OpenAI’s Chad Nelson on How Artificial Intelligence Could Shape the Future of Creativity, Collaboration, and How We Can Survive

About Episode

My guest today is AI specialist Chad Nelson, who is also an award-winning creative director and technology strategist with over two decades of blending technology and entertainment seamlessly. Throughout his career, he has been at the forefront of emerging technologies and applying them to create new entertainment experiences. And this new era of AI is no different.

Chad has recently created an animated short film, Critterz, with the help of AI. Though AI has created a lot of controversy in the creative space, Chad reveals a different perspective in which AI is just another tool that artists can use to let their ideas come to life. We go way beneath the surface of prompts and AI art to unravel why and how the creative human mind remains indispensable in any creative work. We also discuss the ethics involved in using AI as well as how creatives can harness AI to stand out from all the noise that, ironically, AI will create.

As a creative myself, I too understand the fear that this age of AI can bring. But this conversation with Chad shines a new light on understanding AI and shows us how irreplaceable the creative human mind is.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I'm here today with Chad Nelson. And Chad is a three-time startup co founder, you've been a creative director on a variety of different kinds of projects, you've got over 20 years experience. And according to you, you are an expert at building brands through wickedly cool content across any and all entertainment platforms. And also we have added a eye specialist to the LinkedIn profile and resume. So Chad, this is going to be a really interesting conversation. And you and I have worked really hard to make this happen. Lots of bumps in the road a lot of excuses to never actually get this on the record all these things in life getting in our way timings, calendars. But we're here because I think you and I both know this is going to be a pretty interesting conversation about AI. So really appreciate you taking the time to be here today.

Chad Nelson: Oh, well, thank you having Yes, thank you for having me. Yes, we've been trying to do this for a while now. And I'm excited that we're actually able to get this thing going. So let's

Zack Arnold: Yeah, me to. Dive in. Alright, so for just a little bit of context, the way that you and I originally met is we sat next to each other on a panel that we did for Editfest last August, that was all about artificial intelligence in the world of creative editorial in Hollywood. So that's how you and I initially connected. And we both kind of had that mutual moment afterwards, it was almost like the dating scene where you see somebody across the room and you see the other like, we need to talk, right? I just I knew in that conversation that there was something you and I needed to get so much deeper into than the things we could barely touch upon on that panel. So I want to go way, way, way deeper. But before we go super deep into AI in the creative process, and all the things that you've learned, I actually want to start a little bit further back learning a little bit more about the origin story and the kind of basic, the various dots so to speak, that we can connect in your previous life in your previous careers. Because one of the arguments that I've had about AI and continue to have is the idea that because of the emergence of artificial intelligence in creative fields, we're going to see most specialties most highly specialized crafts go the way of generalization. And your resume, you are very much a generalist by trade. And I've been doing so many different things your whole career. So before we even talk about AI, I just want to talk more about you give me kind of the beat by beat of understanding all the different things that you've had the pleasure of doing throughout your career.

Chad Nelson: In two minutes, let's go.

Zack Arnold: Yes, exactly. Tell me your entire life story and 90 seconds go.

Chad Nelson: Yeah. It's interesting, because I've had a career that has always been around entertainment, and technology. And so when I think about this, the joining of those two worlds, I my career has kind of always been built around those that combination. I started with the idea that I would go through use, basically USC Film and Television, and Film School. And like any kid in the 80s, you know, it's like yo, Spielberg and Lucas and that, you know, all those dreams and aspirations, like, I've found so many kids had. But what I realized is when I finally got into school, I also knew quite a bit about computers, and a lot more about what these computers could do and creating either interactive entertainment or help storytelling for, you know, more traditional forms of entertainment. And when the verge of the or the birth of the Internet started, what 90, I mean, early 90s, let's just say mid 90s. Yep, yeah. When the AOL discs were going out with 1000s hours, or 10,000, free hours and all that. One of the things I found pretty early on is that the studios who are clearly especially at that time, or the the arbiters of all this content, really had no idea how to bring that content to the internet. And so I was actually working at Samuel Goldman at the time, on a show called American Gladiators. We were the first literary reality TV shows out there, which I thought was a lot of fun, and a very interesting kind of career experience for my first foray into into television production. But what I realized is the studio had no idea how to build Internet content, they had no idea how to build a web page, they, you know, they, and they be yet but they're the best storytellers in the business. And so one of the things I found my room and I were like, if we, if I quit television production, and we kind of put together a presentation of how to tell the studios how you can take their content and bring it to literally the beginnings of AOL and the early, you know, old browser days, I mean, even pre Yahoo, I think we would be able to land a lot of different companies on at different gigs. And that would be a huge service. And so we did that. And that's how I started I started a little company called paradigm. We had about, I don't know, five to six designers from Art Center. And we were taking studio content and building out prototypes and visualization and eventually launching some websites for the very earliest days of the web. I'll fast forward a few years when real time 3d technology started with video games, you had things like Tomb Raider We're in Doom and Quake and some of those early games. But one of the things I found was no one was bringing 3d graphics to the web. And in addition, no one was bringing real time streaming into 3d worlds. And so my CTO at the time started this company. And he was the, I think, the first to do streaming onto polygons. And when Intel saw that they funded us, and we basically produced a company called eight cylinder studios or eight ACS, which was bringing 3d Real Time graphics to the web. And then we sold that in 2001, to the company that made the codec that eventually powered YouTube. So in a way, it's like I've been in this kind of bleeding edge, like where technology is meeting entertainment and figuring out how to, I don't know, capitalize on it, through actual, you know, technologies or products and services. And so I'll fast forward to more recently, so when AI started becoming a topic, I mean, we've obviously had it on topic for decades, I mean, from 2001, and how and so forth. So it's not like no one had even heard of AI clearly. But when it started hitting mainstream when GPT three came out, when open AI dropped that in 2021. That's when I started saying, Oh, this AI thing could start being very interesting as it relates to storytelling, especially in video games, where most scripts and video games had always been, you know, you got your seven token responses, unless it's a major character. And then you might actually get some story, but everyone else is like, Hey, what are you doing or watch out? And then like, you get these just token responses. I'm like, Well, it's interesting. GPT, three, could all of a sudden open up entire dialogue of what every NPC could have a history, just like you would see on the world, like on the show Westworld. So that is when I started saying, Well, what does this AI generative and large language model future look like? And that's how I got introduced to open AI and started playing with tools like Dall-E, and so forth. And that's kind of what's led us here to this moment now.

Zack Arnold: I love it. There's 100 things I wanted to get into. But I have a random question, what does all this have to do with golf?

Chad Nelson: Well, Golf was funny, because in the mid 2000s, I was saying to myself, How can I build a company that would allow me to go to golf courses around the world and have vacations paid for, essentially. And I realized that in the world of golf, video games, they all either were very cartoony and look like, like, they're simple, like more miniature golf. And then there was the EA Tiger Woods product, which was on the PlayStation. But on the on the early days of the web, there was no golf game. And so I said, Well, I had this idea about I've been dabbling with digital photography. And I said, Well, what if you could combine digital photography with laser scanning, or LIDAR terrain maps, and basically create a free to play golf game that allowed you to buy either equipment or enter tournaments and so forth. I was like, I had this idea. And it was before even free to play was a term. So we came up with this company called World Golf Tour with a couple other people. And we we essentially raised some venture capital money, and we built the largest virtual golf community in the world, we had about 14 million players playing on iPhones or on the web photorealist photorealistic versions of Pebble Beach and St. Andrews, and so forth. And then we sold that to top golf in 2016. So yeah, so again, another example of like a career choice where I'm looking at new tech, how do we apply it in a new way to essentially allow for new entertainment experiences?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, well, the the pattern that I'm seeing is that it's an I've got this specialization in this area of knowledge. Here's another completely different area of knowledge. And you keep using the word intersection, what's the intersection of these? Where do they overlap, right? You're connecting all these random dots. And this next question is going to seem random, but it actually isn't. Because I know you were kind of quasi joking. But I'm very serious about I want to know which came first, I've got this idea for this free play golf game, or I want to design a lifestyle around traveling all over the world and get paid to play golf, which one came first.

Chad Nelson: I think it was standing on a golf course in Mexico, and saying this is the life and then taking some pictures with this new digital camera that I spent a lot of money on because back then 2004 Or five, they were, you know, stupidly expensive still took a picture of this golf course. And I said how in the world can I replicate this for others? Like how in the world could I do that? And that's where the spark hits. Because, you know, in life when you say like, oh, that's an intriguing idea. How can I share Right, how can I actually, you know, how can I tell you a story that you feel like you're going to be engaged with? Or how can I create some moment or an experience that you feel like you can participate in? I mean, those are the things that all of a sudden inspire new ideas. And I think that's what it's funny, because when we talk about AI, and I know we'll get to this, but it's like, it's those are the moments where if you don't have them in life, no, I mean, the AI will never produce those moments, you know, the AI is only producing replications of things that's already been taught. It's never inspiring new ideas, where it's like, to that point, I'm standing here, how can I share it? That wouldn't happen if I'm sitting at a laptop just brainstorming with an AI.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. Agreed. Well, there's no question a little bit later, we're gonna get into exactly what you said, which is how do we differentiate artificial intelligence, from human intelligence and from creativity. But I'm actually fascinated by this. So I'm going to totally go off script. And I want to go even deeper into this, because there's something really interesting that I see as a pattern here. And I think the pattern is similar to a lot of people. But there's one factor that's different, which is, Oh, I see the combination of this and this, that would be cool. I see the combination of this and this, that would be cool. What most people think after that is, I hope somebody does that. And you're saying, I'm going to be the one to do it. Where does that come from? Because you've just said, there's this and there's this and there's this, I'm going to combine them? I'm going to be the one to do it. And I think a lot of people even if they have the spark of the idea, they never follow through and you're a serial follow through her. That's uncommon. Where do you think that comes from?

Chad Nelson: You know? Yeah, it's an interesting one. Because I think when I was growing up, and you think about, well, who are your heroes? Who are your a lot of people either use sports figures, or maybe it's, you know, for me, it was Walt Disney. It was George Lucas. I mean, they like George Lucas said, Well, I can't make Star Wars without an effects studio, I'll just start an effects studio. You know, Disney is like, oh, I want to do animated stories. Or I want to make a theme park. Oh, well, let's create Imagineering or let's create an animation studio and, and they turned their ideas into businesses. And I've always been inspired by Richard Branson, another one of my big, you know, kind of influences where it's like, oh, obviously, he came out of music, but then said, Well, what if I started an airline? And because airline travel? Clearly he was not satisfied with how do I make it more fun? How do I make it different and more transparent in terms of pricing models? And so I've always found that those individuals that just once they have that idea that they figured out a way to make it happen to me that's like, oh, that's I'm, they were the ones that inspired me. And so for when I it's funny, now I've talked to some students, and I'm kind of going out and talking to schools and so forth. I realized that yeah, a lot of students just they don't have that in them right now. Because they were they get inspired by I could be an influencer. Or I could go in and essentially create my own channel. Now, don't get me wrong, that is a business or that can be a business. And some of them could actually go on to great acclaim and doing so. But it's a very different type of inspiration that I found I had when I was, you know, a kid and looking at those, if you will, titans of entertainment, and of industry and saying, Hey, I would love to do that with my career. Yeah, replicate that somehow, that would be amazing.

Zack Arnold: So I'm glad that I asked that because I didn't think that was going to be the path that got me to this next point. But now it makes so much more sense, how you decided, I'm going to make the first short film done completely with AI, and how that intersects with the major part of your career as a creative director, with ideation. And I know that this is something you talk about a lot is the path of ideation and how many steps. So given that, and given that you just you're like, you know what, I'm going to find a way to solve this, this is something that I want, talk to me now a little bit deeper and more nuanced about the transition into learning about AI, and how that intersects with all the work that you are already doing.

Chad Nelson: Yes. So I think what was found fascinating about how I personally got involved in AI outside of just reading about it, or hearing podcasts like yourself, or others, and talking about it was when Open AI dropped Dall-E to that announcement in April of 2022. So now almost I mean, we're closing in on over 1820 months ago, let's say maybe two years, but you know, anyway, but the point is, when I dropped that, I saw that maybe through a different lens than others did, which was oh, it's cool. I can make a avocado lounge chair or it could put a skateboard or a squirrel on a skateboard in Central Park just by typing it. And a lot of people I know just thought of it as like a really cool party trick or like a little bit of a Wizard of Oz machine. But the way I immediately as soon as I read that I was like this is this will change the fabric of creativity. This is going to change how IP is developed. This is going to change how cars are designed, or we pre visualize anything. And I found that It was so. But I didn't know if it was really true or not. So I wrote open AI, asked if I could get permission and they, you know, I found the right person eventually. And they granted me access when I basically said, Hey, here's what I would like to do with it, here's what I'm thinking about with it, I'd love to prove some theories. And so thankfully, they let me in. And and when I started playing with it, that's what I found was, was it was basically not only meeting my expectations of being so transformative, but it was exceeding them in many ways, in that I didn't realize it could handle emotion, or simulate emotion, as well as I thought it could or as well, I mean, it were as well as it did. And and I'll send you if you want for the podcast, but it's like I had one of my first prompts was, and it was done this way, I'll start say this first, it was done this way. Because they told us in the beginning, don't do humans, because of we are, we haven't done all the bias training. And secondarily, we are very concerned about deep fakes. So and will kick you out if you break these rules. So just don't do humans, and you're good. And so I was like, Okay, that's great. That's fine, I can do that. But I want to see if I could replicate human emotion. And in the world of animation, Pixar, DreamWorks, and so forth. What did they do, they take an object via an animal or you know, a thing, and they bring it personality, and they and they use, they use that thing to convey emotion that we can relate to. So I was very curious to see if these AI tools could do it. So my first prompt was a red furry monster looks in wonder at a burning candle. I was like, Oh, let's see if it does this. I mean, let's just and I, you know, hit enter 15 seconds, or whatever it was, and the image appeared. And I was, I was truly floored. Because I wouldn't say it was the greatest monster design I've ever seen. But what it did do is it captured wonder. And as an animation fan of animation, as a fan of Disney, as I mentioned earlier, and knowing what animators go through to become, you know, say for a CalArts graduate, or even an animator at one of the major studios, it's that embodiment of that emotion that has to be read in literally microseconds that we can relate to it. And then for the AI to get this so quickly. like day one, I was like, if this is the worst, it's ever going to be worse starting at a place that I didn't even anticipate, like literally. And so that to me is what set this motion this kind of this idea and motion of I would love to see if we could tell it film with these tools soon. And and figure out a way to do so.

Zack Arnold: Well, I'm gonna make sure that we have a link in the show notes. If you're willing to, I'd love to share that very first image that you passed from that prompt. But I also want to make sure that we put a link to your entire short film critters, which was essentially kind of the the tail end of this. And I want to talk more about that. But I want to stay right now with this idea of the idea, the ideation phase, right? So I want to actually break down the ideation phase a little bit in more detail from the creative directors perspective, because I think those at least that are in my field, or that are more in the filmmaking field, we see things so far downstream, that sometimes we're a little bit disconnected from like the initial pitches in the ideas. So I want you to break down if you were to have an idea similar to this, or maybe choose another idea, where before AI before Dali, here's what the ideation phase look like. And now what it looks like with all the new tools that are at your disposal.

Chad Nelson: Well, let's just talk about traditional entertainment, which it's all even say an animated series. So whether it's critters or something else like it, nothing gets funded in animation. But at least by one of the major studios unless they can see it as a more like a Multi Product IP, like something that's going to either last multiple seasons could go into dog toys, books, other merchandise and so forth. I mean, the investment in animation has always been so historically large that you need to have it be I hate to use the term but it's like it's got to be a transmedia approach. Otherwise it's never getting greenlit. So how does that begin? Normally? Well, obviously, it could start with some characters, it could start with some visual designs and some you know, some funny illustrations of what you know, these characters might look like. And then you hand those off to other conceptual artists and they kind of start to expand it and you hand it to some writers and they start to expand it as well. Or maybe you take the time and you do it yourself. But and then eventually it's like okay, well now we need to do a pitch deck. So let's let's go and create and hire someone to help us build out, you know, other merchandise. You know, what would the what would the toys look like? What would you know, interactive games look like what would all the other aspects of this so it feels like it's a multi dimensional IP so I could walk into a studio or streamer etc. and say hey, look at this IP this is something that would be valid able to not just as a single episode, but clearly as something that could be far with far more depth over far longer duration. That process could take months in the traditional sense if I was starting off, and I might need even a team of, you know, five, six people to really do that, right? Just because of the nature of the tools and the specialty that we'd be required to actually do all the toy rendering or the other, you know, video game, conceptual concepts, and so forth. And what I find now is, if I am a creator, I still might need some expertise in certain areas, don't get me wrong, but the time or putting those experts on these tools is enabling us to create at a such a much faster rate that we don't need the giant cost of not only financial cost to essentially must, everyone's doing it for free. And secondarily, the time cost, we can work through ideas very quickly get a pitch deck going and actually go out in a far shorter duration. And, to me, that is, you know, if you're gonna live or die by your ideas, don't get me wrong, like, you want to still be passionate about it. But if I think it's gonna go if I spent six months, and it goes nowhere, I mean, that's six months of my life, I just lost and maybe along with a few other people, you know, that's, and if I'm doing it as a business, that's a pretty poor business decision. So you know, I look at it, as you know, I'm in the creative business. So for me, I always kind of think about, well, what's the time and effort and the cost it's going to take for me to get my best ideas out. And even to arrive at those best ideas, how long is that going to take? How much is that going to cost. And so I look at these tools as a huge cost savings and time savings vehicle, if you will, to get me to those ideas into those pitches much sooner.

Zack Arnold: So I want to come at this from two completely different angles. And I'm guessing you probably talked about this more than once, and somebody has asked you this on a panel more than once, maybe even the panel that we were on, right. But when you say that I have this ideation phase that goes from up to six months, where you have an entire team, and you're saving money, and you're saving time, downstream from that is a host of people that could potentially be saying, but I'm the storyboard artists or I'm the the animator to this putting together the pre visualization, or I'm the one that's creating the music that's going on your demo pitch or whatnot. Right? So I want to start by looking at it from that angle. And then I want to look at it from the totally opposite perspective and argument. But when others have come to you and said, Hey, Chris is greater the ideation phase being shorter is great. But what about us?

Chad Nelson: It's a hard one, because the film industry has gone through a couple of phases where, but let's just start with when it was film, or even just film and television two distinctly different paths. Clearly, that's why we have the Academy and the Emmys. I mean, it's like it was literally two different entirely production lines. Whereas I think now you could argue that television is almost the same production. I mean, we're all using digital cameras, we're all using digital editing equipment, you know, none later. It's, I don't even know if they're really from a creation standpoint, that different anymore. But

Zack Arnold: Narrative structure is really the only thing that separates them. One is 90 to 100 minutes, and it's self contained. One is episodic. But yeah, if you're looking at the nuts and bolts, the workflows are so similar.

Chad Nelson: Yeah, I mean, and that's because the nature of just, I mean, obviously, and especially with digital, I mean, it's maybe television couldn't afford film. And so they would shoot on video, but now obviously, everything's digital, or at least most things are so it is clearly blurred. But yes, I agree the medium itself, or the the end result might be that's where the variation occurs. That said, I look at it as we saw the early film world go into a digital nonlinear world. We saw effects go from practical and so forth. And then we obviously went to CG. Now obviously, we see practical effects making a resurgence, because people really love that authenticity from it. But we've seen jobs and roles on film productions change over the years, I mean, editors, I remember there was a and you probably remember this from the days when when we went from reel to reel, classic film techniques and editing to suddenly avid releases a nonlinear editing solution and, and even those tools were so primitive in the beginning and there was a lot of anger that's ah, these tools are never going to destroy the art of editing. And I think you could at least say now there are more people editing content than ever before. Now, they might not necessarily all be classic film editors are certainly not doing, you know, major Hollywood productions, but around the internet and around the globe. Certainly a lot of people are editing and learning the art of editing. And so I think that actually I do like that. I do like the idea that some of these He's roles and skills are a little bit democratized in the way that a lot more people can do them. And so thus, if I was interested in editing, I now actually have the ability to become an editor, and maybe experiment and explore my art, or my, my, my voice, if you will, through that medium and and maybe that actually lends me something down the road, I do think there will be some jobs in the traditional sense that might actually start to go away, unfortunately. But that happens every generation. But new ones are going to occur and new, new roles will happen. So one of the things I like to talk about, and hope that things like even critters does is helps inspire individuals that say, Hey, I am interested in learning, I am interested in what you did. I went to film school, you know, I ended up in a career doing this, but I still have three storyboard scripts that in my closet that I've been writing, for the last, you know, X number of years, I would love to start to visualize them, how did you do it? You know, how can I start to try to do that? And so to me, that's, that's where it does start to get exciting, as opposed to the industry being so task oriented, where it's like, you have to pick your lane. And that's all you're going to be for your entire career. And I Yeah, that's a tough one. But at the same time, I look at and say, well, what's the you have expertise in something as well? So take that and learn these, you know, if you took these tools, what else could you do with it? And to me, that's also what I try to do with, at least in helping inspire and maybe people bridge whatever this awkward transition period it might be. Because it is definitely going to be awkward for a bit.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, it's going to be awkward. And I'm on the same page as you completely that there's going to be a rapid evolution of what the jobs actually look like. You know what the roles look like a lot of things you're going to change. But there's also a lot of data that says that there were at least short term probably in elimination of lot of jobs that eventually evolve into something else. And I don't remember the exact date but fairly recently, Jeffrey Katzenberg came out with a statement saying AI is going to eliminate 90% of animation jobs. Right, that's maybe seems a little bit drastic. And I've got my own personal feelings about Jeffrey Katzenberg. But it's hard to argue that he knows what he's doing in the world of the animation business like that's, that's one of his X levels of expertise. Right.

Chad Nelson: Well, and it's also interesting, I find that animation, clearly. In Burbank and Los Angeles was the home of animation for decades, and now how much is being offloaded to offshore? And overseas? I mean, so we've already seen that business, in a way completely get reset. And that's a positive term. But But what are obliterated? You know, in terms of domestic animation production? It's, yeah, it's, it's, there's definitely been a globalization effect already in the industry.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, my feeling is, and I'm not an economist. So this is certainly not my area of expertise. But between post pandemic, so many people working remotely, everything that's happened with these industry negotiations. And now the way that Netflix has globalized its content, and like squid game is the biggest thing in the world, including the US, we're going to see the globalization of Film and Television and animation workforces, where it's not going to be one studio on a building with a bunch of people working, it's going to be everywhere, it's already happening. But I think AI is going to make it even more rapid. But I want to zoom back in for a second. Like I said, when it comes to this idea of I've got this pitch that I want to put together, I took it from six months and building an entire team to give me a few days with some prompts, and I can really knock something out. I want to argue from the opposite perspective in a second. But I have one more question. And it's It may sound like it's almost an attack, and it's totally not, but I want to get your opinion on this. If somebody were to say you have an ethical responsibility to be hiring and paying the people that would do those jobs, instead of having the technology do it for you. How would you respond to that?

Chad Nelson: Well. Where do we draw the line? I think I mean, my I'll tell a story is a way of answering this question. My grandfather came out of World War Two but one of the things that I guess through at some point during his time and in serving learned how to do printing for the military basically was working in the print shop at times for you know, whatever it might have been, you know, documentation or manuals who knows what I don't know exactly, I don't remember but when he came out, moved to Los Angeles and started print press letterpress that print press and basically was printing magazines or menus and and brochures and all these churches had bulletins, like all this stuff that you just needed printing. And he did that for years and then about 78 79 noticed his business was starting to change and this thing called the personal computer and printer, laser printer. And originally a dot matrix printer came in. Now luckily, in his case, he had a pension and, you know, military and ex military that is, and he's like, Well, do I learn these computer systems? Or do I just say, Hey, this is a could been a wonderful career and retire. And ultimately, that's what he did. But yeah, I mean, his business clearly could not endure the personal computer revolution, it was it was a changing, if you will, of the entire fabric of how we went about printing. And as much as I know, he could say, well, like look this like as society like we all bought computers, we all bought printers. I mean, I don't think society owed my grandfather, no, no, we need to keep him employed, and keep printers going. I found that it was a real point to me, where I recognized and he recognize there is a shift that's happening. And as a human on this planet, either I figure out the next transition, ie in this case, learn these computers and figure out how to make a business out of that, or in his case, he chose to retire now. I don't think when we we're gonna get into some bigger questions on on a planetary level in a socio economic level. What happens in this world when AI can do a lot of things? Where are we going to actually have the quantity of jobs that could support our planetary? I don't know, I really don't know. I think it goes beyond Hollywood. Let's just put it that way.

Zack Arnold: Oh, this goes way beyond Hollywood. How exactly tiniest microcosm of how this affects the world couldn't agree more.

Chad Nelson: Yeah. So to me, I think the question is, we know this is going to come I think the idea of the genie being out of the bottle and putting it back in is not going to happen. So I think the real question is, is like, Well, how do we really truly begin this transition? How do we actually start education? How do we start these discussions, and it can't be coming from just a place of fear and anger? And don't get me wrong. And I'm not saying that people shouldn't feel fear or anger, because it is a transition and change and change is hard. But the reality is, it's coming and let's start talking about it. And let's start being very productive and proactive about it as an industry in Hollywood, I think is one of the most creative clearly one of the most creative industries out there storytelling, being something that humans have been doing. From the dawn of, you know, we're sitting around fire in caves. So if this is a creative, a truly a creative industry, we shouldn't be talking about, well, what does this mean going forward? And how do we still keep the creatives that are the best storytellers in the world paid for what they're doing? How do we keep them empowered to do this? I? Those are the discussions I want to have. It's hard for me to say that no, but we have to do it with decades old, if you will. Maybe roles and or systems, because the reality is the systems and the the the tasks and the mechanisms by which we tell these stories will change. And we actually have to acknowledge that. Yeah, I just by any other way around it.

Zack Arnold: No and I appreciate how definitely and delicately you walked around a very sensitive topic. And if I were on somebody else's panel, I would have done the same, but because it's my own show, and I can say whatever the hell I want. If somebody had asked me the same question, I would have said, no, they have no ethical responsibility whatsoever. This is something called progress, right? If it's about exploiting people, because of the technology, that's a completely different conversation, but if it's a matter of I had this job that used to take me six months, and with the democratization of the tools, I can do it in less time for less money, I do not have an ethical responsibility to the people specifically be like saying, I have to keep riding horses. And I'm going to avoid the Model T so that I feel very, very strongly about this.

Chad Nelson: So let's go into this one on this because I think what I do have a choice on and where I do have the ability to to ultimately say, Well, what tools am I going to use? And who are the what were the decisions made and how those tools were created and or trained? I have a choice on that. And if I know, a tool has basically exploited Artstation or other IP holders, and yet I'm trying to create IP, I am in a way biding

Zack Arnold: Yeah, that's a very different conversation. I couldn't agree with you more

Chad Nelson: like what Adobe is doing and saying, Look, we're only using images that we license, we're only using things and we're going to try to create a compensation model. And maybe it's not fully you know, executed yet but they're at least in this kind of taking a very strong ethical stance to say, look, we cannot succeed if we're literally killing the backs or riding the backs of all these people that created all these, this training data for us. without giving them any sort of compensation. So I look at that and say, Well, if you are going to start something new, maybe think about what tools you use, just because maybe one tool set is producing the best outcome or the best output. But yet, you know, it's literally scraped Artstation and IP. Yeah, you might want to think about that. Because that that, that is kind of like you can't you can't go both ways on that one.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And I agree with that. So when it's a matter of do you have an ethical responsibility to continue doing things the old way? Because like you said, if I if I'm the local church, do I have the ethical responsibility to keep hiring the manual print center versus getting a laser printer? No, that's evolution. That's progress and technology, right? It'd be like saying, Well, I still use the telegraph, because I refuse to use the internet. How's that going for you? Right, right. But yes, when it comes to where's the data coming from? I think that is a huge, huge issue. And every time that I've experimented with any kind of model, and I'm not even remotely at the level that you are, but I dabble, one of the first questions I always ask is, where's this training data coming from? Because I'm very interested in building custom GP tees, which we may talk about a little bit down the line, I guarantee we're talking about it off the record afterwards. But if I know what the data is, for example, if it's all of my data, crazy excited about that, but if I'm just going to go into Dali, and say, show me your red critter, it's like, but how do you know what the red critter should look like? Right? Because with critters, it doesn't look like a Pixar movie. But it doesn't not look like a Pixar movie. So how were you able to navigate all that in the very early days of experimenting with this?

Chad Nelson: Well, I think for me, because I knew a little bit about a little bit. I'm not an expert by any means. But I knew a little bit about copyright law, and creation of IP. I knew if I just typed in a prompt, and that was it. And I did nothing more and just was like, oh, read furry critter, you know, in a forest. And first thing that pops up said, Great, let's put it in the film and animate it. I didn't know I didn't really do anything. In that case, like so why did it? Why would I think I would even own that? Did I personalize it? Did I bring my own voice or my own kind of, if you will, creative instincts, do it in any way. And I know at least at least knew enough to say, Well, if that's all I did one as an artist, I'm not really doing much. And number two is a copyright holder. I'm not sure I can even copyright that. It turns out actually, that's kind of where the US is right now that immediately do a prompt, and you just take that prompt that first result and shows zero modification to a US Copyright Office will never, you know, at least as of right now, they won't grant that as a copyright. The prompt is not enough. It's still based on derivative works, doesn't matter where those Derivative Works came from, it's still based on some sort of derivative. And and we need, or at least the way our copyright office works is that a human has to be the thing that creates that variation to a certain degree, and no one knows exactly where that line is yet, but we have to at least have some sort of human involvement in creating that, that variation of whatever has inspired them. And just then, so first gen does not do that. So for me, it was, luckily Dall-E, from very, like literally from the day they launched it had in painting. So you could say, all right, red, furry creature, you know, sitting in a forest. I could go in and take the ice and just say, well, let's change the eyes. Here's how I want to change the eyes and try you know, 15 or 50 different eyes, I could change its mouth, I could change ears, horns, etc. And that's what I did. I did that for every character until I found the one that I or a version of it that I felt like this really embodies kind of what I'm thinking about. And that means I've at least personalized, I've done something artistically, to take it away from just being the first random number slot machine it'll pool generation to at least me as an artist going in and customizing it to my liking. And I documented that. And so we're right now we're in the process. Maybe by the time this is done, but we'll see if the Copyright Office grants me a copyright on the the origin of the characters because I'm trying to show all the that work. Who knows we'll see what happens. But that could be a good follow up to.

Zack Arnold: It could definitely be a good follow up and

Chad Nelson: Why they denied it or if they accept it, was it because I helped and I could show a proof of if you will of transformation from the original works and see where that ends up.

Zack Arnold: I'm going to be fascinated to see where that ends up as well. I now want to look at this from a very different perspective, same idea of this ideation phase and shortening it. So the the original argument It was let's say that for hypothetical for hypothetical sake of conversation, this is a six month ideation phase to create this, I was able to do it in a week, look at all the cost and time I eliminated, I look at the number of jobs that were eliminated, right. So in some cases, I think that's true. However, my much larger argument is that in most cases, the answer the question is, I have an idea and it would it take this six months to put together in this budget in this amount of time? Well, that's never going to happen. So $0 ends up being spent, no time ends up being spent, and no jobs are lost. And what I'm seeing with the democratization of this technology, is now we get to ideate things that we simply couldn't before. That's the other side of the argument is no jobs were lost, because no jobs would have been created. Because it wasn't doable by anybody except Pixar, or Disney or DreamWorks, etc, etc.

Chad Nelson: Yeah, that's I definitely agree with that. The other side of it, I, I've been thinking about this quite a bit as well, which is the Hollywood system, unless I'm a very established name, and I have street cred, if you will, and or the cache to basically say, Oh, well, here's an idea I want to do. And studio says, Great funded, we love it. Because we want to be in business with you. The journey to that point, typically is, hey, here's my idea. Oh, that's interesting. Okay, well, we'll take it to one step forward, you know, we'll get we'll Greenlight you for one phase of development. And so then you kind of go through that phase, and you're trying to then fight for that next approval, and then the next approval. And really, to a certain degree, I'm wondering, like, how often does the initial vision of the person that's conceiving this idea get mutated, modified and altered? Just to keep it going, you know, just to keep going through all these various gates? And is that at the end of the day making a better product? Or is it making the more watered down, you know, kind of, if you will, design by committee approach to entertainment, and I'm kind of curious to see that maybe over the years, as this product, or this process becomes a little more mature, might actually start to produce more, we'll call it higher quality, more original vision, you know, out of the gate. In our shows and entertainment, I I'm kind of fascinated to see if that actually ends up being the proof point, or does the system still, if you will water it down? And we kind of get this? I don't know. I mean, there, how many times have we seen shows? We're like, Oh, my God, that's a great concept. And you see it, you're like, I don't know what happened on that. But it's certainly there's no way someone wanted to do that, when they set out to do this, like, we you can, I mean, when you're in the inside to your point, when you make the sausage, and you know, kind of sometimes how the business works, just to keep the funding going. I'm hoping I would love to see that the actual filmmakers voice can get further into the project in this process. I don't know. That's, that's, that to me is a hope.

Zack Arnold: I agree. And I always want to look, I always want to be cautiously optimistic and hope that that's the case. And I think that there's there's absolutely a world especially in the development end, where when you have less cooks in the kitchen, and less ideas are less ideation phases and less notes in between and funding phases. My guess is that there is a world where you get much more original more fleshed out pitches. But once they say you're greenlit, it's still the same system from there until it ends up on TV or in the theater. So I'm not as optimistic unless the system downstream changes more. But I even want to look at that from a slightly different perspective, which is now that we were going to have this democratization of creativity in a certain respect where like, I have no artistic sensibilities whatsoever. But for me, to be able to go into Dali and create some images is now very, very simple for me. So like, as we talked about, it's not a matter of I taking jobs away from people because I would have done this big pitch, I thought I would never pitch this I don't even know where to start. Now there's a tool that democratizes it no different than cameras or $10,000 versus I have a camera on my iPhone. Now everybody can do it. And my concern is that we're going to see a rapid race to the bottom or to the mediocre just like we have with like we millions of people can edit now. There are millions more amazing editors and storytellers out there. Just everybody in their mom and their dad and their uncle can cut a little league video montage. Right? So I think that there's that danger where we're gonna have some people that truly break through and have original ideas that they couldn't ideate before and there's going to be a lot of garbage.

Chad Nelson: I think we already have a kid good case study of this called YouTube and Tiktok where

Zack Arnold: Anybody not watching I just did a spit.

Chad Nelson: That's because I would argue 99 point, something 5 99 point you know, no, actually probably 99.9 is unwatchable, or at least unwatchable to you. I mean, and also, like, you know, meaning like, we all have things that we enjoy, but there's going to be the bulk of what YouTube is filled with or Tik Tok is filled with is things I wouldn't even really want to consume. But somehow the algorithm knows enough about you that it can't, tries to give you what it knows you like so that you do consume something, and it keeps you in there. But most of those channels are just filled with noise. I mean, just video noise. These AI tools are just going to continue that. And I hate to say it, yeah, we're gonna get a lot of, we're gonna get a lot of fluff. We're just gonna get a lot of it. But we already have that now, to your point, an iPhone, an iPhone can make anyone a journalist or a documentary, documentary filmmaker, or

Zack Arnold: A photographer, photographer. Yeah.

Chad Nelson: So we already have that. And, you know, it does also funny that I find like, just like when remember when COVID, everyone's like, suddenly became adventure experts, or everyone suddenly like, like, oh, I can go get my Sprinter van and drive around the country. And suddenly, I'm a travel blogger. Just because that's what people could do didn't necessarily mean we needed more of them. It's just, honestly people born and that's what we got. I feel like there's a lot of people that are experimenting with AI now. And we're getting a lot of like, we'll call it the dystopian AI future stories. It's almost the last thing I'm gonna see. Now, if I watch a runway or pika labs, or one of these new videos, it's like, it's this is another robots and dystopia story. I'm like, we already have enough. But, but ya know, we're gonna get a lot of noise. Definitely.

Zack Arnold: And I think, other than the frequency of the noise, or just the sheer volume, because you said, I think that's going to continue, I think it's going to continue times 1000, I think we're going to see such an amplification of mediocre content at best. But I also think in the highly specialized fields, it's going to eliminate the careers of the mediocre, because those that truly have the specialized storytelling skills, animation skills, draw whatever the skill is, if you're truly great at it, the technology is not going to replace you, you just have to evolve with the workflows and the the expectations, but there's going to be so much mediocre at best and just garbage, that it's gonna take more effort to make sure that your signal is above the noise,

Chad Nelson: You know, and I feel like we're already having that we're seeing that now to it with with even Tik Tok and YouTube and that, or Instagram and reels, in that I in my daily life, I have only so much entertainment time or bandwidth anyway. So there are going to always be the things that I'll dedicate the two hours or three hours for the next Scorsese film, you're like, Yep, I'm sitting down. It's going to be a dedicated night, I'm going to watch that. And then there's that point of like, hey, like, you grew up in the 80s and 90s. And you're like, Well, what do we watch, we watch a lot of bad TV and a lot of good TV. But we watch TV because there was no really internet entertainment yet. And but what we're seeing now is that, a lot of that to your point mediocre, or even just like bad television, that's all diverted to the internet now, like that's kind of claiming most of that audience. So I feel like that's we're already seeing that being affected. And thus Hollywood is going to be still have to focus on either you, you build those 10 polls as big as you can, or as high as you know, continue, continue, excuse me continue to focus on those production values. Were with the talent that allows you to tell the story in the best method possible. Or you take a world that's beloved, and this is the Star Wars strategy that Disney is doing or others, whether you're like, you're continuing to expand it, and thus the person can continue to live in that world or that IP or that universe in a way that they couldn't before. But yeah, I think most mediocre, like I don't know what I want to watch. I just want to watch TV. I feel like that's just gone to the internet.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I would I both agree. But I think that there's a flip side to it, which is that similar to kind of this democratization of access to these new technologies, there has been such a glut and an overproduction of so much streaming content in the race to acquire users, that there's a lot of mediocre crap on premium streaming services to it's not just the internet. And because of that there are some really amazing shows that are getting lost now, that probably wouldn't have gotten lost a decade ago. Like I've made the argument that of Breaking Bad came out today. It would be a flop. Nobody would find it. But back then it was right on the edge of when we still had appointment television and we still had conversations at the watercooler. I think Breaking Bad would disappear if it came out today. It has nothing to do with the show. It's one of the most brilliant shows ever.

Chad Nelson: You know The other thing about breaking bad is I also wonder, because it was at the same with madmen, those shows came out when streaming was starting. And so maybe it didn't have the audience in season one, and maybe kind of had a little bit of word of mouth going into Season Two. But by the time Season Three came out, people were able to go back and watch the entire season on this early streaming networks, or the early streaming on basically Netflix in early days. And I think that's what helps some of those shows really find a massive audience. It would have been interesting if they didn't have that. I'm trying to think of a good example live and I can't think of one. Well, like the wire, for example, how many times have you like, oh, the wire brilliant show, right. And they're like, Oh, I never saw it didn't have HBO at that time. But then until HBO, Max, and some of the other systems came out that allowed you, you were the only other way was to buy or rent those DVDs. And that didn't really get mass appeal. And so I think that show probably could have had more life, like Breaking Bad, but it didn't have the vehicle by which for people to discover it. So it was in a way, it's almost too early for that kind of switch, if you will, in terms of viewing habits.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And the reason I bring this up, because we could easily just talk about shows on streaming and this and that I don't want to go too far off on a tangent, but it's not a tangent yet. And I want to share why. Because we're already seeing this gluttony of content. Imagine what's going to happen when we can make it faster, or go to another level. And it's I don't know enough about the technology. Don't know how soon this is coming. But you pick up your remote and you say, show me show that's 90 minutes where there's a panda, and it looks like Tom Cruise, and I'm with Tom Cruise and the panda and we're going to Fiji Island, right? But what AI is going to do is create just this gluttony of all this new content. And for me, it's a question of both how do we differentiate ourselves in our human intelligence from the artificial intelligence. But if we want one of my favorite quotes that I share all the time is the Gretzky Gretzky quote, about don't skate to where the puck is skate to where the puck is going to be. You talk about in a Washington Post article about how Yes, and we've talked about already, AI is going to replace jobs, it's going to do it and Hollywood is going to do it in tech, it's going to do it in journalism, it's already doing that a mass level in social media marketing, but it's also going to potentially create even more jobs. What are your thoughts at least about in the the arena, we're talking about? Now? What are the jobs that don't exist, or that are being created that we train ourselves to be able to do a year two years, three, five years down the road?

Chad Nelson: Yeah, it's, this one's an interesting one. And I wish I had the silver or the Magic Ball crystal ball to like, you know, hey, here's what you should learn. And then

Zack Arnold: I was going to add a quick disclaimer, which is PS, neither of us have any idea what we're talking about, and we're completely full of shit. So having said that, let's figure this out.

Chad Nelson: Look, I remember even just six months ago, people were saying, Oh, you need to hire a trumped engineer for your company. I'm like, okay, maybe like, but GPT, the latest version is basically making prompt engineering kind of automatic. So like, that was a flash in the pan. You know, I just think these tools are evolving so fast, that it's hard to say, Oh, well, you need to learn this. And, and thus become an expert at it. Because honestly, six months from now, I just don't know, I really don't know, like, runway is great. I love runway. I don't know if I mean, once Adobe enters the fray. And after effects could do everything a runway? Can. Are we still using runway? I don't know. I mean, it's gonna be hard to say. But yeah, Adobe will have licensed video libraries. You know, like, they're gonna make sure it's all, you know, legit data that studios can use because they know that's the business of of, you know, distributing content as there has to be licensable material. So, yeah, I don't know on that one. I wish I could give you a better answer on that. Right.

Zack Arnold: Well I've got a couple of thoughts about I'm going to let you keep going first.

Chad Nelson: I want to go back to something you did say though. I am not a believer, though. In this notion of, hey, just show me some entertainment. Enter button, go and then I'm going to commit to 90 minutes of a slot machine pull of the AI. I do think I know gonna be right. I think that it can create something. But that's a very one that's a very expensive compute, that that compute is not free. someone's paying for that. And right now, we're looking at a long time before that computes so dirt cheap, that it's not even like three to $7 I mean, it's going to be expensive for a while. So that to me is number one factor. Number two is if I did that the first time and the entertainment was great. And then I said hey, you should watch it. But you actually go and watch it. It might not be the same experience because The algorithm would change it for you. And thus, I think that whole notion of shared storytelling and shared experiences, which we that's one way we connect as humans, starts to go away. Now in advertising, maybe that's better, because you're just trying to sell me a car and what you would like in a car versus what I like in a car might need different apps. And I think that will say a lot of but I just don't know, in entertainment and storytelling, if not having that shared experience will really work. Secondarily, I think the notion of I really like the idea that a good storyteller has thought through crafted, and hopefully taken the time to figure out the best version of the story they want to tell. And that's what's being presented to you versus the algorithm, saying, Well, let me just give you that 90 minutes thing. I'm just gonna go through the chain of commands and boom, we're gonna render it and now you watch it. I don't know, if I do that. And I first first time I see it, it's okay. The next time I see it, it's not good. I probably never do that again. Because I'd rather have someone curate and tell me the best story that they can. And that's how certain filmmakers become famous is because we know they're good storytellers. I just don't see that really as much. Could it happen down the road? Yes. Do I see that in any near future? Certainly not in the next 10 years? At least? That's my opinion.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. And I do, I want to go deeper into this idea that I brought up previously, of what we can focus on where the puck is going to go next. But I want to dig into this a little bit deeper, and again, have no idea about any of that technology where it's going, I'm just pontificating and have no clue. I can't imagine how poorly this is going to age in five or 10 years. But having said that, there's a couple of things that I consider the first of which is that yes, as far as cost is concerned, like you said, to get it to the point where you can generate a 90 minute piece of content based on my criteria. We're not even close to that yet. But here's here's one of my concerns. And I don't know if it's that big of a concern. I just want to see what your thought is. Because you're so ingrained in this is that for us, we grew up pre internet, we remember what it's like to have collective shared storytelling in a theater. We didn't have the internet, we had appointment television, everybody was watching the Seinfeld finale and talked about it the next day, or friends or whatever it is. But my kids coming up my son not so much because I've done my best to educate slash indoctrinate him on real movies. My daughter will not sit through a TV show or movie, she loves YouTube shorts. So from her perspective, I don't think she's ever even going to prompt for a 90 minute movie, she's going to say, show me a three minute prank video where X does this to y and z setting. Right. And that's going to be a lot easier and cheaper because she's never really experienced shared collective storytelling the way that we have, and it's going to take time to get there. But as the new generations grow up, and the technology matures, one of my fears is does long form storytelling just start to disappear. And I don't know, but I'm genuinely concerned about that.

Chad Nelson: Yeah and are too long, didn't read world. I mean, I had a conversation with one of my good friends the other day, who movie industry, you know, our movies, the new opera, you know, and we look back at them with great respect, and there's still a community for it. And that community still heralds it as one of the great art forms of its day and appreciates it but it just doesn't become or retain the mass media kind of form of of art that where it began. That might happen to point your daughter like she might never say, oh, yeah, a Scorsese three and a half hour movie, the Irish, like, sure, I can't wait to dive in. That might literally be the last thing she wants to do. And I'm not saying she doesn't have a great taste in which but what she likes and what she grew up that were her reset, or foundational point is, is not at all, as we said where we started. So yeah, I do. Yeah, I have no idea where this next younger generation with their high art will be that way. Yeah. It's, and yeah, and I don't even know how. Yeah, the shared experience. I mean, we live in a spoiler alert society right now. Because no one's I mean, outside of sports. And even then I have all sorts of friends that like, don't tell me the score. Because I'm gonna watch it later. You know, in the day, and you're so you like, even that you kind of just have to say, All right, well, I don't say sports scores or outcomes until I know, they bring it up. And so it's like, yeah, we're already kind of living in this weird, self curated, edited world. Yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see what this next generation finds Heinz is the they're their new art form in this.

Zack Arnold: Well speaking of not only the next generation, but the current generation, I want to go back to at least a couple of my thoughts about how we go to where the puck is going to be next, and we skate there. And the reason I bring this up is because I know it's an area that you already have some specialty in, you even teach it, I believe that we need to stop focusing on the things that are changing all the time, and we need to focus on the things that stay the same. And from the perspective of being a creative and being a storyteller, one of the things that doesn't change is your ability to communicate your ideas. And I think that if it's a matter of let's do something that's really, really simple, I am a rotoscope artist, and my entire day all day long is manually putting in the dots and mapping out people for green screens, or whatever the visual effect is, right there, that specialty is going to go away, there's no question that that's going away and rapidly. So we bring up runway, right? So somebody can say I'm gonna go from being a manual rotoscope artist, to being a runway rotoscope. Artist, you're replacing one specialty with another specialty. That's just as dangerous of disappearing. Yeah, my feeling is that if we focus on the skill of communication, and in this case, with AI, it's being able to communicate with prompts. And this is actually a course that you have on LinkedIn learning is how to prompt and communicate with Dali, we've needed to communicate since the beginning of human history, I believe those that rise to the top are the ones that learn how to communicate and refine prompts with any AI program.

Chad Nelson: Yeah, well, I mean, I think it goes back to I mean, the AIs are only as knowledgeable as what they've been taught. And I think it's very funny when I've worked with certain individuals, like say, in the fashion business or the interior design business, and they refer to things like some 1960s, Italian ceramic designer. And then we tried to put that into the AI. And we realized they had no clue of that certain designer, because they didn't grow up in that that designer was in the 60s, they're not in the digital era. And if they were unless they're really incredibly popular, there's probably not a lot of source material on Pinterest and others for those systems to have scraped. To me, that's actually kind of cool. When that happens. That means you found like, almost like a hidden gem of knowledge, that it's kind of nice that it's not in the public domain, and thus just in this system that can be replicated. But it also is kind of a fascinating thing, because it really makes you realize that these systems are going to be what is perpetuated and rise to the top are going to be the things that the algorithm determines are the most popular. So the only way you can defeat that is by having a knowledge and specific knowledge of things that are potentially more obscure, more unique, more nuanced, versus just relying on Oh, well show me the interior of a living room in this modern house. And this is gonna give you the most popular, what it thinks is the most popular result. But if you're going to make something exceptional, you need to know how to ask for that. Which means you have to have the knowledge to know how to ask for that you need to know other and other designers. Or maybe it's even down to the lenses that you would want to actually quote capture that. So that to me goes back to your statement from very early on or about a general knowledge. And I It's interesting you asked this too, because I was just speaking to a number of students the other day about just AI and education, art, education and design. And one of them came up afterwards and asked me well, how do you how what advice would you give for someone like myself to stand out as an artist? What would make me stand out? I said, Well, look, I'm you're me she was in a design program. I said, Well look, there's probably 152 or sorry, 7080 courses that you're you have to take with a couple of deviations along the way. And maybe in general electives, but you have your pretty much list that every classmate of yours is going to take. My advice would be figure out what's outside your comfort zone. And take those courses. Like if you don't know anything about typography, for example, take some typography courses, just learn the basics of graphic design or maybe improv or communication, you know, like maybe a debate team. Those are gonna be the things that make you all of a sudden, far more interesting later in life and also stand out than just the people that have just taken just this standard curriculum. And I feel like that is also an opens up a host of new experiences that I think as any creative would find that when you find yourself in those uncomfortable zones. It lights up your brain in a different different way. And maybe it is fear and maybe you don't like it so you reject it. But what I find is that you you do learn something from it. And then that influences your your creativity in some new way that was unexpected. And that's what makes you more unique.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I think that is amazing advice. And as you had mentioned the quiet Since I'm like, Oh, that's a really good question. I'm not sure exactly how I would answer. So I'm not sure I can be yours because yours is really good. But maybe I would just add to it, which is that in order for you to stand out, number one, you need to have life experiences that you can bring your storytelling, because ultimately, like you said, storytelling exists for us to understand the human experience collectively as humans. And if you don't experience life, you're just going to be regurgitating everybody else's work. Which AI is not the first tool to do that. You can be a film student that watches all of Scorsese's movies, and then you write a script. And it sounds just like a Scorsese movie. Everybody knows the student in film school that did this, right now, there's nothing new or original about it, there's no motion to it, because you're thinking, I've seen all this before. And there's if if you had lived the mafia experience in the 30s, it would feel different, it would be more nuanced, but you just regurgitated what's out there. So AI is just the next tool doing that. But if you can bring life experience and empathy into your storytelling, that to me is one of the things that sets you out. And also like, just to double down on what you said, it's generalizing those life experiences in generalizing your skills, because of every student takes 101 and 205 and 378. Well, if you're the one, like you said, that's coming in with experience in typography, or debate, that's what sets you apart. And I'm what guests, you know the story already, but for those that might not one of the reasons that the Mac became the Mac was because Steve Jobs took a random calligraphy class, and he learned about fonts. And that's how the Mac stood apart from the IBM and the dos and the windows and everything else. And it had that elegant look, because he took one calligraphy class and changed the world.

Chad Nelson: Yep, I was gonna say, and if you remember their advertising, the it was said hello. And it says, Well, I'm cursive. And that cursive was because no other PC at that point could even do cursive. And it's back to your point reemphasizing because he took something that put them out of his comfort zone and gave them some new knowledge. I think that's just a great example of it. It's also why we also make fun of things like the Hallmark Channel, and like, say, the Christmas holiday movie season. They're all like that, that actually is literally what would be the equivalent of the human equivalent of an AI generated network. The closest thing we have to most predictable, most expected, you know, like cardboard cutout of characters. And don't get me wrong, there's an audience for it. And there's a reason why people like it, because it is just popcorn, feel good television in many ways. But that said it, we all know the formula. Yes, what works for it and what makes it work. But an AI could certainly do that to learn that.

Zack Arnold: And that's and to me, if we're going to use the Hallmark or the you know, the Netflix Christmas movie, or whatever it is. It serves a very specific purpose. And it's something that we always make fun of. But what I found interesting about it, they've actually done studies on it. And it's the dependability and the comfort of already knowing what's going to happen, it actually improves people's well being and can reduce depression. One of the reasons that we rewatch shows over and over and over like, I essentially have four sitcoms that are just on a loop for whenever I just kind of want to decompress this, what I call my palate cleansers. It's either friends, Seinfeld, Parks and Rec or the office. It's like which ones next? I've watched all of them over and over. But there's actual science that shows that it can improve our well being and reduce depression, because we already know what's going to happen. And we take comfort in it in a world of vast uncertainty. So knowing that the thing that's safe is doing work that isn't repeatable. That isn't formulaic. If you're thinking where can I go and where can I skate to where the pucks going to be next, Hallmark Christmas movies probably isn't the best place, because that's going to be pretty easy to replicate because it is paint by numbers, which again, is not a bad thing. It is what it is, and it serves a purpose. But if you really want to stand out against it and you want to make a place, then you need to find an area that is not repeatable. That is not formulaic, because otherwise AI is going to take over all of that and given time.

Chad Nelson: It also kind of it says to me, too, as an artist, and certain filmmakers are good at with this. And I've certainly done this, and then others, I'm only going to pick on and say Wes Anderson here for a minute, because we've now seen numerous AI, Wes Anderson versions, or Lord of the Rings and so forth. Because he had such a signature style, that it was somewhat repeated, that it almost became pattern recognition, if you will, for these AI systems. And thus we could just do the merge, if you will, combination. And it's interesting now because I'm not going to say that West Anderson is not a great filmmaker, or certainly that he shouldn't continue making films, but it's almost like in this new world. As a filmmaker, you almost would have to continue to be evolving. Otherwise these systems might make you very generic there be quickly. Because once you are repeatable, and an AI could be trained on your, if you will look or your style, it will be hard to to continue to replicate that. And I think maybe even find audience, if it that is all you do. And I think that's going to be also where it's going to be interesting because then it means you have to have more general knowledge again. So that you can continue to evolve your own storytelling and your craft as opposed to just kind of relying on your best hits.

Zack Arnold: Yeah and that and that, to me is where we don't need to go back into this again, but I just kind of want to put a point on this in case anybody is screaming in their car, or while they're working out right now. This is also where I think we have to be very careful about the ethical implications and the copyright infringement. Because I believe I have no right to say create this image in the style of timber, like Tim Burton spent a lifetime developing that style such that if I put that prompt and people would know my prompt without reading my prompt, or like, oh, that's like Tim Burton, right. That's, that's an immense amount of credit to what Tim Burton has created, but it now makes him vulnerable. And those are the kinds of protections that I think are so vitally important, where we're protecting those ideas. And that look, even if it isn't like a direct image or something he painted or created. To me, there has to be a way to protect the IP of this as my signature look or feel. But it's also very complicated.

Chad Nelson: I've, in some of my early prompt, and or courses on this that I've taught and in lectures, and so forth, I've actually it's funny, I use Tim Burton, because they might, I can actually type in a prompt. I like a haunted house in the style of Tim Burton. And most of the engines outside of I think Adobe will give me a house in the style timber. What I kind of say is, we also have responsibility as an artist, because I can prompt that, sure, but doesn't make me a good artist, that just makes me someone that can copy. And if you really want to be a good creative and a good artist, and really have some unique angle to your voice, if you will, doing that is not going to sit going back to this place standing out, you're not going to stand out at all, all you've done is emulated someone else's work. And that, to me doesn't make you anything that's original, and certainly not something that probably is going to garner that much respect. So if you really want to stand out, you really want to develop your voice, you really want to be a unique storyteller, then you got to bring something to it, just because now I can go get a book on timber, and I could go see all his films, and that probably will influence me. I mean, if there was no way it would not, let's put it that way. So just even consuming Tim Burton's films, or seeing how he's, you know, his sketches and his art of books, for example, I will get something from that that might become a derivative. But also, because of the nature of the systems, it's not going to be a one to one copy, because I'm going to at least bring some other information to it when I kind of use that knowledge. And I just think that that we have to make sure that the artists responsibility in this equation remembers that.

Zack Arnold: Well and the thing that I immediately thought of was the Pablo Picasso quote, which is the good artists borrow, but Great artists steal. And now we've got this tool to make this so much easier and more ubiquitous. And that's the challenge, because you could say, well, all creativity is just copying. I've talked about this on numerous podcasts, where there's there's nothing left to create. There's nothing from the origin of creation, where it didn't exist to it does exist. Creativity is combining things. I mean, I'm stealing a quote from Steve Jobs. Right? So then how do you draw the line between like you said, I've watched every Tim Burton 50 times, and I'm a production designer, or I'm an art designer, and I draw sets, you might not be copying it directly, but you're heavily influenced by it, even if it's only subconsciously. That to me is work. It's challenging, and I have no answers, but it's something we at least have to think about and talk about,

Chad Nelson: Well look at, let's say dome scores. I mean, how many times do we see now? Hey, I want something that's like John Williams, or I want you know, that's like I cuz I can't afford John Williams or now John Williams is obviously getting to the, to the age where he's no longer going to be, you know, composing. But when the clearly one of the greatest composers of certainly of our lifetime, and there's others who have made a career sounding like John Williams, or at least being heavily influenced by what he brought them, so, but yet we still find that that's artistic and respected, because they're bringing their own humanity and their own voice to what was inspiration from another great and certainly John Williams studied all the great classical composers. So so. So we clearly are doing derivatives to your point about you know, Warhols quote. But the systems that exists in these AI worlds could do it perfectly and replicated almost one to one in microseconds. And again, what are they really bringing to the equation as a human that's asking for it? I'm not sure you really write anything, the computer in a way did all the work. So I don't know that seems pretty lazy to me even though I think it helps accelerate processes. I hope it doesn't become just this crutch for laziness in the creative industry.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I agree with you. I think that the one difference are there are many, but the significant differences the ease at which you can do it now, where if you want to spend a lifetime learning timbre and style and emulating it, that still takes a tremendous amount of effort. If I want to do it now in a single prompt, that's a totally different world. But having said that, I actually want to circle back almost to the beginning of this conversation now that we framed it around in order to stand out and create and have these ideas whether the tool is AI, or pen and paper, right? It's this combination of your life experiences, your work experiences, all the skills and abilities that you've learned. I'm not you may know the answer to this question. You may not know the answer to this question. I don't know if anybody's ever asked it before. I don't know if you've thought about it before. But there is a lifetime of experience led to you making the choice. I want my first prompt to be a red monster looking at a candle with wonder, why was that the prompt?

Chad Nelson: Well, the Yeah. It kind of goes back to something I remember at the time. Disney used to do. I'm gonna I would almost need to go back and remember exactly where I got this from. So I'm gonna probably butcher this slightly. So please don't quote me on this. There's probably paraphrase. Well, yeah, but there's no saying there's animators and historians out there, that would be like, Ah, you don't know your history. And I'm like, so I'm gonna butcher this I know, slightly. But one of the original tests I remember was, where you get a, like, a box, say, a box. You could not use eyes, you could not put arms or any sort of limbs on it. But draw a box as a cube. But show me it sad. Show me excited. Show me it like, so it's like this. Everyone knows a square box. But how can you all of a sudden make that box look like it's conveying emotion? And that was like an early animator test. And so to me, it was like, Well, I wasn't going to do that. I think I was like, I'm that's almost probably too hard. Let me at least try giving it a character and giving it a something where it's looking at it. So then, you know, I kind of gave it a put I put up some guardrails on that that bowling lane, if you will. But that's kind of where it was coming from is that notion of taking something and putting it in an animator test and saying, Alright, let's see. Let's see what you could do.

Zack Arnold: So in the the point being that even to create that really, really simple test, if there was a vast amount of background and education and understanding how a traditional animator learns how to emote visually, with guardrail, so that's a big part of it. Now, I want to break the prompt into the three different pieces. And again, if you don't remember all this is totally fine. It's just to me, it's a fascinating thought experiment. You've got to write critter. You've got a candle and you've got wonder why wonder you wanted it to be an emotion. Why was it specifically wondered not sadness, happiness, anger, there was probably a reason you chose wonder.

Chad Nelson: Yeah, and I think also because that's what I was wondering myself, when I was sitting in the room was like, this thing might be amazing. And it's like seeing fire for the first time. It's it. It was, in a way a expression of what I was potentially feeling, man, I want to see if it could prove or realize that feeling. And, and when I saw it, I definitely was somewhat amazed.

Zack Arnold: Mm hmm. So now now we're digging into really the how you brought the subconscious human mind into this creative process to create this prompt. So now the fact that you chose fire is fascinating to me, because it was a very primitive choice. Like, you know, what, what would a caveman look like if you were looking at fire? Right and you made it wonder because that's what you were experiencing? Why red critter?

Chad Nelson: Am I you know what's funny is because I had them I do remember this. Remember the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the big red monster?

Zack Arnold: It's the first thing I thought of when I saw the images Bugs Bunny. I definitely know that it's much taller and wider than the one but it looked almost the same. Yes.

Chad Nelson: It has like no neck and the head it's just basically shoulders them and then the you know the arms. Yep. And I kind of was like, Huh, I wonder like, went back again to my animation background and I just thought oh, what's an iconic character that would not be Bugs Bunny or like I just didn't want to bunny? I didn't want to see it. Do a derivative of Donald Duck or something like that. Like I wanted to see I'm like, oh, red monster. Alright, see what it does? Because that I mean, I don't think that character if I Gosh, man. I think it's just isn't just a monster. I don't think more it is.

Zack Arnold: There's nothing specific about it. I can picture it instantly. It's iconic to me.

Chad Nelson: I don't know if they ever named it. No, I don't think so. Yeah, I think it was just like the the it was that red monster from so that's where it was. It kind of came out of Louis again. Going back to our minds experience, history, nostalgia, all these things want a motion in the moment. All of that turned into some sort of weird, you know, neurological soup in my head, which then turned into a prompt. But that goes back to experience, history, feelings of least how to write enough to maybe can convey some semblance of your own emotional history as well. And then I think at least knew enough about prompting the gecko to say, don't dry, try to write a paragraph, just write a very simple sentence. And let's see if we can handle that.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, so they're just there literally is a lifetime of things happening to create that one simple prompt, and a lifetime of education and experiences that led to the refinements of the those prompts. And the choice of the horns or, you know, changing this, this animal should be blue and not green. Like, again, this comes back to your personal creativity, and you're realizing a vision, you're just using a very different tool. And at least in my opinion, as long as the tool is not literally copying off of the backs of other artists and stealing their artistry, this, to me is another tool to embrace and our toolset but it's going to be a pretty, pretty rapid evolution as we see these changes happen. So given that, there's a million more things that we could cover, and we're pretty much out of time, and I'm I want to be respectful of your time. Is there anything or one thing that you're like, we got to talk about this, that's super important that must be addressed before we go today?

Chad Nelson: Hmm, one thing I'm, I'm gonna get, I'll leave you with, and for your listeners, if you will, our viewers. One thing that I'm seeing, which I think is going to be the most revolutionary part of kind of this next digital future, you know, the 70s, and 80s, were like they were their personal computer age, you know, we got desktop computers, the Mac's, you know, so forth, PCs, the 90s to the 2000s, were the beginning of the Internet era, and the Internet age, digital conductivity information, basically democratized instant immediate, you know, the going into these mid 2020s, is going to be this beginning of the new Aih. And that's going to probably be one of the most rapid and revolutionary of these three digital eras that we've ever experienced. So for people to get ready for that, it's, it's going to change, you know, some of the, let's just say, a change in their own kind of, I hate the skull shape, but it is a it is a paradigm shift in many ways. And just I'm gonna give one example, we've used Photoshop forever, we've used Microsoft Word, we've used all these other different applications. And when we do that, it's great because they have tools and abilities to, let's say, Photoshop, I can put layers, I can bring in images, I can modify and distort and color correct and do all that and make a beautiful final composite image. But what it doesn't know is that image doesn't know what it is, it doesn't have any intelligence about what it is. And if I opened up another Photoshop file, it has no connectivity, or connective tissue, if you will, or, or relation to that other file. In the New World. When you start to create, it's going to know what you created, or what you just created. And it's going to know as you're creating the next thing, what are all the other things that you've created. And so it will be much more like the human mind. And then it's like, Oh, I know what you've written, I know that you've already visualized, I know what music you're thinking about. So as a storyteller, as a filmmaker, these systems are not going to be a bunch of disparate files anymore, it's going to almost be like this intelligent neural network of your creativity that is now talking to each other. And when we do that, and that starts to emerge, and we're on the very beginning of it now is, the process is going to be rewritten again, in terms of how we even approach our own creative exploration. And some of the tools are just starting to come out in this kind of new way of thinking. And there's some things I can start to show. So we should probably do a follow up on this soon. But

Zack Arnold: Oh, we're gonna be talking a lot more about this because I am at the center of wanting to do all of this.

Chad Nelson: But it is a shift in just because yeah, we've been in this world of individual files, individual and have file types where one program can only work with one file type, or Photoshop can only work with images of these file types. We're going to go into a system and a world where modality is just ubiquitous, and the programs can, you know, read music just as much as they can read text just as much as they could watch a video or create an image. And when you start to have programs that are more like that, and it's far more, just like you are far more multi dimensional than just one thing. You're gonna have tools that allow you to create in that kind of multi dimensional manner. And that's the verge. We're on the verge of that right now. And that's what's going to be incredibly exciting and also wild at the same time.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. I agree. That's, that's the part that I'm really excited about. And that's why I think that you and I will have a multitude of at least off the record conversations about custom GP teas and all the intersection of all these technologies, and most likely, it'll turn into an on the record part two, at some point, I don't doubt. But having said that, I do want to be respectful of your time. But before we go, if somebody is inspired by today, they want to learn more about the work that you're doing, they want to watch the film, they can go to your LinkedIn learning course, there's a lot of different ways to interact with you. And we're going to make sure we have links in the show notes. But if they wanted to pick one place to start the relationship, to start the conversation to learn more, where's the best place to send people.

Chad Nelson: I mean, you can find me on LinkedIn, if you just type in just Chad Nelson, comma, you can do top golf or open AI. I think I come up first in one of those two. On Instagram, I have an account called dailydall.e. And Dall-E was the first day I tool I was really using in the very beginning and I tried to post daily and then in the start now I'm a little too busy. I try to get there almost every day, but And remember, Dall-E has a dot between the L and the E. So it's like daily, no space or no underscore dall D A L L dot E. But you'll probably have comments. But yeah, that's Yeah, well, and then then, if you send me a DM in there, you know, I do try to respond to everyone. So unless you're spamming me for something, but I do like that form for community conversation, so.

Zack Arnold: My audience knows better than to spam you or send the link to their resume. At least I hope they know better. But I highly

Chad Nelson: or please try my software and and you know, like I would love your feet and like yeah, you're just spamming me with like enemy like but ya know, I like I love having real conversation though, with the people.

Zack Arnold: Great so I'll make sure that we put links because learn from me, you don't want to put Chad Nelson in a search engine because there are a lot of Chad Nelson's that was a big mistake doing my research. I'm like, ooh, that's probably not going to work. Let's Chad Nelson's out there. So I'll make sure we find the right one.

Chad Nelson: There's wedding photographer. There's the truck driver, you already know all of them. I love that there's the BMX like or motocross expert, there's like I mean, there's a there's a number of them. It's pretty fun.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, well the shownotes are going to be a repository of those resources. So they don't make the mistakes that I do. But Chad, so glad that we were able to overcome some of the obstacles to make this happen. Love this conversation, to be honest, I can't wait to listen to it in five years.

Chad Nelson: Oh, we're gonna laugh.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, of course we are. Right. Well, yeah, that internet thing that's not going to take off. That's a fad. Right? All those things, you go back to the 90s and hear comments about it. So well, we'll see what we had to say. But at least for now. I hope this is valuable in helping people navigate. What are my next steps? What should I be focused on next? So I'm hoping that we could at least do that for now. So can't thank you enough for being here.

Chad Nelson: Oh, absolutely. Thanks so much Zack.

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Zack Arnold

OpenAI’s Chad Nelson on How Artificial Intelligence Could Shape the Future of Creativity, Collaboration, and How We Can Survive

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