Introducing: Artful Intelligence | Ep 1: Malick Lombion on Hyperlapse x AI

What if you could create the impossible with AI? In this debut episode of Artful Intelligence, Chris McLeod introduces us to Montreal-based filmmaker Malick Lombion, whose groundbreaking technique, Hyperlapse X AI, is redefining video art. Malick combines hyperlapse cinematography with cutting-edge AI tools like DALL-E to compress time, space, and reality into surreal and mesmerizing visuals. Malick pushed AI to its creative limits, proving that human ingenuity and machine learning can work in tandem to unlock new dimensions of art. Reid Hoffman and Chris explore what it takes to innovate at this level: the right partnerships, a willingness to fail publicly, and a commitment to going all in. Discover how Malick’s work inspired a new wave of video creators—and what it says about the future of creativity in an AI-driven world. For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/ Time Stamps: Introduction 00:01 – Artful Intelligence introduction. 02:36 – Chris and Reid discuss the central question: Can AI amplify human creativity? 04:08 – A brief history of cinematic breakthroughs, from Georges Méliès to hyperlapse. 08:13 – Malick explains Hyperlapse x AI. Part 1: The Right Humans Are Required 10:01 – Malick discovers DALL-E 2 and its potential for groundbreaking visuals. 10:55 – Malick teams up with Manuel Sainsily to create Hyperlapse x AI. 12:26 – A long and tedious process. 13:35 – Reid Hoffman on the value of diverse collaborators in AI innovation. Part 2: Plan on Failure in a Public Way 18:39 – Malick gets an offer to work with Insta360. 20:45 – Public experimentation on Instagram leads Malick to hyperlapse videos. 23:08 – Trial and error with a 10-foot selfie stick. 26:39 – Reid Hoffman on iterative deployment and learning from failure. Part 3: Once You Know Where You’re Going, Go All In 31:26 – Malick begins transforming his 360 footage into a Hyperlapse x AI video. 32:16 – Malick moves from Guadeloupe to Montreal, fully committing to his passion for video creation. 37:09 – Malick completes his breakthrough video. 40:33 – Malick’s Hyperlapse x AI video goes viral. Outro 49:19 – Chris reflects on Malick’s journey and previews the next episode in the series. Links: Malick Lombion’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/malick.fr?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw== Malick’s Hyperlapse x AI video with the Insta360 camera https://www.instagram.com/reel/CiPyY1VAv6I/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== An updated version of Malick’s and Manuel Sainsily’s first Hyperlapse x AI video https://www.instagram.com/reel/ChNyS6iAEA8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Reid Hoffman?

  Hi Chris.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Hey Reed.

• 0:03Reid Hoffman?

  This is Chris McLeod of The Clan McLeod.

• 0:08Reid Hoffman?

  Chris and I worked together for many years when he was the executive producer of my other podcast, Masters of Scale. So Chris, you've been spending the last few months on a bit of an AI journey. Tell us about that.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  So it all started with a conversation. I was talking with a close friend who is a writer, a musician and producer. One of the most talented people I know. I was telling him about some of the ways that I've been using AI in my creative work. And he was not only skeptical, but terrified. Not about the Terminator stuff, but about how AI will affect creativity and artistic expression. My friend is not alone. Many artists have a complicated relationship with AI. Some of the greats like Steven Spielberg, Drake and Tyler Perry have raised concerns about

• 1:02Speaker 01

  the impact that AI is having on the arts. I think the fundamental question many of them are asking is, are we moving toward a world where humans aren't needed to create anything? And is that the world that we want to live in?

• 1:18Speaker 01

  So the last few months, I've been trying to get to the bottom of this question by talking to groundbreaking artists who are fully in on using AI tools and capturing their stories.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  I found that their often mind bending work would not be possible without AI. But it also wouldn't be possible without humans. So as we explore their stories in this three-part series, we pose the question, what if? What if the future is still being written? What if we could work toward a world where creativity is not replaced by AI, but amplified by it? So Reid, this is where you come in. You're an AI creator yourself, but you're also someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how to plan for futures that break humanity's way. So I'd love to play you these stories.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  From time to time, I want to zoom out to hear your perspective and what we can learn from these creators to ultimately work toward a future where AI is amplifying humans, not replacing them. So Reid, does that sound okay?

• 2:28Reid Hoffman?

  Amazingly and wonderfully so. Let's do it.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Awesome. Awesome.

• 2:36Speaker 01

  Welcome to Artful Intelligence. In each episode, we'll share the story of an artist using AI to create what's never been possible before. Episode one, Creating the Impossible. Before we begin, I have a secret, and you can't tell anyone. So I built a vocal booth in my apartment a while back, and I haven't told anybody, but my vocal booth is actually a time machine. It's sort of like the police box thing in Doctor Who, except mine is smaller on the

• 3:20Speaker 01

  inside. And honestly, it's pretty cramped in here. To begin our story, we need to go back, long before the invention of AI, before the smartphone...

• 3:32Speaker 02

  And we are calling it iPhone.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Before the internet...

• 3:36Speaker 02

  You've got mail.

• 3:38Speaker 01

  Or the personal computer...

• 3:40Speaker 02

  I'm Bill Gates. You're going to see the future. Windows.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  We're headed to a time before VHS players... Or even the television.

• 3:51Speaker 02

  Lucy, I'm home.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  We'll start all the way back in the late 1800s, in Paris, France.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  At this time, moving pictures were in their infancy. So magicians were the stars of the day. Magicians like Georges Méliès. Méliès was fascinated with filmmaking and wanted to incorporate it into his act. So he made his own camera and began capturing footage. One day, Méliès was shooting on the streets of Paris when something happened that would change cinema forever. His camera jammed. He fiddled with the hand crank and it started up again.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  When he developed the footage and played it back, he saw something extraordinary. The film showed a horse-drawn omnibus carrying workers up the street. Suddenly, the omnibus had been transformed into a hearse. He realized that when he was fiddling with the hand crank, the camera stopped shooting. Then, when he fixed the problem and the camera started up again, the omnibus was gone and the hearse had entered the frame. Méliès had accidentally created the first-ever special effect.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  This opened up a whole new world of what was possible in filmmaking. Méliès would go on to invent the split-screen effect, the stop-motion effect, dissolves and fades, and even color film by hand-painting every single frame. These special effects enabled him to create films that transported his audience on fantastical adventures: to haunted castles, the center of the earth, down into hell and up to the moon. There was one particular effect that Méliès invented which laid the groundwork for our story today. The time lapse. Nearly a century later...

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Wait, I need to set a course for the mid-'90s. Okay, let's go.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  In 1995, another French filmmaker would push the technique even further by asking, "What if you could compress both time and space?" Guy Roland from Montreal created an effect that would become known as the "hyperlapse" in his experimental short film called "Pacer." No dialogue, no actors, just footage of the streets of Montreal. Each scene only lasts a few seconds. You see time lapses of repeated objects like windows on a building or gravestones. Unlike a traditional time lapse, there's constant movement.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  In each frame, where one window or gravestone used to be, there's now another. The result is disorienting and surreal, but almost impossible to stop watching. So that's a hyperlapse. But what if you could compress time, space, and reality? That would require another groundbreaking filmmaker. They might as well be French, too. Okay, so my name is Malik Lombion. Meet Malik Lombion. Malik is a video content creator from Montreal. He and a friend invented a style of filmmaking that would have never been possible without AI. They call it- This work, I call it "Hyperlapse X AI."

• 7:44Speaker 01

  "Hyperlapse X AI." What is "Hyperlapse X AI," you ask? ChatGPT, describe a "Hyperlapse X AI" video.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  A "Hyperlapse X AI" video is a type of video that combines the traditional "Hyperlapse" technique with AI-generated imagery. You might take a "Hyperlapse" of a cityscape and then use DALL-E to transform each frame into a different artistic style, or to replace elements like the sky, buildings, or lighting with imaginative alternatives.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  These videos are mesmerizing. Images change before your eyes as the camera pans around an object. Malik made one particular hyperlapse XAI video with a 360 camera that went viral in 2022. When other video creators from all over the internet saw what was possible to make with AI, the style exploded, and I had to hear the story of how he made it.

• 8:42Speaker 04

  Hey, can you hear me?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Hi Malik, how are you?

• 8:45Speaker 04

  I'm doing great. I'm doing great. How are you?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Through his story, we'll ask the question, "What if?" What if you, yes, you listener, could create something with the help of AI that's never been possible before? You might think it's as easy as typing in the right prompt, but Malik told me there's so much more to it than that.

• 9:06Speaker 04

  Most people, when they see AI, they just see the really surface level work that people do, which is you go on the software, you type a prompt, you have a beautiful image here. But this is the most basic way of using it. But I've seen some incredible artists create some artwork that was just not possible before.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  And Malik is absolutely one of these artists, so strap in. As we traverse the timeline of Malik's story, we'll discover ways to use AI to create what's never been possible before. Part one: To create the impossible with AI. The right humans are required.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Setting a trajectory for 2022.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  A new tool was released to a handful of waitlisters, including Malik Lombion, that would change the landscape of creativity forever: DALL-E 2.

• 10:11Speaker 04

  When DALL-E 2 came out and I saw what it was capable of doing, I was like, wow, you can literally create some beautiful artworks, some beautiful images with just a sentence, with just some text. So I was like, yo, if this is what we can do right now, this is the worst it's ever gonna be. So can you imagine what is gonna be in like two years, three years? I made it a mission to stay updated in what AI can do.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Do you remember what the first thing you typed in was, by any chance? Do you remember like the first prompt you put in?

• 10:44Speaker 04

  It was probably something basic, like a picture of a cat, like the classic.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  I think that was it, yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  But Malik instinctively knew there was so much more to be explored than cat pics. If he wanted to get the most out of this brand new tool, he would need an expert.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  Yeah, his name is Manuel Sencili. He's a creator from Guadeloupe and we both live in Montreal. We knew that we wanted to collaborate together on something, we just didn't know what. I knew that he was kind of an expert in AI. So I was like, okay, let's put our expertise together. And so we just decided to set one day that I would come over to his place and try and fail and make and break some videos and be creative with AI.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  So Malik captured some stunning video of the city of Montreal and went to Manuel's place to see what they could come up with. He took the footage he had captured and created a hyperlapse.

• 11:46Speaker 04

  We basically spent like 24 hours, no sleep, scene by scene. I'm editing a scene, the rotation, the zoom in, the transition. And I'm sure that this scene is pretty much picture locked.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Then he and Manuel brought in a new collaborator, this time non-human. They started experimenting with DALL-E, but DALL-E was for images only. To work with video, they would have to modify each and every individual frame. So at 24 frames per second, that's 24 images for every second of video that he wants to bring into DALL-E.

• 12:23Speaker 04

  I take these images and I upload them one by one into DALL-E.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  In DALL-E 2, one of the incredible features was that you could select a small area of an image that you uploaded, then regenerate only that portion of the image.

• 12:40Speaker 04

  I select my area that I want to modify and I tap the prompt and I export that. Sometimes the immediate result that you get is not that good and I had to really iterate.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  Sometimes working on one second of video could take me like two hours. So yeah, that was, that was a long tedious process.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Footage of objects like church steeples or the banner on an ice cream shop transformed into new surreal images in every frame as the camera panned around them. Through Malik and Manuel's tedious experimentation, they created a brand new style of video editing, HyperLapse X AI. It became a toolset that Malik would utilize to show what was possible when AI tools amplified human creativity.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  But first, Reid, I've heard you talk about how humans should always be a part of the equation with AI. In the case of creating HyperLapse X AI videos with Dali, it required two very specific humans, a video expert and an AI expert. But let's zoom out for a moment. On your podcast, Possible, you have guests from many various fields discussing how to impact the future. Leaders in fields like science, political strategists, technologists. I'm always amazed at the caliber of people you have on the show, all working to make the future a little better. When you're looking for collaborators to shape AI advancement, whether a company founder

• 14:20Speaker 01

  or a podcast guest, what kind of criteria do you consider so that the right humans are brought into the equation?

• 14:27Reid Hoffman?

  Well, obviously, you know, kind of there isn't like a one size fits all because it's, you know, different human contexts, different goals, different, you know, audiences, different creation moments. Like, you know, if you're talking about the deep tech of AI, then it has to be this kind of technologist or this kind of humanist or both.

• 14:47Reid Hoffman?

  If it's the question about how we experience things and how we think about societies, then it's a different person. It's not like, you know, I always bring in Sue or I always bring in Fred. You know, it's kind of like, it depends on the circumstance. You know, and by the way, it doesn't have to be like, I think it could be perfectly entertaining. To create a, in some circumstances, a humanist discourse that's entirely like chatbots talking to each other. I think it's totally doable. So it doesn't like, you don't have to say like, well, there always has to be a human here. It's just you have to have kind of human beings and humanity and humanism in mind in what you're doing. One of the

• 15:27Reid Hoffman?

  things I did is I did this podcast with, with Ali Miller, where we had a set of custom GPTs that were listening to our discussion. And then we were kind of calling them out for commentary and questions and different things. And so you had a whole panoply of agents, you know, participating, and that was great. And Ali and I were the humans in the loop in this case. And I think the thing to remember pretty centrally in all of this is that, you know, you want people who are imagining how to get to really good futures with human beings, with technology, with AI. But it doesn't necessarily mean

• 16:10Reid Hoffman?

  you need promoters only, or advocates only. It's actually very useful to have critics, warriors, you know, people who are uncertain in the dialogue too. Because, look, we are, it's a navigation. Navigation isn't just, hey, this is the path to getting there. But also, here's how you avoid the potholes and landmines and cliffs and other things that could be part of the journey. And so it's a range of folks, you know, and I'll just go to kind of a personal conversation that I've been having recently with Yuval Harari, who's a spectacularly intelligent and humanist thinker, you know, gave him my new book,

• 16:54Reid Hoffman?

  Superagency, that'll be coming out in January. And we were talking about it. One of the questions is, can human society deal with the speed?

• 17:06Reid Hoffman?

  That we're getting to and it's unique. We haven't had this much speed within technological revolution in human history. On the other hand, you know, each technological revolution has been much faster than the previous one, whether it's the printing press or the car or electricity or the internet or the mobile phone, you know, et cetera. You know, he's more hopeful than I am that you could persuade people to slow down. And he's basically like, look, I hope you're right, but I think you're wrong for the following reasons, you know, then I'm the critic because I'm like, well, no, I don't think you can do that. I don't think it works. Uh, you know, maybe it's a good thing if it works and let's talk about like your ideas to make it happen and I'll give you my two cents on those ideas.

• 17:48Reid Hoffman?

  And that dialogue gets you a much more productive, kind of like, okay, here's how we're steering into the future. And, and so we ended up, he ended up blurbing the book. So that's, that's, that's example of a conversation that wasn't on a microphone, wasn't at the possible podcast or anything else, but was a conversation that was an example of a very good dialogue between a humanist optimist in AI and a humanist, you know, skeptic's probably not the right word, but you know, deep concern with AI.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Part two, to create the impossible with AI, plan on failure in a very public way.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Firing up time travel circuits, moving forward just a few months.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  As a successful content creator on Instagram, Malik was constantly receiving DMs.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  I was receiving a lot of DMs, like more DMs that I could handle. And some of them were just spam.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  One day, reluctantly scrolling through his inbox.

• 19:02Speaker 04

  I received a message from a woman, Olivia. She sent me a DM saying that she works for Insta360 and she would like to have my email.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Insta360 is a company that makes cameras that shoot in all 360 degrees by placing two cameras on either side of the device. Malik was intrigued, but he figured it was too good to be true.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  At first, I thought it was fake, but I was like, okay, let me do my due diligence a little bit. So I went through her profile and I Googled her and I found out that she actually worked for Insta360. So I gave her my email. She actually sent me an email saying that they saw my work. They loved it and we give you some gear and you make a video with their next camera. It was a camera that was not even out yet. They basically sent me the camera and I was like, wow, they just sent you some gear for free? Like, what? Are you crazy? Awesome.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Malik unboxed the camera, looked down at the small silver device with a lens on each side and realized he had no idea what he was doing.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  I never shot any 360 footage before. I knew I wasn't gonna get it right. It's gonna be crap. I just knew it.

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Malik had said yes to this incredible opportunity to make content for a brand that he loved, but having zero experience working in 360 video, it felt like a recipe for failure.

• 20:33Speaker 01

  Luckily, failure is something that Malik plans on. Let's jump back a few years to the moment when Malik learned that failure can actually be a resource.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  He had just quit his stable job to try for a career in video.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  So it was really stressful. Like, for like two years, I didn't make any money. I had a few gigs here and there, but nothing substantial. I was barely able to pay my rent and I took some horrible decision like paying my rent using my credit card, which is horrible. You should not do that.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Once the bills piled up, he knew he had to find a better way. He saw other content creators making a living on Instagram, but he only had about 1,000 followers. If he could grow his social following, it could lead to better opportunities. Time for some public experimentation.

• 21:32Speaker 04

  One day, I decided, hey, I'm just going to post every single day for like a month and try and fail and learn from my mistakes. A lot of different types of content. I tried some fitness, some funny videos, some trends, some kind of music videos.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  And each of the ideas pretty much flopped. When I scrolled back through Malik's feed to see these horrific failures, I was honestly shocked. There is some incredible work there with almost no engagement. But this didn't deter Malik. He kept trying different types of videos to see if anything stuck.

• 22:09Speaker 04

  After probably like three weeks of getting almost no views and no likes, I started to see a pattern.

• 22:20Speaker 04

  I was still trying and failing, but I was like, hey, maybe I should do more of this because last time I tried this, I actually had more engagement on my posts.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Malik realized that failure, even in such a public way, could be a resource, perhaps even essential.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  I saw that the hyperlapses were the type of videos that were working.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Malik had discovered his niche. At first, it was subtle, but his hyperlapse videos were beginning to move the needle. Until finally, the day came when it all paid off. One of his hyperlapse videos went viral.

• 22:57Speaker 04

  I had millions of views for the very first time.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  Malik would begin to utilize failure as an essential part of his creative process. So, back in the present,

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Malik is staring down at his 360 camera with no idea what he's doing. So, he planned on failure.

• 23:21Speaker 04

  So I had two days in mind. One day to just try and fail with a camera and one day to practice with what I learned the day before.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Day one, experimentation. The camera came with a three-meter selfie stick attachment. And for us Americans, I Googled it and three meters is about 10 feet tall.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  The longer it was, the more range you had to actually film everything around you.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  How do you capture 360 footage on a 10-foot pole? How about a backpack?

• 23:57Speaker 04

  The first thing I tried was put it in between my backpack and my back. When you walk, you actually take some steps, so you go up and down. I tried to be as steady as possible, but this was not the most optimal way because it was really shaking.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  OK, how about a bicycle?

• 24:13Speaker 04

  Then I tried on my backpack, riding a bicycle, and that kind of worked. It wasn't the most stable way.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  OK, a little better. Any other modes of transportation?

• 24:25Speaker 04

  Then I tried with a car. In a car is the most optimal way. So I knew after a few trials and errors what I had to do.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  I just like love the image of somebody's on the street and you got this thing sticking out of your backpack, riding your bicycle. Like, what would somebody have seen if they were like on the sidewalk as you go by? What would they have witnessed?

• 24:47Speaker 04

  They would have witnessed something weird, obviously. Like, I definitely got a few looks. And sometimes even some people came to me and asked me what I was doing. So I was explaining to them. And some people knew what I was doing. And I told them, yeah, this is the next one. Yeah, I'm privileged enough to have the next one. You don't know about that one, but I do, you know? So that was nice.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Public failure complete. Now for day two. Actually shoot the video. Malik grabs his camera, gets his basketball goal-sized selfie stick and hops in the car. Now, figure out what to shoot.

• 25:35Speaker 04

  In Montreal, there is a lot of street art, so I know in which area I should go to capture that. I was holding my giant selfie stick, slowly working towards the art. I was trying different directions, different angles, going towards the art, going backwards, going side to side. Most of the time, the first idea is crap, so I just go through it quickly and I just try to iterate over that.

• 25:58Speaker 01

  Was there a moment when you knew, like, okay, time to go home, I got it?

• 26:02Speaker 04

  Absolutely not. I tend to overshoot. Like, most of the time, I tend to overshoot because I'm like, unfortunately, I'm not good at planning, so to compensate for that, I'm just trying to capture as much footage as possible to be as flexible as possible in post-production.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  With more footage than he possibly needed, Malik was ready to import and start editing. He would reach back into his toolkit to try out his new technique of using DALL-E to create a HyperLapse X AI video, frame by frame.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  But first, read in our story, Malik finds the benefit of failing in public. First, by trying various types of video content to see what was working and what wasn't. Then, by traveling around Montreal with a 10-foot pole sticking out of his backpack. He's not only comfortable failing in public, but has found how essential it is to the process. It makes me think of some of your theories of scale. Like, if you're not embarrassed by your initial launch of a product, then you're already too late. The products need a user base in order to iterate and make them great. But when it comes to AI, do you have the same theory of scale? With all the potential risks, do you believe that AI companies can still benefit from

• 27:24Speaker 01

  failing in public? Or is there just too much at stake?

• 27:29Reid Hoffman?

  So OpenAI calls this iterative deployment, which I strongly agree with. And part of that is to say, as opposed to trying to target a, when I make a release, I guarantee that it has zero failure and I won't release until it does. And there's a lot of problems with the negation of iterative deployment because you're like, well, do you actually know which things are actually really important? Like, for example, you said, I'm not going to release a car until I absolutely know. And it's like, well, then we'll never have cars. Because even though in your list of 100 things, you might get seat belts and you might get window washers and you might get airbags, but you're probably going to get a lot, a whole bunch of other things that you're imagining, well, that could go wrong, that could go

• 28:14Reid Hoffman?

  wrong, that could go wrong. The wheels might fall off, we might have to put like, you know, like weld in 10 bolts to make sure the wheels don't come off, you know, and we'll have to put in three levels of rubber because who knows? And, you know, da, da, da, da, da, and then eventually you have nothing or monstrosity that doesn't actually really work for human needs. And so the iterative deployment is, I think, absolutely essential. Now, it's also essential from a social perspective. So frequently, we are very bad predictors of discontinuous futures of ourselves. So like, if you go to most people and you say, do you want a smartphone? For example, I could even frame it as, would you like to carry around a device that's

• 28:58Reid Hoffman?

  always listening, like a microphone? Log jack yourself with a GPS, a microphone and a camera? Like, oh, no. And then it's like, well, but by the way, it gives you GPS and navigation, a bunch of ambient intelligence. Oh, and as I use it, it's like, yeah, this is great. You know, like, I can't imagine life without it. And so that future prediction of yourself, I think, is another thing that human beings in vast majority are terrible at. And so iterative deployment, again, gives them not only an ability to learn what's important, like for, for the developer to learn what's important, but for people to learn themselves too. So I think that's super critical. Now, does that mean you just kind of throw it all against the wall and see what happens? It's like, no, of course you have a theory about.

• 29:40Reid Hoffman?

  What might be good and bad for the individual, what might be good and bad for the group and the society? You're measuring against that and you're testing things. And you're particularly trying to make sure that you don't deploy anything at scale. This is from my book Blitzscaling. That you deploy anything at scale that really creates a lot of harm potentially. And the way you learn it is you go, we have crushed, you know, our system or we have injured a lot of people. And you're like, well, yeah, let's not learn that. Let's not learn that way, if at all possible. Right? And now, obviously, part of what happens is people kind of say, well, what's really critical is, you know, I'm an expert user of Photoshop.

• 30:20Reid Hoffman?

  And if this suddenly makes me less economically viable, because it makes everybody able to do this, where I used to be the only person and that's the end of society and humanity. You're like, well, no, that isn't actually. Right? And that isn't that kind of big of a risk. And yeah, it's, it's difficult. It's like the hand weavers, but with a loom. Go, I'm a hand weaver and oh my God, you're making this critical function that I was doing no longer valuable. And you're now doing a loom mass production. And you're like, yeah, but remember loom mass production is how we get a middle class and we clothing for everybody. Right? So and the benefit in the AI case is let's have AI also try to figure out how to help the weaver get to something else. Right?

• 31:04Reid Hoffman?

  Um, and so the, this is all a very long way of saying, yes, I have the same theory of scale.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Love it. Fascinating.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Part three.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  To create the impossible with AI. Once you know where you're going, go all in.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  So Malik has overcome his unfamiliarity with 360 video by failing in a public way. He knows exactly what to do next. Reach into his AI toolkit and transform this 360 footage into his breakthrough video style, HyperLapse X AI. Will it be a hit? Who knows? But at this point, it doesn't matter. Whether he fails or not, Malik knows exactly what he wants to do. So he might as well go all in and see what happens. It's a mindset that he picked up when he was much younger, living on the French island, Guadeloupe.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  Living in Guadeloupe. Honestly, the schools there are limited. The classic process for anyone that wants to go further in their studies. After they get their bachelor at 18, they usually leave to go to France.

• 32:32Speaker 04

  I wasn't really interested in going to France. Guadeloupe was all I was used to. So it's kind of how sometimes to get out of your comfort zone.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  After the first four years of university, he started getting restless.

• 32:46Speaker 04

  I just knew deep down in me that I had to see more of the world.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  He learns of a magical land where young French-speaking artists can thrive. A place where healthcare is free and maple syrup flows like the river. A little place called Canada.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  I had a friend in Montreal and they were telling me about how the lifestyle of Montreal is fun. I was seeing them having fun there. I was like, oh, okay, that seems interesting. So when I tried Montreal, I was like, yeah, I basically love it here. So I decided to stay.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  So Malik finished his education in computer science. In order to go all in on his new life in Montreal, he would need to keep his residency in Canada by finding a job.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  Because I am French, so whenever you come to Canada, you have to have a visa. And the visa I had four years were all tied to my employer. So if I was not working for someone, I had to basically leave Canada.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  He decided to apply for a job as a web developer.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  It was a fully English environment, but when I actually applied for that job, I wasn't able to speak English. I wasn't able to line up like three words in English. Like, I had a very basic vocabulary and everything, but I was not able to make a full sentence. But I feel like they really needed the staff, so they say, okay, just come, you'll learn.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Just imagine that for a moment. Malik is just out of university in a brand new country, working a job for the first time in his life. Now he'd have to learn a new language and he'd have to do it fast. This is someone who has clearly gone all in on his life in Montreal. I guess he was just that excited to code websites.

• 34:37Speaker 04

  To be honest, I never enjoyed any time of me being employed. The friend that got me into video, he is literally just like me. I remember him and I were every day on Google Hangout, talking, chatting about how much we hate being in that position right now. Like, I just knew from day one that this was not something I want to do my whole life. I was absolutely incapable of that. The only thing preventing me from quitting my job was literally just paperwork. So I was pretty depressed because of that.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  To cope with his misery, Malik turns to a side hustle: making videos.

• 35:19Speaker 04

  At this point, I've been making videos for a while now. It's just something that I do for fun on the side. I have my nine to five and the amount of mental energy that I have left to work on my art, basically, it's minimum. So as soon as I got my permanent residency, I decided, okay, I'm out, I quit, which I did with absolutely no plan, which I don't suggest to anyone. It was a horrible idea.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  So the first day you wake up after you quit your job, you probably, if you're anything like me, you probably spent like three full days playing video games. And then the next day, when it's like, alright, it's time to figure this out. What was that day like?

• 36:07Speaker 04

  I really felt, felt, felt happy. Like, it was weird, but I just felt happy. But I also felt scared because I knew that I had absolutely no savings. I knew it was gonna be hard, but I knew it was the right direction.

• 36:24Speaker 04

  So the way I, I move in life, I don't necessarily know the destinations, but I know if I go in the right direction and I keep that path, I know I'm gonna learn somewhere.

• 36:38Speaker 04

  I always move like that. You know deep down that this is the movement that you should make. So you should go 1,000% in that way.

• 36:46Speaker 01

  As we know, this decision paid off. After trial and error and some public failure, Malik and his friend Manuel invent a breakthrough style of video content. Then Malik has the opportunity to work with Insta360 on a brand campaign, which brings us back to the present.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Malik has the footage he needs, knows what he wants to make and goes all in.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  He imports the footage to the 360 video editor.

• 37:19Speaker 04

  I just scrub around the 360 landscape and I try to see what actually catches my attention.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Once he finds something interesting, he edits the 3D footage to add motion.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  I try to be as creative as possible. So I do some zoom ins, zoom out, some rotations and create some transition in between scenes.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Malik edits the 360 footage until he's happy, exports each scene to good old 2D footage, then uploads each individual frame to Dolly for some AI magic.

• 37:56Speaker 04

  I take these images and I overlay that on top of my original edit.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  After this long and tedious process, the edit is complete.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Now with the edit wrapped, it's time to add music.

• 38:18Speaker 04

  The music I used, I didn't choose it randomly. This is a version of a music that I used before. One of my very first really, really viral videos that some remix artist did. The beginning was by ABBA. It was a mashup that someone did with the music of Elton John's.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  It was just so beautiful. Like everyone was commenting about how this music fits so well with the edit that I did. And someone did a remix of that remix with Bruno Mars.

• 39:04Speaker 04

  I was like, okay, this is the remix of a remix of a remix, so I'm gonna use it.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  There's a lot of mashups going on. It's like a mashup of a mashup of a mashup. And you have this hyperlapse thing, which is already sort of a mashup of time lapse.

• 39:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  And then you add these AI components. It's like all these things coming together, which I just love. It's perfect.

• 39:27Speaker 04

  Like, to me, it kind of felt like it was poetic somehow. Because it was showcasing Montreal in such a beautiful way. And the music was just fitting perfectly. So then I was able to actually post the video.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Time to unveil the groundbreaking HyperLapse XAI to the world. Malik uploaded the video to Instagram.

• 39:55Speaker 04

  I was really hyper aware of the numbers. Like, how many shares did I get in how much time? How many likes, how many comments? I really had some benchmarks to hit in like 10 minutes, then half an hour, then one hour. And I knew that if I hit this amount of like in 10 minutes, it's good. And if it keeps for half an hour, it's great. And if I hit this amount of likes and views for an hour, I knew it was just going to be viral.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  For the next hour, Malik was glued to his phone as the numbers started trickling in.

• 40:32Speaker 04

  I hit every single one of these benchmarks within the hour, so I knew that it was going to be a viral video.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  When other video creators saw HyperLapse XAI, it exploded. Now you can find this style of video all over the internet, made by people who were inspired by Malik and Manuel's innovative technique and wanted to see what they could do with AI.

• 41:05Speaker 04

  I can confidently say that this is the only thing that, that the only trend that my friend and I are responsible for, the HyperLapse XAI. Before that, nobody ever did that before. And after that, it went absolutely viral.

• 41:23Speaker 04

  I saw like thousands of versions of that same techniques.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  I started this whole AI project because of my friend and the many creators like him, who are worried about the impacts that AI will have on human creativity. And then we posed the question, what if the future is still being written? And what if we have agency in creating the world that we want to live in?

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Malik's story shows how AI can not only amplify creativity, but how it can lead to breakthrough ideas like HyperLapse XAI. And perhaps there's something to learn here, whether you're an artist, a technologist, or a business leader, or somewhere in between. Maybe if we bring the right humans into the loop, lean into failure, and then find a way forward and go all in on it. More breakthrough visionaries will create what's never been possible before.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  Read one final question. While the future is still being written, we can imagine scenarios where it all breaks humanity's way. AI transforms the world for the better, impacting some of humanity's biggest concerns, like climate change, healthcare, and education, to name a few. There are some other less amazing scenarios we can imagine as well. Scenarios where humanity isn't amplified but deemed unnecessary, whether in the arts, the job market, or in the wildest sci-fi scenarios, existence. So my question is, why should we be all in on AI?

• 43:20Reid Hoffman?

  So I'll answer this in two or three ways. One is, technology is more or less inevitable in human context. Human beings, I don't understand human beings, except that we divide into groups and we compete and conflict with each other. And part of that conflict is like a different theory of the world, different theory of humanity. And so Group One goes, oh, AI can be totally terrible and can build Terminator robots. And Group Two says, we don't believe that Terminator robots are actually uncontrollable, Terminator robots are really realistic, and so we're gonna build them anyway. And Group Three says, Terminator robots are really good and we can control them. And Group Four says... And so it's like, that's what happens. And so the whole theory of, we can all kind of agree, I mean, how we can't agree on climate

• 44:05Reid Hoffman?

  change, right? Let alone this kind of stuff. So human beings will naturally kind of go this way. And so that's part of the reason why I think the all-in or the approach to technology is to say, look, we know we're coming, so we gotta shape it. And by the way, if you go, well, we're gonna go really slow in shaping it, it's like, well, then the people who are not gonna go really slow are the ones that are gonna create it, that are gonna define our future existence and future humanity. So, slow is almost like a guaranteed losing strategy relative to future humanity, so intrinsically just slowing down is not good. Second thing is, you know, since we kind of said sci-fi as part of it, generally, in the industry, it's described as existential risk, X risk.

• 44:46Reid Hoffman?

  The general argument goes something like this, which is, can you guarantee me we're not gonna have Terminators? They're gonna wipe out humanity for reason X, Y, or Z.

• 44:57Reid Hoffman?

  And you go, well, I can't guarantee that. And they go, aha, that's the proof that we should have nothing to do with this. And you're like, well, um, look, I agree that AI, robotics, et cetera, increments this particular existential risk. There's no getting around it. It goes from nothing was there before, because there were no ability to do these kinds of robots to something above that. But then you go, look, the weirdly way you should look at existential risk is as a portfolio. Like, killer robots are not the only way humanity can end. There's lots of ways humanity can end. Pandemics, that's why humanity can end. Nuclear war, asteroids, tons and tons

• 45:37Reid Hoffman?

  of things. And you go, okay, so if you just add in AI as it is to this, even if we were just driving down the road and we're just building it and we weren't being overly attentive and so forth, I think there's a very good argument. It's a net positive on the portfolio of existential risk, because you go, well, the only way I can really think to fix pandemic, both natural and man-made, is AI. And if you think about like, well, okay, can we be identifying asteroid risk and what to do? Can we be inventing the technology to mitigate climate risk? And you go through all these things and you go, oh, AI could be really positive here. AI could be really positive. AI is certainly very positive here, you know, etc., etc. And so the overall portfolio becomes a lot

• 46:19Reid Hoffman?

  better, even without intelligent navigation. Now, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to not drive intelligently, and so increase the likelihood that it's very humanity positive and decrease, you know, humanity negative. Now, maybe to, to kind of, you know, be a little less abstract to be helpful to people, like, let's take visual creation. You go, well, what used to be really important is I had very fine hand-eye motor control for painting or something. And now, you know, hey, I can go to Dolly and I can make something and it's pretty amazing and it doesn't

• 47:00Reid Hoffman?

  require that motor skill. So we go, well, that motor skill is now less economically valuable. Yes, right? Looms, weaverings, etc.

• 47:12Reid Hoffman?

  However, visual thinking is still super important. For example, I know some of the artists who do this stuff, like some like great, you know, architects go, okay, I'm about to go pitch a client. Give me 30 versions in the style of myself. And I kind of go, okay, these three look really good. And we'll modify them a little bit and we'll take those. Right. And it's like, well, that's human creativity and that kind of judgment and editing. So your visual thinking still, your judgment, your ability. And now you can go a lot faster because you're not constrained by what the production of that hand motor thing is. And yes, it changes the landscape. And the person who said, I spent 20 years perfecting my drawing skills. And it's like, yeah, but that's part of progress and change.

• 47:57Reid Hoffman?

  And the good news with AI is we go, well, we're trying to, to help group of people X learn this new thing. Well, AI can help them learn that new thing.

• 48:13Reid Hoffman?

  You know, what I see is a line of sight to a, a medical assistant on every smartphone that's better than your average doctor, that's available 24/7, a tutor on every subject for every age on every smartphone. The elevation of the human condition for that is a, is huge. And that's an instance of where AI can be massively beneficial to humanity. And that's line of sight, like that one, I can guarantee it's only us preventing it that causes it not to happen.

• 48:55Reid Hoffman?

  And so that's part of the reason why I'm, you know, all in optimistic.

• 49:19Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for listening to this first episode of Artful Intelligence. We hope you enjoyed it. Next week, we'll have another brand new episode where we tackle the question, "When the future looks grim, how can you change it?"

• 49:33Speaker 05

  I was just being bullied a lot when I would talk about AI, like death threats. I want people to be at peace more than anything. I want people to feel confident in their choices and who they are, because that in essence is going to make the world better.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Artful Intelligence is produced by me, Chris McLeod. Massive thanks to Reid Hoffman. If you're on Instagram, I highly recommend you follow Malik at Malik.FR. Find the link in the show notes. Special thanks to Aria Finger, Sean Young, Saida Sapiyeva, Ben Relis, Ian Alice, Parth Patil, Jack LaFortun, and the team at Wonder Media Network. Mixing and mastering by John Delore. This has been a Blue Elevator production.