‘Hard Fork’ Live, Part 2: Dylan Field on Standing Out in the A.I. Era

“I think if you have a creative voice in writing or design, you put yourself out there and you take a risk — this is a good time to do that,” said the Figma chief executive Dylan Field.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner, Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

• 0:35Speaker 00

  This episode of Hard Fork is brought to you by our Hard Fork Live 2026 sponsors. Premier sponsor, IBM. Associate sponsors, Everpure, Pureleaf, and the University of Notre Dame. And supporting sponsor, Atlassian.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Welcome back, Hard Fork listeners. This week, we are bringing you more interviews from Hard Fork Live and a special musical performance. Today, we are featuring an interview with Dylan Field, the CEO of Figma, as well as a musical performance by Dan Powell, one of the New York Times musicians and composers who works on the show and who was there in San Francisco at the live event as our DJ.

• 1:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is a really fun collection of segments, fascinating conversations with Figma's Dylan Field, and a just legendary performance from Dan Powell, who is one of our favorite people. And one of the most fun things about working here is getting to hear dance cool music.

• 1:52Speaker 01

  We'll be back with more Hard Fork Live on Friday, including a discussion with Daniel Cocatello and Syash Kapoor, a hang with Dwarkesh Patel, and we'll take questions live from the crowd.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Now, have those been screened in advance?

• 2:06Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:07Speaker 01

  They're firing from the hip.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner. Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

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• 4:00Speaker 01

  Well, we have so much more to come tonight. I know it's hard to believe, but we are so excited for our next guest. Our next guest is the CEO of Figma, an AI and web-based design application founded in 2012. It's Dylan Field. Dylan, welcome.

• 4:19Speaker 05

  Thanks, guys.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Hey, Dylan.

• 4:22Speaker 05

  Hey.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  So Dylan, I want to start by reading you a Facebook message I got.

• 4:31Speaker 01

  On August 5th, 2009. "Hey, Kevin, I recently picked up your book at the library. Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it. Anyway, best of luck with your future endeavors. I'm going to Brown this fall. Who knows? Maybe I'll meet you in Providence someday." That message was sent by a teenage boy named Dylan Field. And I want to just, first of all, apologize. I never respond to that, so...

• 4:57Speaker 05

  You can fix this.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Can you imagine you write a book and a college student emails you out of the blue? And you're like, "Yeah, whatever." It was, you know...

• 5:04Speaker 05

  You had a lot going on.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Lot going on in 2009. Anyway, I'm sorry for ghosting you. And second of all...

• 5:09Speaker 05

  It was a good book. You shall read it.

• 5:11Speaker 01

  How did your freshman year of college go?

• 5:13Speaker 05

  It was awesome. Yeah, and I got to meet you.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 05

  Because, I don't know if you remember, but for the lacrosse group that you were in, you came back as a super senior to hang out with everyone, I guess?

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:26Speaker 05

  Including the new freshmen?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Well, it went so well that you dropped out and moved to Silicon Valley to seek your fortune here. And it's been quite a run for you. Figma went public last year, has had a wild ride. And I want to talk to you first about AI, because I have heard that you are quite AI-pilled. And I have seen on your social media accounts that you are constantly experimenting with AI, doing all these AI side projects. What are you doing? And do you have AI psychosis?

• 6:00Speaker 05

  I think it's best to front-run the psychosis. Rather than have it sneak up on you, you just got to dive right in. And you get it over with. But, yeah, I ask myself sometimes. And I don't think so right now. I think I've got a pretty reasonable take on what models are good at, where they're not so great. But it's really interesting to see the new capabilities. Right now, I'm vibe-mapping.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  What's vibe-mapping?

• 6:25Speaker 05

  Well, it's basically YouTube math, but with AI. AI and you know.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Are you proving Fermat's Last Theorem? What are you doing?

• 6:33Speaker 05

  No, I'm not. But basically, like, I think it's just interesting to see how AI attacks these problems. It's kind of the opposite of Figma. I mean, Figma, we're a design platform. We often are evaluating the models, trying to see how good they are at design, what we should use, what we should put in our product, expose to users. And it's like the opposite of verifiable. You know, you and I could look at something and disagree or agree on the merits of it and the design merits of it. But, you know, there are some domains like math, some aspects of computer science where things are correct or they're not. And so I think it's really cool to see that range. And the verifiable domains models are very good at now.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  Casey vibe math his way through high school. They flunked him, but I'm glad it's going better for you.

• 7:20Speaker 05

  I don't know. I don't have any results, so just be very clear.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  I want to hear a little bit more about like what direction you are taking in all of your AI use. And as you sort of, you know, pursue these projects, this sounds like a lot of sort of like personal stuff that you're doing for fun. Is that just sort of like the curiosity of a lifelong learner? Or is there something specific that you're trying to find?

• 7:40Speaker 05

  I find that just in general, the more that you like explore new technology, you don't know how it's going to pay off or what benefit it will have. But it ends up having some benefit in weird ways you can't expect. Was very excited about NFTs early on and they became what they are now. They weren't called NFTs then. They're called crypto collectibles because that was a cool phrase. But, you know, it was like, whether it's that or, you know, WebGL, which led to Figma.

• 8:05Speaker 05

  I just always try to explore stuff and like go deep on it, figure out the capabilities because you can find ways to use them.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  I have a theory that I want to run past you, which is that, you know, that now you can't, every startup founder, CEO in Silicon Valley is obsessed with vibe coding. They're all doing it on the weekends. They come in on Mondays and then, you know, they say, why, you know, why are we building this thing? 50 people used to build this thing. I just built it in a weekend. It's driving their employees crazy. But I have, my theory about this is that this is, this is reminding CEOs of what it was like when their jobs were fun. Do you agree with that statement?

• 8:42Speaker 05

  You said you're fearful of that.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  No, that's my theory.

• 8:45Speaker 05

  Oh, theory. Okay, sorry, I misheard you. I think that people like to make things. And they like to design stuff and they like to actually put their ideas out in the world in a more tangible way. And I think we're just gonna see more of it from everyone, not just CEOs trying to have fun on the weekend.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  Speaking of making stuff, Figma recently launched an ad campaign organized around the idea, sort of making fun of the idea that design is dead. It's sort of a more common sentiment, maybe, in the era of AI. Make that case for us, that design is not dead in a world where I can just sort of, you know, type what kind of app I want into a box.

• 9:20Speaker 05

  This is a real roller coaster from, you know, my 2009 Facebook message and now to design.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  We're covering it all.

• 9:26Speaker 05

  It's taking a turn. No, I mean, the, um, look, I think that there's so many hot takes online. I'm sure you get a few of them an hour.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  And, you know, I think when new models drop, everyone's looking for something that they can say is dead. Because, you know, on social media now, it's like either you're so back or it's over. And I prefer to be back. But no, I mean, in terms of the case, I mean, look, like, it's interesting to see folks catch up to the capabilities. And it's like, yeah, you can do a lot. But the average sort of response from AI, whether it's the domain like writing, you know, my take, my hot take right now would be, I actually think that people that know how to write and actually engage in thinking, critical thinking around writing, and it's like, it's a good time for them.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  It's a good time for them.

• 10:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, you told me, but I think so. Yeah. It's like half the audience is applauding. They're like, I don't know, should we, should we not? Is it too like, are we sucking up?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  I mean, I think, like, you know, to the extent that writing is a showcase for your critical thinking abilities, like, yes, like, having great critical thinking skills are always like a boon. Like, is the.

• 10:35Speaker 05

  But it's also style. It's a style of writing.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 10:38Speaker 05

  Like, if you're funny, if you've got an actual, like, way you phrase things, if you have voice. And I think it's especially true right now in a way that wasn't a few years ago. Like, three, five years ago, I would. Said, oh, man, there's a lot of people on social media that are writing really interesting things. And we're in this world where like, there's, you know, Substack and like, people are putting content there and it's really good. And now I look at that and I'm like, man, it's a lot of Claude. You know, maybe I'm over rotated even on identifying people that are basically using AI to write. Same same thing's true for design. Folks are basically looking at these websites or applications and seeing the average. Maybe they're even

• 11:20Speaker 05

  over identifying it. But I think if you have a creative voice writing or design, you put yourself out there and you like, take a risk. This is a good time to do that. It's something that's going to be rewarded.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  And I can imagine, you know, maybe in your view, there's a world where the fact that I can use an AI tool to quickly whip up a design might make me more interested in actually getting good, right? And sort of like not settling for the first generation.

• 11:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, how do you not settle for the first draft, the first thing out there, the first output, and actually mold it and craft it and push it further? And I think that the more you can do that, the more you'll send out, and also the more you'll be differentiated. And I think that there's gonna, I mean, we saw the the data recently on the number of apps in the App Store. It was went up a ton, but the number of apps actually being used and getting frequent traffic is still the same. And so you're basically this hyper competitive environment now where you have to differentiate. You really have to like lean in and figure out how to have a unique voice and a unique take and a unique point of view, just like writing.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  The the big buzzword in San Francisco right now is taste. Everyone's talking about taste as the the sort of bulwark against being replaced by AI. If you have taste, you'll be fine.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  It's the first time taste has ever been a big subject in San Francisco, I think.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Yes, this is the city that made all birds a thing.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  Proudly tasteless since 1821.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  And then I've heard some people argue that actually taste is just the word we give to the stuff that the models aren't very good at yet. You know, researchers in AI used to say, ah, but they don't have taste. And then the models got better. And it was like, oh, wait a minute, maybe they can do all of the taste parts of the job too. So is defend the concept of taste as being either important or cope from people who just haven't used the good models yet.

• 13:18Speaker 05

  I mean, the cycle seems to be the model comes out, you think it can do everything, you discover the limits, and then you realize that like life goes on. And, uh, you know, will at some point that be different and affect the world in a different way? Perhaps, we'll see. But so far, it seems like everyone's adapting, and part of that adaptation is, uh, realizing the sort of new average is being put out by the models. And I think it's not even, you don't even have to defend taste and people having taste, because then we can argue about, do they? Um, to just recognize people can detect the average. They can detect that output, and they can dare to do more. Um, but I also do believe that this is a great time to be creative. And I think that the more the

• 14:02Speaker 05

  models put out that's in distribution, uh, because that's how the models are trained. They're trained on distribution of data. And if you're in distribution, uh, and you're not actually pushing the bounds, like, I, I think that, uh, you're in a worse shape than if you're actually going and exploring the frontier of human knowledge, creativity, and what you can put on the world, and making something that's fundamentally new as an expression of yourself. Uh, so I get excited about that. I get excited about our opportunity to be the place where people, uh, can really unlock their creativity at Figma, and, um, or one of the places, there'll be many, uh, and just like creating tools that can empower people.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  I'm curious if you're seeing a reaction in the world of art and design to AI and what that looks like, right? You think back, and the invention of the camera gets us impressionism. Do we have an analog for that yet in the design world now that AI makes design easier to access?

• 15:01Speaker 05

  I think it's interesting how we're seeing some of that reaction, maybe in the world of marketing and advertising. I don't know if, maybe it's happening in, uh, the art world. Like, I would have expected by now that people be really into sculpture in a way that they're not, uh, or just things with textures. Uh, and that'd be my, like, art thesis, you know, so probably don't hire me as an art advisor. Uh, but like, you know, I, I think that that's probably, uh, a natural reaction, is like lean into the things that are not digital. Um, whereas I think in advertising now, we're seeing Ways to prove authenticity, to prove that you are actually making something that is not generated by AI. And some companies are really going for that.

• 15:45Speaker 05

  In the world of design, I think that what we're going to see and what we are starting to see, a lot more activity, a lot more creativity. People really making software more of a creative medium. You know, I think back to the early days of the internet and it was so fun. And I feel like the last 15 years or so, like basically the time we've been working on Figma, we've kind of been in a bit of a rut, honestly. You know, a lot of very monoculture takes when it comes to design and the way it expresses. And I, you know, the people that are trying to do hot takes in the audience will be like, and Figma's to blame.

• 16:23Speaker 02

  Shame on you.

• 16:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Casey said it. But, um, no, I, I think that the more we can do to make it so that people can push further and like actually create really dynamic interfaces as well as, uh, marketing and media in general, the better.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Have you seen anything that's been AI-generated in the realm of design or art that you think is really good? Like Casey turned me on to Fruit Love Island, uh, which is now my

• 16:49Speaker 02

  You've all watched it.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  My favorite TV show slash TikTok series. But is there anything that you've seen that is clearly AI-generated where you're like, oh, that's actually kind of fun and interesting?

• 16:59Speaker 05

  You know, yes, and also it wears off fast. Uh, I think it's just like any style.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  I'm on season three of Fruit Love Island, so it hasn't worn off yet.

• 17:10Speaker 05

  Not yet.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  The pineapple had an affair.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  The papaya and the banana are about to hook up. It's great.

• 17:14Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. Sounds tantalizing. Uh, I'll have to watch it tonight.

• 17:22Speaker 02

  I want to come back to something that you were saying about writing earlier. It's just sort of been on my mind ever since you brought it up because you were bringing about the fact that, you know, we have Substack now and a lot more people are writing, which I agree with you is super cool. When Satya was here earlier, he brought up this post that he had read, um, that was on Substack today. I happened to read the same post because it was on Tech Move. And I read it and I'm just going to say it. It was Claude generated. Okay, and it irritated me as somebody who's always trying to get my stories on TechMeme because I'm like, I'm just reading like the output of a prompt. And so when I read that, my honest feeling is like, this is not good for my profession. Like, my profession is starting to look more and more like slop. And so I just wonder, like, if there are designers in the in the audience, if they're having a similar feeling when, you know,

• 18:07Speaker 02

  they're looking at the designs that they're seeing everywhere and they're just knowing that it was outputted with the touch of a button.

• 18:12Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, one quality that writers and designers also share is imposter syndrome. And it's good to label it so that you know it's there and you don't have to deal with it every day, or as much. But I think it's, designers are arguably in one of the best roles in technology. And I mean, I'm talking to companies all the time, customers. They're telling me that they're hiring designers. Sometimes they're not hiring others. But design is one of the most prioritized places in the company where they're hiring. Overall, folks are still hiring a lot. This also perplexes me. I mean, we're in a world where folks are saying that all the jobs are going to get replaced and they're then turned around and they're like, oh, let me call the really good engineers so I can get them to join my team.

• 18:56Speaker 05

  So it just doesn't make sense to me right now in general, but I am very, very bullish on design and the role it will play in accelerating companies further.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  So you think like two years from today, like, there are more people whose job title is designer than they have it today?

• 19:10Speaker 05

  How many years?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Say two?

• 19:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so. I think probably significantly more. And a lot of people that are doing other jobs, I think, will start calling themselves designers, creatives. You know, I think in general, we're seeing more of this kind of generalist vibe that people are feeling like they have to embody. One thing that's been interesting is a lot of engineers, kind of like you were saying, getting started their design journey because they make something so fast and they're like, now what? And is it good enough? Maybe I should push it further. And then they kind of are trying to figure out, okay, how do I do that? So I'm pretty excited about that part, too, welcoming more people in as designers.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  I have a friend in the audience tonight who is a product manager who started out as a non-technical person and is now able to create really amazing prototypes, just with the advance of AI tools. I can see a world where design gets, you know, added into that portfolio as well. I just think, and I think that at the end of that, like, that job probably has a different name, like, than PM?

• 20:04Speaker 05

  Not all of it will be great design, but the act of, like, considering it and being thoughtful what you're doing and then actually putting it out and taking a risk, man, it's design.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  Dylan, this is a lot of high-minded conversation. Let's gossip.

• 20:17Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 20:19Speaker 05

  About what?

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Earlier this year, Mike Krieger, former board member at Figma, a product lead at Anthropic, co-founder of Instagram, was suddenly, he suddenly resigned from your board. And just days later, Anthropic announced Claude Design, which feels a little Figma-adjacent. So what the heck happened there?

• 20:41Speaker 05

  I mean, you just told a story. But I mean, let me be clear, like, Mike is a great dude. And yeah, he's someone I really care about.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Would you let another AI lab executive onto your board in the future?

• 20:56Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, we saw how that went in terms of like, you know, unexpected products rolling out. And so probably depends on what their ambitions are.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Wait, in a, in a general sense, you're not gossiping. You forget these people are there. It's just us, just us birds.

• 21:12Speaker 05

  Sorry, y'all.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Just us birds. In a general sense, I think a lot of CEOs are worried about the AI labs sort of integrating more vertically, like, you know, taking over insurance companies or accounting firms. We're starting to see some of that happen, where these labs are just kind of expanding into all the adjacent industries and really creating tough times for the companies in those industries already. Do you expect that to continue? Are these labs just kind of going to continue to grow and grow and grow and just become these like amorphous blobs that just, you know, create havoc for all the smaller startups in those fields?

• 21:49Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, let's tell the tale of two AI labs. You know, you got OpenAI and Anthropic. And OpenAI kind of went through that journey. They launched a lot of stuff, Social Network even, Sora, which I really enjoyed. I know you did too, Casey.

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's some fun.

• 22:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 05

  Anyway, so.

• 22:10Speaker 05

  You know, speaking of AI generation, I mean, I did enjoy watching myself breakdance.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  And you'll see him do it again later tonight.

• 22:18Speaker 05

  With the robot. But anyway, yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, then they've made the hard call of actually shutting them down and focusing the efforts of the company. And that's a hard call to make, but respect that they did it. And then also, I think, you know, we've got Anthropic is kind of in its arc of being more expansionary, their thinking, launching a lot of stuff. And I think you see what works and what doesn't. And then you see a year later, what happens? I mean, I think the more interesting question is a year or two years out, like, where will they be playing still? And, you know, not everything works. It's hard to build product and get it out in the world. What are some things that you think they will attempt and fail at? Oh, I don't know. Safety? Choking.

• 23:12Speaker 05

  Very good.

• 23:13Speaker 02

  That might be the best answer of Hard Fork Live 2026. Yeah, very good, very good. Dylan, you run a public company. It's enterprise SaaS. The market is very skeptical of that right now. Your job seems hard. How is it going for you? And do you think you convince the market that there is a bright future for you and your enterprise SaaS brethren?

• 23:37Speaker 05

  I don't have to. Elon Musk is doing it. You're the son, right?

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  I mean, was it 22.9 trillion on enterprise applications? Let's go?

• 23:52Speaker 02

  I'll pretend to know what you mean.

• 23:56Speaker 05

  No, I mean, like, but actually, I mean, how do you put that out there and not go, wow, and software is huge? I mean, he made it bigger than the entire space economy.

• 24:03Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:03Speaker 05

  So, you know.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  What do you make of... Okay, I'm told, we only have a few minutes left, but I'm told that you have a desire to talk about hyperstition. What is hyperstition? And why are we supposed to know about it?

• 24:18Speaker 05

  I guess some of our team told you that.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  This is, I mean, getting back to the abstract conversation, sorry, y'all.

• 24:29Speaker 05

  But it's basically someone who's kind of like an internet edgelord came up with this term. Don't look him up, but um, but I do think there's like a really interesting idea here, which is how do you describe this phenomenon where ideas, memes summon their own existence? And the two examples that I think are really good at this, one is Bitcoin and the other one's AI.

• 24:55Speaker 05

  You know, why did Bitcoin work? There's every reason to believe in the world that Bitcoin would not work. And yet it just snowballed. And basically, the more attention it got, the more basically strong it became. And AI is the same way. You know, there's all these folks that cared so much about safety, so much that they thought, okay, we gotta do this in the right way. We gotta form nonprofits and like get together and like all of us gotta be in one place so that we can like really shepherd this technology into the future. And, uh, you know, we've got to make sure we don't create a race dynamic, for example. We gotta make sure that, uh, you know, we have, you know, these complex corporate structures that we can, uh, make sure that this benefits humanity in the best ways possible. But then it's like, okay, well, uh, there's a lot of like really powerful stuff you can make with AI.

• 25:40Speaker 05

  And, you know, people are people. It's hard to always get along and, uh, man, you know, there's always an incentive to break apart. And well, hello, race dynamic, here we are.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Can I try to repeat back to you what I've heard so far? And you tell me if I'm right or not.

• 25:54Speaker 05

  Communicate it better than me.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Well, hyperstition, the way I have heard of it is like in the sense of the AI is learning from what stories we tell about AI. So if you want AI to go well, you should like feed it a bunch of stories about AI being like really nice to humans.

• 26:10Speaker 05

  That's part of it, too. I think that it's like also the case that AI is like painfully aware in some cases of, uh, you know, all these tropes that are on the internet about it. And, you know, it'll talk to you about the Google engineer that thought it was conscious. It'll talk with you about, um, sort of the stories around, uh, science fiction and the ways that it's been depicted. It's very aware, it's all in the train set and, you know. There's not as much information for some reason, the train set, data set of these stories where it goes well, but I actually do think there's an optimistic future for humanity. And I know that's a hot take now for some reason, but I want to believe that every day. And I think that it's on all of us to tell those stories too, of how it does go well.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  And so it might be a good time to write some stories about how things could go well, just to make sure it gets into the training data.

• 26:59Speaker 05

  Exactly. You got it.

• 27:00Speaker 02

  You have your homework for this evening.

• 27:02Speaker 05

  Dylan Field, thank you so much for having us. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dylan. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  All right. Hypersition.

• 28:08Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner, Dell. AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

• 28:42Speaker 04

  Building and scaling AI today can feel pretty chaotic, mostly because teams are juggling too many fragmented tools at once. That's where OutSystems comes in. OutSystems gives you one unified agentic systems platform to manage your entire portfolio of agents, apps, and workflows. You get to innovate at the speed of AI, but with the security, governance, and control your enterprise actually needs. And the results are already there. A major manufacturer used OutSystems to build a multi-agent system that analyzes blueprints. And a global bank cut their development time by 60%. Own your agentic future today at outsystems.com/nyt.

• 29:18Speaker 06

  Your sales team is at risk of missing quota. Don't panic, just ask Rippling AI. Built on your real-time people and business data, Rippling AI can pull metrics from Rippling and your CRM into a meeting-ready dashboard showing quota attainment, headcount trajectory, and revenue to quota by region. In seconds, you'll see what's behind your quota risk and fix it before it's missed. Head to rippling.ai/hardfork to get the only AI built to give you full visibility and take complex actions across your whole business. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot AI slash hardfork. Sign up today.

• 30:00Speaker 07

  Please welcome to the stage New York Times composer Dan Powell and his robot choir.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Dan Powell. Dan Powell and the incredible Hard Fork Choir. You know, Dan, in addition to being our DJ tonight, also composed the Hard Fork theme song and so much of the other amazing music on the show. Thank you, Dan, for coming out tonight. Rarely has a human losing a job to automation sounded so beautiful.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so those robots are made by Teenage Engineering, and they are part of a choir that takes in input via MIDI and Bluetooth and outputs beautiful songs. And only occasionally do they need to be wrapped on the head to behave.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  But I'm told that feels good for them.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, they like it.

• 33:38Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Dell Technologies. It's time to put AI to work. Is your business ready? The challenge isn't getting started with AI. It's scaling beyond pilots while maintaining control of your data, governance, infrastructure, and costs. Dell AI Factory provides the integrated foundation you need to scale AI securely and efficiently with one trusted partner. Dell, AI on your terms. From idea to impact. Learn more at dell.com/yourwaytoAI. That's dell.com/yourwaytoAI.

• 34:13Speaker 04

  Companies are pouring money into AI, but few leaders can explain how those AI investments work with the systems you already have. You know, the ones that actually run your business? Without Systems, you don't have to start over with AI. You can choose the projects where AI will have the most impact. And OutSystems gives you the platform to make it agentic on your terms with complete control every step of the way. So you can trust AI with the mission critical systems that run your business. Own your agentic future. Learn more at outsystems.com/NYT. That's outsystems.com/NYT.

• 34:48Speaker 06

  Your sales team is at risk of missing quota. Don't panic. Just ask Rippling AI. Built on your real time people and business data, Rippling AI can pull metrics from Rippling and your CRM into a meeting ready dashboard showing quota attainment, headcount trajectory, and revenue to quota by region. In seconds, you'll see what's behind your quota risk and fix it before it's missed. Head to rippling.ai/hardfork to get the only AI built to give you full visibility and take complex actions across your whole business. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot AI slash hard fork. Sign up today.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Hot Fork is produced by Whitney Jones and Rachel Coen. We're edited by Veeran Pavich. We're fact-checked by Caitlin Love. Today's show was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Original music by: Felicia Bietup, Marian Lozano, Diane Wong, Rowan Nemestow, and Dan Powell. Video production by Sawyer Roque, Jake Nickel, and Chris Schott. Special thanks to The New York Times Live Event Team: Hillary Kuhn, Beth Weinstein, Caitlin Roper, Chantal Renier, Melissa Tripoli, Natalie Green, Kirsten Birmingham, Marissa Farina, Jennifer Feeney, Morgan Singer, Dana Proskowski, Haley Duffy, Yanhui Liu, Matt Kaiser, Sarah Cheever, Johnny Marola, Victoria Kim, and SV Productions.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Thanks to everybody at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the Blue Shield of California Theater, and a special thanks to Paula Schuman, Hui Wing Tam, and Dahlia Hadad. You can email us at [email protected] with all your photos from the event.

• 36:54Speaker 08

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