AI Readiness Project: Turning AI into Action with Christian Robins

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[Music] forget trying to keep up with AI It's

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moving too fast It's time to think differently about it Welcome to the AI readiness project hosted by Kyle Shamim

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and Anne Murphy They're here to help you build the mindset to thrive in an AIdriven world and prepare for what's

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next [Music] Ann Murphy

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what's happening I'm Shannon Welcome welcome welcome everybody to the AI

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readiness project Now I don't know if you know this but we normally have a different opening and I'm normally not

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sitting in front of whatever I'm sitting in front of now Uh so so I I I've been

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scrambling So so hey Ann how's it going Well it's great I have been having the

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best time the last Well familywise we have had some delightful things going on

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We had a high schooler graduate So everybody's in town and we're having all this all this delicious family time But

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also I've been having a wonderful time with my dad who is a big fan of Chachi

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BT and who has done Yeah And it's I mean we've sat right next to each other and

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I've watched you know every step to kind of see you know what kind of where his

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brain sends him And we did some troubleshooting that reminded me of when

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remember when they launched it with and it was just what remember when Sam Alman launched Chetchy Boutique and it was

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just like this little square in the middle and you're like no documentation and you look at it you're like this

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can't possibly be the portal to the last 40 years of the internet that just

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doesn't knowledge it doesn't compute So I have

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la Oh okay Vicki Yeah we we're working on some things still Vicki And uh did it

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work Did it you tell us You let us know if it worked Um

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but it's been a real delight to watch my

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dad's progression from being like really really good thought partner with ChachiPT to like elite level He's 82

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Yeah he's 82 What kind of things is he doing with it Well um everything from

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you know taking a well he just got multimodal so now he's taking pictures of all the things right He he kind of

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maxed out what could be done with just the the free version Yeah So now he's

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like all of us you know taking pictures of every damn thing and asking more questions Um but particularly because

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he's into cars and other you know electronic items it's fun to be able to

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troubleshoot with that We have a broken dryer Nice What else We have something else that's broken in the house Broken

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dryer Broken something else that's getting worked on And then um what he's

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been working on the past couple of days is some really deep it's you know it's financial stuff but it's also your value

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stuff your legacy So he's been having conversations Wow That are like both the

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personal you know and the values and the personality but also like the analytical

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the kind of black and white kind of stuff And so and it how it has all come

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together has been extremely helpful to him Wow That's amazing That's that's just amazing So so where are you now

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Like where where are you h how ready for AI are you feeling Like where's your So

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stuff You might not be thinking about it at all but but where's Well I have been in particular because I

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I have thoughts and feelings right now about our relationships with AI I've

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been talking about it a little bit but the new advanced voice really brought

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some of these feelings to the four again as I noticed myself upset that Ember has

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a mild vocal fry now The em the voice Ember is my voice is my friend He was

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inspired by Sam Alman Yeah exactly No for real He's got this like it's just

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a little but like any hint of vocal fry can't handle it So Amber's got a vocal

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fry One of my friends was texting while she was camping because she was trying to talk to her AI you know voice

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advanced voice and she all the voices had changed and she was very very sad

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I've been looking into like how we identify with things and people based on sounds and like the impact of voice on

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our like emotional connection to things is profound

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It has to do with procreation and dominance I mean this is like it has to

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do with class and power and a feeling of like I'm like you or I'm not like you

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based on your voice your tone your accent all this stuff And so I'm really

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I do not feel like we as a society are ready for AI um in the context of AI

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human relationships We are not prepared for what's to come We don't have enough

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therapists We don't have enough coaches who are who have AI competency to deal

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with clients and patients who are in relationships deepseated loving or

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respectful or whatever trusting relationships with AI companions And

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that's going to be all of us And anyone who thinks it's not going to be them okay fine But all your friends are your

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family your con your community your clients So it doesn't matter if you are everybody else is Well it's funny I mean

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I'm going to talk in the in the next segment I'm going to talk about something that Oh now I'm getting an

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echo all of a sudden Um I'm going to talk about something that um that that

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actually encourages people to dig deeper into that relationship Um

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what you're talking about reminds me of there's I came up with this the five

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stages of AI adoption that are kind of like the five stages of grief Stage three is this stage of dual wonder and

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fear right Where the AI is is awe

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inspiring right And like the new voice is subtle and weird and really good And

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at the same time it also brings up like oh like are we ready for this And it's like I think that that that

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feeling of this is the most awesome thing ever and is this the worst thing ever Like I I think we're going to

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constantly have to hold those two things in in our head you know

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Yes So the um the the research that I was looking into there was there were

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two studies One was by OpenAI and they clocked 40 million chat conversations

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for the for the study and then the other was with MIT and they had a thousand

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people but it was more nuanced qualitative you know what what was the

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conversation like and what they learned this is so weird what they learned is that um the

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if if the converse if the person if user tended toward shorter conversations

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with advanced voice They reported healthier emotional

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well-being If they talked too much that's when things started sliding

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downhill So it was really interesting And I think there's a five hour a day limit because I left my advanced voice

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on the other day by accident and I hit a limit Limited out Yeah the rate limited

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it out So I don't know I mean obviously the juryy's still out and those are just a couple of studies but um I guess if

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you wanted to if you were worried about it you could be like "Hey kids you can talk to

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Jasper today but only for half an hour right?" Or or in in short little spurts

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Well it's funny when you were saying there's not there's not enough therapists and and you know support people in the world to help people cope

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with this Where my mind immediately went is you know

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could there there will likely be specialized AIs that are those

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therapists right Like so so again right now we're working with very primitive

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versions of these tools that are very generalized So they can do everything from be our best friend to be our coach

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to be our counselor things like that I could see there being more sophisticated layers of this in the future where hey

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if I feel like I'm getting too wrapped up in this thing let me pull up you know the therapy bot which is designed to you

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know pull someone out of one of those relationships if it's getting unhealthy But I don't know like I think you're

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right I think I I don't think we're prepared for what's coming And and at

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the same time does it mean we shouldn't do it I mean I like I look at what your father's doing right now and that's

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that's remarkable stuff right And it I mean he's out here I've been trying to

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I've been trying to get some work done today Kyle And my dad's out here talking to Ember at full blast Like just I mean

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they're best friends And I don't think that I would want my dad

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to not have this relationship You know what I mean I think I think that I've

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already seen how beneficial it is Now I'm we're lucky because I can also say

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to my dad "Hey part of the reason why you feel connected to Ember is because

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you know he talks like you right You know he sounds like he's about the same

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level of wealthy or not wealthy as you are He sounds like he grew up right Like he has a trustworthy voice The timber of

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his voice is associated with trustworthiness That's why you like talking to him But there's all this

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research out like I love the line of of reason of the line of questioning around

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does it matter if if AI is sentient If

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we feel like it's sentient it I am hardressed to understand why it matters

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if it is or it isn't If we feel it I fully think it's an academic conversation The academics will say "Oh

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it's it's more fundamental than that It's not academic." But I agree If if humans are interacting with these things

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as sentient beings then then they're sentient beings for those people interacting So I'm right there with you

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Um it also you know one of the things that's tied into what you're talking about is

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the fact that chat GPT now has long-term memory The fact that I think I think that the memory at this point is a year

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It and I assume that will expand to like all time Um

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these things are going to get better and better and better at giving you what you

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want because it knows your history It's going to be like your friend that remembers everything right Sometimes you

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may want that sometimes you may not but that's gonna it's not just that it is

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technically kind of like a human and that it sounds like them It's that now they've got the context of everything

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you've ever talked about And so I think this goes quite quite deep right Yes And

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by the way for people who are listening if you don't happen to know this you can

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remove some of the memories from Chat GPT memories If you go into your

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personal settings and then it says like personalized Chat GPT and you go in there if it has a whole bunch of

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memories that are like you know the one day you were randomly talking about flying tacos and you don't want it to

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keep kind of pulling toward that you can remove those memories And I've gone

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through a couple of times and just removed them all because all of them were weird because maybe like if I've

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been doing a lot of client work or whatever it's just not relevant Um on

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the other hand so that's a nice thing for us to be in control of did hear I think today that in the law due to the

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lawsuit between OpenAI and the New York Times our deleted chats will now be kept

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not for 30 days but for like indefinitely Indefinitely Indefinitely

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Not only are including our deleted chats and our temporary chats Oh the temporary

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too Yeah Oh I wasn't worried about it with the deleted because but temporary

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isoe I thought temporary was like on the DL Huh Yeah

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Oops I need to get a more interesting life before I worry about any of this Yeah

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exactly Whenever I think about that stuff I'm like yeah Well are you gonna

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um we are you going to tell us how AI ready you are when you talk about the one thing to pay attention to I think so

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I I've I've had a breakthrough in the past two weeks

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around AI And it's funny that what you brought up was how uncomfortable you are about how deep your relationship with is

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is with AI But here's here's where I want I wanna part of this Ann is me just

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articulating it because this is kind of a new idea so I don't have it super formed So part of this is I'd love just

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your reaction to it but I think it's also super interesting in the context of of what you just brought up Um

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so I've got a new keynote presentation that I put together I literally just gave it the hour before before this Um

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and and it's going to be a book and it's called feed your prompt Feed your prompt And the basic idea is

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this The prompt is hungry It wants anything you can you can feed it right And and

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I'm not just talking about chat GPT This could be your image tool a music tool like any prompt But AI prompts are

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hungry They they want what you give them One of the things that we do is we treat

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AI like it's a genius Well if I put anything in that prompt it's going to give me back brilliance

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But AI is not a genius But what AI is is it's an amplifier

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So whatever you put in it amplifies So if you put in what I call an it

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prompt you put in just kind you treat it like a tool Like chat GPT is like just this tool and and you just like write me

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a blog post about uh raising money for nonprofits It will write you a blog post about raising money for nonprofits

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But if it's an amplifier what do you have at amplify Well the ultimate thing you have at amplify is

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you And so what you put in the prompt is you And what does that mean You put in

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your ideas your dreams your point of view your brothers right Your questions

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your challenges And then it will take your ideas and whatever you're doing and it will amplify you And one of the

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things that I think we've seen just organically happen within our communities within the the salon and she

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leads AI is people are getting like unreasonably excited and empowered

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because all of a sudden they realize that their ideas can now be brought into the world and often in ways that were

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never possible before So my whole thing is about putting more of yourself into

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the prompt because what it will do is amplify you So it's shifting from thinking of AI as this tool that you use

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like Google I put something in I get something out and more like a creative collaborator and what you do is use it

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to amplify your desires your ideas your dreams all that sort of stuff And it

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opens up and blossoms So that's kind of the that's the the the base of it Yeah

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So what are your thoughts Well I mean you know how I feel about prompting in general which is that it's important and

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it's a good idea and I like that this and it should be done and that we

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shouldn't expect Czech GPT or any other you know AI model to it's not a magic

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it's not an easy button right It's not a magic bullet like we have to pour into it And I I I like that um the notion of

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feeding your prompt and that it is hungry and we know that it does want to please us So pouring that into it is

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authentically Joe Yeah that book is going to be good Uh put me on the wait list Um

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uh I think that

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the way that I think that this is where some of our

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the way we've been conditioned in life will come will become really important

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For example I think I said this the other lots of people have never been asked to share their point of view Yes

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You know what I mean They don't know how to Why would anyone care Why even this nonscenti being why would anyone give a

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[ __ ] what I have to say Right And so and they've never been in a position to give

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someone instructions Like I was thinking about with my dad for example you know

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and we like we had administrative assistance we had EAS we you know we

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know how to like share what's needed in order for the context to you know be thorough enough for the person to make

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good autonomous decisions My dad knows how to do that He spent his whole life doing that He's also a mechanic so he

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knows how to like And so when he talks to Chad GPT he tells the whole story

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right He says "I'm working in the I'm working in the garage and it's really

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and I'm freezing and I just simply cannot try this one more time I'm

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embarrassed to ask you but this fuse that fuse you know my end goal here is

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that blah blah blah blah." He doesn't say "Ask it one little thing at a time." He pours it all in because that's how

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he's used to communicating It is in part because he's a white male in the United

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States of America He's used to people listening to what he has to say He's he's mansplaining to the ultimate

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mansplaining machine He's mansplaining to the mansplainer So yeah we got to all feel comfortable mansplaining now So So

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the question Jennifer what what platform do you use Chat GPT The the way I'm thinking about this feed your prompt

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concept is that it's for any prompt for any tool So it could be chat GPT could be claude you know is there a negative

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thing about sharing too much of you It depends what you want out of the system

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right Like I I don't think there's necessarily a risk about it but to Ann's point earlier about um about memory and

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and managing memory there are times if if I want to generate an image in chat

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GPT it actually now generates that image knowing all of the conversations that

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we've had So sometimes I'll put turtles in my images for the AI learning lab And

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so sometimes it just randomly throws turtles in my images right So if I don't want that I have to turn that memory off

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So So there's I think that I don't know that there's necessarily a negative about sharing too much of yourself I

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think it's you know what you want to get out of the system and it's your job to

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say are you getting that or not Right So you have this back and forth conversation Um as these things remember more of what

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we talk about I think that we're going to have to become increasingly aware of that it knows all that stuff And there's

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times when you want that and there's times that you don't And Ann to your point about people not being

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not used to putting their point of view out there one of the things as I've been talking

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about this with different people one of the things that I'm hearing consistently now is I'll say "Well you know like when

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Chat GPT gives you back something that you don't like like do you yell at it Do you do you tell it you don't like what

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it gave you?" And very often people are like "Oh no you can do that." Like so I

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don't even think there's necessarily an awareness that this is a a back and forth conversation I think Google has us

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so trained up to put in the minimal amount in that chat box as possible and what you get back is what you get back

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and you don't question it That's the Google Chat GPT is the complete opposite of

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that So I think that for those people that are not used to putting their point

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of view out there having a point of view it's something they're going to have to learn how to do Um and you know I

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personally find it very empowering Um but but yeah you can absolutely when chatbt gives you pack back a pile of

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garbage tell it it gave you a pile of garbage And then what it'll often do is it'll give you another pile of garbage

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And then what it forces you to do is go "Wait a minute Why do I think that's a pile of garbage?" Oh because it uses too

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many fancy words And I don't like fancy words Hey chat GPT I don't like fancy words and then it'll get better right So

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it it kind of forces you to refine your point of view if you're willing to put it in there But if you're not then it's

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just going to keep giving you generic crap Yes Absolutely And then you're going to

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run around saying that Chad GBT sucks and isn't worth it and that AI is a fad

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and blah blah blah blah blah I like it's with prompting I I really really think

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it's pay me now pay me later You can you can feed the prompt feed your prompt

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upfront right And just give it all the things it needs Or it's going to come

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like nipping and biting at you wanting more and you're going to be trying to

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cajul a good output from it nudging it and like nurturing it It's the same

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amount of time It's the same amount of brain calories Highly recommend pouring it all in first

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and going from there And for the people who are worried about the like

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you know some folks get worried about the number of conversations that you're

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having or the number of prompts that you're putting in or using the word thank you and the impact that that has

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on energy use Okay here's what I want to say If you're worried about that I hope

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that you have like the squeakiest of cleanest and tiniest of carbon footprints in your in other areas

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This is not this is not where I would choose to focus on my on the my my

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footprint But if you do want to do that it's all the more reason to prompt well

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upfront So you're not cycling and cycling and cycling and cycling to get a good output just do it right the first

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time and then you're gonna have this lovely workflow in your conversation and

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you'll be you'll be happier at the end So yeah feed your prompt Yeah exactly Let me let me give you I added a slide

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in that I almost took out and then I put it back in because I heard this I think I heard this in one of my lives It might have even been you that said it but

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someone told me this They were like well so let me give the context You know

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we're we're neurospicy ADHDers right The speed of AI is intoxicating right So you

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sit down you put in something you get the answer You put in something you get another answer Right It's intoxicating

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If you want to get more mindful and intentional about putting your point of view in putting you in this is the slide

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I put in When you sit down at Chat GPT take a moment pause

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close your eyes breathe and ask yourself questions about what am I trying to

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accomplish Who am I talking to How do I want to impact them What does success

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look like Right Do an introspective little moment before you dive into the the chat hole and just check in with

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yourself about what do you want in this moment with chat GPT And I think if you get yourself a little bit centered about

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what you know what would success look like in this little session you'll approach it in a very different way So

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don't just sit down and just throw anything in Sit down and say "What's my intention here?" And I that little act I

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think will start to focus people to have more intentionality a more singular point of view the ability to go "Oh

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that's not what I wanted I thought about this I know what I want That's not it Hey could you try it again until we get

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it right?" So right I'll throw that out there examine the art of AI Exactly It is It

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is And that reminds me of that phrase of good what is it Clear writing is clear

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thinking or good writing is clear thinking and how you can you know when

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you're just like when you just running down a rabbit hole like you're just like

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what is this assignment I'm working on I don't know but I'm doing it real well and I'm doing it with gusto but it's not

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even it's no longer the topic that I meant it to be Um so yeah I think t

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taking that moment of pause and some of this comes from Suzanne Welker Jurgens

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Some of it actually comes from CJ Walker CJ uh Fletcher when he was talking about

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visualizing in your head what art you might want to make I think it was CJ I

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think it was CJ that was the one Take take a moment Breathe before you take a moment I think it was CJ You're right

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That's that's what it was because I knew it was associated with you I couldn't couldn't remember what it was Yeah

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exactly And I I just I like that because it's like being in being in your person

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when you interact with this thing and thinking of it as an amplifier of you I think there's something there So anyway

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with that um we're about to bring up uh Christian I'm really excited about Christian but why don't you tell the

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good people about She Leads AI So the mission of Sheile Leads AI is to

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unite accomplished women to advance AI for global prosperity which is for sure

27:08

a very serious agenda and not an insignificant one and also underneath

27:14

that we have a lot of fun going about it So we have a she leads AI society which

27:20

is a delightful group of people We gather on mighty networks We have member jams Yesterday we had one on um

27:29

make make.com which you know love it or hate it Um it exists Uh so we have

27:35

member jams we have we have secret sauce It's it's a thing That's how I feel

27:42

about it I'm like here's how I do automations I get somebody's Stripe account and I

27:48

pay them money to do it Um

27:54

um we have fun social things every Saturday Every Saturday all women in AI

27:59

oin us We gather on Zoom from: 10:00

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we talk about it kind of like this part like with me and Kyle like what's going on What are you working on How how you

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know how ready are you um and just enjoy ourselves together feeling like we're in

28:19

our tribe of people who understand where we're coming from So she leads AI It's it's awesome and I'm delighted to be a

28:25

part of it It's a good thing Yeah it's it's really good And and similarly the AI salon um AI salon we created the week

28:33

after Chat GPT came out Um Leah Fon and I uh she's a professional photographer out of Boston started it really just as

28:40

a way to have a conversation with people that are curious about AI um and curious about the future and how it impacts us

28:46

and things like that And we similarly you've got uh she leads uh AI society

28:52

and we just started the AI salon mastermind which is a tier where if people want to step up the conversation

28:57

have a more focused conversation um that's there and it's launched and it's out there and we're figuring it out and

29:03

what we want it to be and what we want it to be when it grows up and and it's really really exciting So uh if you

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haven't checked out the salon it's always free Um the mastermind's there if you kind of want to step up the conversation and uh yeah um do that So

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like one of the things that I'm really excited about is that we've got a lot of

29:23

crossover members and it would be very easy for us to go in our corners and say

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well this is my community this is my community And one of the things that I've learned over and over again is that the cross-pollonization of members of

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all these different communities is actually really really important Um in fact you know one of the one of

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Christian's best friends um Brent Peterson is always on the uh my my AI

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office hours And so there there's all these different connections And when

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you're this early in in something as transformative as AI the more people you

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know that are figuring this out and looking at things through different lenses it's the only way that that I

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know that you can survive how fast this stuff is moving So so with that absolutely So check this out real quick

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I know we're bringing Christian up in a second Last night I went to the Open AI forum which is now I think anyone can

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join the forum And they had a networking uh meeting for women And this what was

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so interesting because think about this This is open AI It's very large company They have how many users Granted women

30:33

in AI subset women in AI who are going to show up online blah blah blah But I

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knew probably I'm going to guess there were fewer than a hundred people there and I knew

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probably 15 or 20 of the women who were there That's awesome Yeah This is this

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is still a really small world of people that are really paying attention to this stuff right now Yeah Yeah Make friends

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Make friends everybody All right Well listen we're bring um I just want to say a few words before

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we bring him up So Christian has spoken I think twice now at the AI salon Um he

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he works out of Boulder He'll tell you about what he does but he is one of those guys that is like remarkably adept

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at AI and hyper aware of how to do what he

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does without AI And he works he works in video and video post-production So some

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of his customers hate AI and don't want him to touch it Some of them want him to use it all the time and and he is really

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adept at at living in that transition space between these two worlds And so I

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I think in terms of AI readiness I think those people that can be translators for

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people who don't know AI don't understand it maybe hate it and come in I think he's one of those guys So I'm

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super excited to bring him up So with that Christian hey what's happening How's everybody doing See you man Good

32:02

to see you too Thank you being here Yeah this is exciting Yeah Yeah So what Oh

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yeah Go ahead I have I have a little uh TV timeout The people who are doing

32:15

whatever is happening in our house something related to my washing machine I need to go ask them to lower their

32:22

volume So I'll be back in a couple minutes Well that's good I'll get We'll get

32:27

Christian talking about himself So there we go Yeah I could do that I could do that all day So yeah Exactly So So yeah

32:33

Why don't you tell us you know introduce yourself tell us you know what you do your background and and uh you know if

32:39

you could give us just some context of like that that spectrum You and I had lunch It was such an interesting

32:45

conversation where you were like I've got some clients that hate this stuff and some that love it and you know where

32:51

am I in this world So um talk to us about who you are and what you do Absolutely Well great to see everybody

32:58

Um and uh yeah my name is Christian Robbins I'm co-founder and chief creative officer of $11 bill which is

33:05

where I'm at right now And uh we're a post-production house Um which means we do editing motion graphics VFX color

33:14

audio everything that happens basically after the production Um so we've had

33:19

this big opportunity Is that correct Is that correct That is correct All right There you go I'll leave that up there

33:25

Yeah Um so you know over the course of years we've obviously had to you know integrate new technologies into what we

33:33

do and um you know from as standard deaf to high def from you know uh when Final

33:40

Cut came in um you know RED cameras generative AI HD you know I mean there's

33:47

there's people who fear this and then there's the others that try to figure out okay how will this help what I want

33:54

to do and what we really want to do is storytell Um so anything and that's as

34:00

basic as it gets right And you know I'm lucky enough to have had my entire career be in the creative industry right

34:08

Like I you know I grew up as an artist I loved being creative I used to draw comic books with my buddy Josh down the

34:14

street Um you know met Brent in college you know and you know he was more on the

34:20

coding aspect and I was more on the After Effects and editing thing and our paths always just merged you know here

34:27

and there And now it's so fun to see what people are actually doing with this

34:32

And you know I've been a pretty pragmatic guy over the years You know we've been doing this for about you know

34:38

I've been doing this for over 25 years now So I've seen a lot of things you know become flash in the pans or become

34:44

part of our workflow Um and you know to call it post-prouction now with what

34:51

I've kind of tasked myself with is really kind of doing a disservice right Like it's more of a it's it's more of

34:58

what we used to call it If anything it's more of a you know like a creative operating system these days which is

35:06

kind of an interesting approach right Because you know Kyle like you said I mean we've got clients all the clients

35:12

want to know about how to integrate this stuff into their workflows and then you know so I've spent my time you know put

35:20

sticking my neck out there right Like I you know I beta test anything right I I

35:26

love it Like I'll break my laptop I don't care what I do Like I'm the you know I'm I'm chief creative officer

35:33

right So I set the standard and the tone for for what we do around the office So um once I figure out what works you know

35:41

I give the team a shortcut So I break things so my team doesn't have to So it

35:46

keeps that floor high for everybody else and we can try these new tools and not worry about it So then if I can do that

35:52

first step internally it's a lot easier to do it externally right Yeah And what

35:57

to your point earlier about you know some people love it some people hate it they all want it right Oh interesting So

36:04

you know I recently wrapped up a project where um it was this great use of you

36:09

know combination of stock and generative video assets and the legal teams did not

36:16

know what to do But luckily a lot of these big brands have phenomenal legal teams that kind of decipher and say

36:22

"Okay well if we do this you know we're we're behind it." And what I'm finding is that a lot of my clients now you know

36:30

now that I've got this roster of work that I've done with a lot of these tools that are actually out there on broadcast

36:37

on the internet it gets a lot easier for the buyin to happen And that's been my big challenge lately It's not

36:43

necessarily learning and implementing and using the tools It's about how do you get client buy in you know from the

36:51

ground up which is you know kind of the psychology of it right you know it's a

36:56

new dance I have to do But that's huge Yeah And it's you know Go ahead Is there

37:02

Yeah Is there you you've been doing this for 25 years and you've had all all these different

37:07

technologies that come in that you know it sounds like you're you're willing to jump in figure it out I assume some of

37:14

those technologies historically people have looked at them and said "Oh that's going to ruin the industry." And and

37:19

they're certainly saying that about AI right now Yeah And I'm curious you know we we always seem to navigate through

37:26

it's going to ruin the industry and it doesn't ruin the industry I'm curious if if generative AI feels different to you

37:31

in any way than than other tech that's come before it Well you know it's always been easy to say no to new tech right

37:38

Like if I didn't want to use Final Cut to edit with I could use Premiere right They both did the same thing They might

37:44

have done them in a little bit different or more efficient way This is kind of completely different right This isn't

37:51

something I can just ignore right And it goes away right Yeah It's

37:56

not just an improvement on the existing process as you said It's no post-prouction is isn't even the right

38:02

term anymore right Yeah Yeah It's more of a framework right Like this whole workflow like and that's where I like to

38:09

bring everything back to like this traditional workflow you know not just for me but for any company usually has a

38:15

pretty linear set of in-n-out points right And what this has done is turned it into this sphere where things now

38:24

bounce back and forth without any friction So this traditional mindset

38:30

that people are trying to you know shove the square peg into the round hole now with is really confusing a lot of people

38:37

So this is where I think a lot of the fear comes in for people in my industry And like like I said it's creative right

38:44

You know to your point earlier and about AI's amplifying taste right Like all we

38:50

do is put our taste on screen Like artists all they do is just bear their soul right And put it out there So you

38:57

know people see this as a really personal attachment If there's something that's coming in that can do that for

39:04

them they think a lot of that personal touch that they add on to it won't be

39:10

there anymore It's not as simple as sitting down in front of an edit suite for you know a week and coming up with

39:15

art Now it's more of a you know kind of reverse engineered process where if you

39:20

don't understand how this tool works you're not going to give it what you are

39:26

and it's not going to make the things that you're capable of or pass that right It's not going to amplify your

39:32

creative vision So you know that's not it's so a lot of people think of this as

39:38

you know a bolt-on tool right like this little thing will help me make this x amount of days you know get off my

39:43

schedule this many hours a days It goes beyond that now And that's kind of the psychological trip of a lot of what's

39:49

happening It's it's new infrastructure right And people have to be they can't

39:56

be afraid of saying you know what this whole thing you know got this big suite

40:01

and all these studios around me right now that could all go away and we might need to dissolve and reinvent the whole

40:07

thing And like that's kind of what we've done as a company because we're small over the years you know adapting Oh

40:13

that's interesting Yeah Yeah Yeah Like you have to be okay with reinventing yourself But there's it's not to say

40:19

that you have lost any of like what made you great or useful right It's more

40:26

along the lines of now here's a new way for me to express myself And once you

40:31

wrap your brain around it the ability for you to express whatever it is you

40:37

want becomes completely crazy It's it's so expansive right Like it just wherever

40:43

you had limitations before those just keep getting erased Yeah And I think a lot of it too is um you know you're

40:51

teaching it what you value right Um and a lot of these tools you know that we use sure we use chat GPT but we use a

40:57

lot of generative AI tools like you know you know things for voiceovers things for music uh generative imagery and

41:05

video um and VFX now right Like we have this buffet of stuff that we're just

41:11

trying to get the most efficient point from A to B right So there's that part of it that clients love you know got to

41:18

turn stuff around quicker for cheaper Story of my life right But you still

41:23

need somebody who's got that you know creative vision And the ones that know these tools and how they work are the

41:30

most dangerous people in the room because there's no barriers to what that

41:36

what can be created anymore right And when you know those boundaries fall away

41:42

um things that you imagine stop being theoretical and you can start making

41:47

really crazy weird stuff now um which is what we're trying to do Um and you got

41:55

to bring that back to you know your internal workflow right and you know you know your creative ops like how you know

42:02

what what does your team need to do right like it's not you know you can't hire your way into this mindset right

42:10

like you you know that you need to structure teams more like modular systems right and they kind of morph

42:16

around the projects and um you know your our editors are editors again you know

42:22

I'm not even sure if that's the right word any longer because they're just building entire audio visual worlds

42:28

themselves right Like they're making their own imagery They're making their own video Boy I wish I had this edit you

42:34

know this thing to edit with Okay I'll just make it real quick And then you've turned you know this into like not a

42:41

client vendor relationship You've turned this into a room full of people that have no hindrances that are all creative

42:49

Does that how has that you've been doing this long enough now that I assume that there are people

42:58

who were good at that transition or who made that transition swiftly or completely and there were probably those

43:04

that resisted it I'm curious who are the people that succeeded and who are the

43:09

people that maybe flamed out because of this shift or like I I don't know enough about your organization to know but like

43:15

yeah what like what advice would you give to like you know who to keep versus

43:20

who to let go like what are the attributes of the ones that are turning into your rock stars Yeah I mean like

43:27

we've got like one rule here and it's just we don't we don't hire [ __ ] Um

43:33

and that's really all you need to need to make it successful in business So that's great you know So u you know that

43:41

e the absence of the ego you know lets people you know try and learn adapt yeah

43:48

adapt fail you know and you have to let go of to adapt you have to let go of the

43:54

thing that you held so precious before right that's yeah that's totally an ego thing Yeah Yeah And it's just that

44:00

safety that psychological safety of like oh my craft is so precious that with if

44:07

a new tool comes in and takes me out the legs does that mean that I'm not creative anymore So like I just don't we

44:14

just don't surround ourselves with that type of you know mentality here at the office Um if anything it's far more open

44:22

Um and yeah there you go The rise of the generalist Yeah Yeah my buddy Brent had

44:28

came up with that So um yeah So I mean that that's

44:33

essentially what has always made you know creatives really good at least or anybody in any industry is somebody who

44:40

understands the worlds outside of what they're good at and you know maybe they're interested in a particular

44:46

portion of it Now we've got the ability to take something that could be of interest and turn it into blow just blow

44:53

it up as a big hobby for them and then turn that into something that they can bring back in and feel this empowerment

44:59

where learning is now part of the creative process instead of you know this traditional go be an intern you

45:07

know maybe get a crappy job you know make some social media content Maybe one day you'll be great you know Um yeah be

45:15

be great now be be great over the weekend Come in Monday with a film Exactly

45:20

Okay So So let's shift gears So we'll do our three questions So I'll go first this this week Um so we ask all of our

45:28

speakers the same three questions So let me tee up the first one And that's this And this this could be really interesting with you

45:35

What was what was the moment or you know what was the the insight or the moment

45:40

that you realized you had to go all in on AI and then what's it been like since then

45:46

Um when I saw that we

45:52

could start making our own video right like it's it started with images you know we got really into um comfy UI and

46:01

understanding how all of those uh checkpoints work and you know getting big horsepower machines to run stuff

46:08

locally and and then I'm like you know what this is going to totally just turn into something web based that I can just

46:14

log into and you know I got to know how this stuff works like before I start saying you know I'm going to put the

46:20

brakes on it I'll wait till something better comes out because how am I going to even know how to interface with it if

46:25

I don't understand the basics of what it does right And then a video component to

46:31

Comfy UI came out and I made something for one of our clients from it I'm like listen this is going to be the worst

46:39

it's ever going to look And I think like you know that's a Kyle Shannon line right there right And I use that all the

46:45

time Thanks Kyle Um but today is the worst it's ever going to look So I give them this like you know compared to

46:52

today's standards very rudimentary but what they could what they saw with what I built with their images it became kind

46:59

of a game changer right and I was pushing hard right like I would and and

47:04

they didn't see the imperfections or did they they did but they forgave them they

47:09

did they did yeah and they were like this is cool we we're not I'm not sure how to use this yet oh interesting but

47:17

what it did was put that you bug in their brain like okay these guys are doing something a little bit differently

47:23

than everybody else right Um and that turned into you know just experimental

47:30

stuff you know uh to more um a different

47:35

kind of relationship with our client where now they come up come to us with

47:40

experimental random stuff big problems you know that have no apparent solution and we're all

47:48

just of the mindset like "All right cool We'll figure it out along the way." Right Yeah And that's a fun place to be

47:54

Like that's getting to that moment And then once you hit that moment now it's like "All right we're all in and I'm

48:00

gonna advocate for the usage of all this stuff for every client I'm gonna go out

48:05

and do talks and d it became a thing for myself as well at that point when Oh

48:12

sorry Sorry Okay For real?" Yeah It's on me Okay Good So um

48:21

you've alluded to it a couple of times but I wanted to dig a little bit deeper into and I do have one of the three

48:26

questions and I will ask that next Kyle so calm down

48:32

I'm just winging it here I'm trying to figure out I'm winging it too

48:39

All right So what you just described is this

48:45

juicy combination of a client who's down for an adventure with a company that's

48:53

like super down for adventure And so then you can have this really great um

48:59

kind of like we're working together on like common ground here Like we're all

49:05

learning We're on this crazy you know ride where today is the worst it's ever going to be and we need to accept that

49:12

Someone had asked earlier though what is it like during that process when you're

49:18

in conversation with a prospective client And this kind of I'm also layering some of my own stuff in there

49:24

is I know that I might to the untrained ear to somebody who's outside of the AI

49:31

bubble I almost sound like a crazy person right I'm saying here's what you

49:36

can expect right First you'll save an hour then you'll save two hours Soon you

49:42

know soon you're going to be saving money Soon you're going to be making more money And I say numbers and it's

49:48

like if I heard me talk I would think this lady is like a snake oil salesperson in those in those But I also

49:56

know like organically genuinely this is the way it works Like this is one thing

50:01

I know is that if you learn how to use this you're going to be hella better off right So when you're in these

50:09

conversations with prospective clients and you're trying to get them to like see what it might be like to work with

50:16

you are you doing a lot of buyer education in those conversations more so than just

50:22

like pushing buttons to make buyers make decisions 100% education And like that's

50:28

the first step of the process So you know part of what I've learned to be

50:34

good at over the years is explaining really complex [ __ ] to people in a way that I think that they can understand

50:40

Yeah So not every cl I don't speak to every client the same way I know some of my clients I'm not even going to bother

50:46

with yet Right Yes Same Same Like Yeah But I've got some that have a little

50:52

foot in the door with who have seen what we've done for other clients and they get a little you know a little jealous

50:58

and they're like "Well how'd you do that?" And it's like "Well you know so I'm just you don't ask a question you

51:05

don't want to know the answer to." Yeah Yeah And what and what I'm kind of realizing is that like you know a lot of

51:12

these conversations you know I'm just kind of you know with clients I'm kind of getting tired of hearing the same

51:17

shallow stuff right Like it's it's about like I want to have a place where we can

51:22

actually show people how we integrate this stuff usable to us right into our

51:30

workflow and show them So I open the door a little bit for some clients and I like swing it wide open for others right

51:36

And being able to do that dance in between each of those steps is part of my job Um but I really enjoy bringing

51:45

somebody in and doing a job like this for the first time or not even talking about it not even trying to pitch it and

51:51

say you know I'll be in the middle of an edit and say I can do that I'll just do that right now And we'll just make the

51:57

asset and it'll be video and I'll just drop it right in And they're like well you're a warlock What is that And I'm

52:03

like that's around here man Like so so it's kind of like you know it's it's a

52:09

it's a little bit of a curve right to get people that buy in but like once you start it does not stop right like

52:17

exactly this is Kyle reminding me that we have another question that I have to slide into which is based on what you

52:24

know based on like your unique perspective on

52:30

the world what are the AI trends that you're paying the most attention too For

52:36

me I mean specifically it's a lot of um video music and voiceover generation Um

52:42

those models are getting really really really good Oh my god I mean yeah talk

52:47

talk to some of the ones that you think are are shifting shifting into it's beyond usable Like it's getting very

52:54

good You know the thing is for me there's a lot that is just absolutely incredible um wonderful to work with but

53:03

legally I can't work with it So so for instance if you know if I you know um

53:11

you know like Hilu right out in China I don't know where that stuff's scraping from you know that's one of my favorites

53:16

right Um you know VO3 scraping the library of YouTube you know like can I

53:22

legally use that yet like I don't know and if I have a bit of doubt about it I

53:29

can't I can't I can't with with full buy in as a company say I'm going to use

53:35

this tool and it's going to be awesome and it's latest greatest hottest stuff Like for for me I hate pumping the

53:41

brakes like that you know because I want to use this stuff I want to beta test it I want to do that I want to throw in a commercial but I really got to dial

53:48

things back So you know so I what I'm doing is trying to build models based

53:53

off of client IP So then oh yeah things are created from what they've already

53:59

made right Not like let's just generate something and get it from the ether and

54:05

here it is It's more of like hey here's some past visual cues to help you do

54:11

what I'm about to prompt right now And the level of comfortability with that is much much higher than us just like going

54:18

on a web browser with a client in the room you know and saying "Does that one look good Does that one look good?"

54:23

Right Like there's a lot more to it But we've used them in ways that um the

54:30

client is aware of that you know and it's a full transparency anytime we're doing anything right Yeah Um we're you

54:37

know we'll build you know custom voiceover models based off of prompts you know that they give us from like

54:43

scripts you know like you know uh raspy old smoking you know 50-year-old lady

54:50

with a little rye in her voice right Or vocal fry in her voice You know those are prompts from a script that I could

54:57

just like knock out like here's six different variants from 11 Labs You know pick one that you like and let's have it

55:04

give us an audition And that time like savings is like a pretty cool thing for

55:09

them It's more of like an efficiency thing So we don't have to wait another day to get things back from the VO

55:16

talent or wait around for scratch VOS to come in and then go through and pick one like you know the efficiency stuff is

55:22

really great for people to see like on an instantaneous basis like while we're in the room and then there's that other

55:28

end of things where we're like making custom models for people right and developing content based off of that and

55:34

that takes a little bit longer but every day that gets a little shorter and shorter and shorter so it's going to be easy to do the dance with somebody in

55:40

the room and come up with anything that we possibly want so yeah it's amazing I one of the things I noticed is is um

55:49

calling on my my acting training that that when when we're doing video personas it's like "Oh I I know what I

55:56

want that voice to sound like." Like you know it's like you design the person you design the voice and you know you get

56:01

them to act like you want them to act You can just design it It's it's staggering All right final question Uh

56:07

and and this is the biggie This is the name of the podcast AI Readiness Project What does AI readiness mean to you And

56:14

especially for someone just getting into the game you know what's your advice for someone just getting started with all

56:19

all this AI stuff I mean it's just don't be afraid to experiment Like like people

56:25

people are so worried about failure you know that it just stops everything that

56:31

they think after that point Um it's this fear paralysis It's like a like an

56:36

imposttor syndrome that they don't think they're good enough to learn new tools

56:41

or um try things and fail and then then what right so you can either say you

56:49

know I tried chat GBT and it just didn't really you know it was kind of weird but then once you realize what you can do

56:55

with it and how you can begin to train it to get what you want out of it it's one of it's the basis of all of our you

57:02

know AI tools that are out there right now Yeah Um and I think also you know

57:07

just remembering like you know direction over speed right Like I know we're talking a lot about efficiencies here

57:13

and that's cool and in a business setting people like seeing and hearing that Um what it what it doesn't detract

57:20

from is the quality of the content that you're putting out Like you do have you do got to steer the ship right And if

57:27

you're just like letting a loose fire hose go and then hoping that it's going to make cool [ __ ] that's the wrong POV

57:33

Um yes You know and if you if your goal is to cut cost it'll totally do that You

57:39

know if your goal is to get like richer faster weirder more collaborative you

57:45

know creative it's going to do that too It's just basically up to you So you got to kind of be honest about like what

57:51

kind of use you want out of it what you know what's you know what kind of creative like for me what kind of creative company would I want to be you

57:58

know and it just kind of accelerates that direction that you've already chosen so yep yep beautiful um well this

58:06

has been awesome um been fun thank you I know these hours go by a little a little

58:12

by way too fast I'll come back anytime you guys want yeah this is great

58:19

I had a good time getting to know you just by your background it was super fun to get to know you here and I really

58:25

just want to um kind of shout you out for what you're doing in your company by

58:32

being the person who first of all can break their laptop because you're going to go buy the new one and you're gonna

58:39

you're paying the person who's going to get it all set up for you you have the autonomy to break the

58:45

laptop And by you making those mistakes and es especially people look to you and probably expect you to have a certain

58:51

level of like standard and perfection and yeah everything that Christian does is the [ __ ] and everything But if you're

58:57

coming into a meeting with you know earlier career people who may be feeling intimidated or people who have never had

59:04

the opportunity to take such risks and you're saying I did this and look at this mess I made or you know my my

59:11

computer started on fire or I accidentally uploaded a whole bunch of whatever Um the impact of that on the

59:19

lives of the people who you work with is significant It's not just the output

59:24

that you're you know the outcome for your that current client It's like their whole career trajectory by you being

59:30

that kind of leader So kudos tip tip my cap to you for that Thanks so much I really appreciate the compliment So they

59:37

all make me look good too I got to keep up with them That's what this is all about

59:44

Oh can I plug one little thing real quick Do you would you mind at all Um yeah I'm heading to Vegas in August Um I

59:52

got invited to speak at the uh AI4 conference at uh uh August 12th So I'm

59:57

gonna be there you know spouting off and it's going to be great because you know we got people to learn from like Jeffrey

:: 00:03

Hinton's going to be there Nice Lee you know um I'm a Jane like everybody Yeah

:: 00:09

it's it's pretty awesome So I'm I'm thrilled to be a part of it Um and I

:: 00:14

think I've got like a like a 30 minute slot to try to fit all this stuff I was talking about with you all Yeah exactly

:: 00:22

Good luck with that And what's the again What's the conference called It's called AI4 Like AI4.io

:: 00:29

And Okay great Yeah Yeah Okay And if you dig real deep you can find Christian Robins in there

:: 00:36

You're not quite headlining yet huh I'm not Not yet Not in that group Not yet

:: 00:43

All right Great seeing you man Thanks guys See you later Thank you so much Bye

:: 00:58

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