The film director winning awards with AI | Ben Hansford

Commercial director, AI filmmaker, and USC professor Ben Hansford joins Reid Hoffman and Parth Patil to explain how AI is reshaping Hollywood, film production, VFX, and comics. Ben has been experimenting with generative AI since before DALL-E and Midjourney went mainstream, using the earliest tools to sharpen commercial treatments, win jobs, and teach one of the country's first AI film courses. He traces Hollywood's arc from student protests and industry resistance to a scramble for answers, as shrinking budgets and shifting audiences push creators toward new workflows. He also recounts how a 30-minute AI VFX test reset his sense of what a director can prototype, and why he's building BloqBloq around a stark creative bottleneck: as he puts it, there are more NBA players than professional comic book illustrators. He maps the "iceberg" of creation, from databases and security to publishing and iteration, and explains why turning an idea into a finished product takes more than a prompt. For Ben, AI isn't just a tool. It's a crew. For more info on the podcast and transcripts of all the episodes, visit https://www.possible.fm/podcast/

• 0:00Speaker 00

  AI as a crew, AI as a team, AI as the Navy SEALs. You can give it a mission and whether or not you love the results, it is going to accomplish it. I always think about like, you know, Jack Nicholson technically is a tool of Stanley Kubrick. Jack's gonna do what Jack's gonna do.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  Right? And Stanley can nudge it and he can say some things, but when he calls action, Jack's gonna jack. I've never seen anything shift as quick as people's opinions on AI. There was a phase about a year ago where I felt like everyone needed help and now they don't need help anymore. They need answers. We are actively watching budgets decline and distribution become more complicated. And Gen Z and Gen Alpha are just, you know, they're floating away from sort of modern studios. AI is their answer and they know it. They just, they now have to kind of bring it all together. The shift has gone from like, we hate you to please help us.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  The Token Grantee Program gives a thousand dollars a week in tokens to high potential creators already deep in AI across film, gaming, comics, print and digital art. There are no tool restrictions. The freedom to choose is the point. Grantees also get access to my own custom fleet of agents and an ongoing collaboration with me. The goal? To close the gap between an idea and the world.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  Ben, welcome. And Parth, why don't you introduce Ben? Selecting him, how do you met? That kind of thing.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Ben and I met, I think, three, three years ago now, maybe, maybe four. But Ben and I met in LA. He, he, he hit me up through a shared Slack channel we're in with a bunch of guys from, actually traditional Hollywood, more, more traditional Hollywood guys. And Ben was the first person I met in traditional film and entertainment that was experimenting with AI. At a time when almost no one was experimenting with AI in Los Angeles, right? It was like, I was like, oh my God, I can have a conversation with one person. Like, I don't have to go to San Francisco for this. And, and Ben would come over to, to my place and just hang out in the lounge and we would just hack. I would, I would show him the latest agents and then he was playing with image and video models back then, when they barely worked.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  And yeah, and, and, and so, yeah, this is, this is Ben. He's a professor at USC and teaches film. And also just very deep in the latest in AI, from coding agents to image and video and what it means for entertainment pipelines.

• 2:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and full disclosure, Reed, I owe this to Parth. Like I owe literally, cause he's right. Like at this time, it's a, we're pre-Dolly, we're pre-mid journey. Like all you're doing is, you know, you're on GitHub, I burned one GPU, I got, you know, I, I killed one computer with a virus. Like it was the wild, wild west. And I started reaching out to some friends because I was like, this is the future. This is absolutely the future. Most of them disagreed. I was even, I was even at FMX in Germany and they told me I was crazy. And then a mutual friend of mine in Parth's was like, you've got to meet Parth. He, he is the holder of the keys. And then I went and met, I went and met with Parth. And I think my joke is that, you know, when Neo meets Morpheus and he gets red pilled. I, I met Parth and I was red pilled from there on.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  It could be red pilled or, or given you were going Keymaster, we could even go back to Ghostbusters, right?

• 3:08Speaker 00

  Oh, let's go Ghostbusters.

• 3:11Speaker 01

  For, for, for those people who've seen the original, I might be dating myself. So say a little bit about kind of, in addition to meeting Parth, how did your early AI experiments start? Like what, what, what, what was the kind of like the, oh, like this is the future. I gotta start, even though everything's broken right now.

• 3:32Speaker 00

  So I actually, I get a really lucky break, which is I'm a commercial director. So, you know, my, I make my bread and butter directing commercials. And so my, my world has always been very visual. In fact, I can, I can date it all the way back to like, I was the neighborhood dungeon master. So, so I start telling stories as a kid and everything is visual for me. And then I become a commercial director. But probably about four and a half years ago, I start playing with generative AI. And I get this immediate bump. I get this immediate superpower, which is I start winning more and more commercial jobs with it. So I'm starting to do treatments, you know, and even just like being able to do better image manipulation, being able to do like really like gorgeous style frames

• 4:16Speaker 00

  that no one knows where they came from. I start winning more and more commercial jobs. And at the time I'm teaching directing at USC. And I start, I start bringing in like, I, I literally, one of the students would always blow like a fake DJ Khalid air horn. He'd be like, and the whole class would yell, new tech? And each week I would show them a new AI tool and they're all rough. They're all just raw. You know, we're running, I'm running a Chrome remote off my desktop. But then what starts to happen is as I'm showing the students these things, my students start to win all of USC's sort of internal awards. So they win like the Coca-Cola refreshing filmmaker award and the Heineken award.

• 5:00Speaker 00

  Cause their treatments are getting better. And then at the time, the head of the directing track just steps in and is like, what the hell is all this AI stuff? And I'm like, it is the future. And then, you know, met with the dean. And so as far as I know, USC has the oldest AI program in America. And what I can release now is that it's even a year older than USC thinks it is. Because I started, you know, I started teaching AI to students almost four and a half years ago.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  You've seen the arc of the technology, at least in, in Los Angeles, was definitely like the, the, the first wave, the second wave, we talk about this. How would you say like the industry, the entertainment industry's attitude towards AI shifted in your time?

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Oh my God. Yeah. And, and like, you know, I'm, I was alive for the, for the internet era. But I can say without a shadow of doubt, I've never seen anything shift as quick as people's opinions on AI. I mean, we go from literally three and a half years ago, where basically where the writer's strike is, everyone hates it to today. Where, you know, I, I had a meeting at a studio two days ago and I realized I, I was leaving with this feeling of they know, you know, there was a phase about a year ago where I felt like everyone needed help. And now they don't need help anymore. They need answers. They, they, they, they are like, you know, we are actively watching budgets decline and distribution become, become more complicated.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  And, and Gen Z and Gen Alpha are just, you know, they're floating away from sort of a modern studios. And so AI is, is their answer and they know it. They just, they now have to kind of bring it all together. So yeah, so the, the shift has gone from like, um, we hate you to please help us, if that makes sense.

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Well, isn't it still kind of mixed in it? Like especially because the folks who are, you know, kind of older, you know, like, are like, ah, still and like there's, there's, there's, there's, there's like almost a convict, whereas the new folks realize this is just where it's moving to. So I might as, I, I, and I have this amazing superpower should it go. So how does that dialogue work currently?

• 7:13Speaker 00

  You nailed it, Reed. It's age. Like I used to joke, it's age, not stage. Because I, you know, I, like I'm watching, I work with both undergrad and grad students. And then as a director, you know, I'm working with like some of the greatest filmmaking professionals in the world. So like, you know, the world-class storyboard artists who have worked with everyone from, you know, Scorsese. I'm, I'm fortunate enough to be on both sides. And the 19-year-olds, Reed, they, they jump in, they have no bad habits. They have no like wiring, you know, flooring to undo. They just, they just jump in with both feet. Whereas I am seeing, you know, more seasoned professionals who've been at it for longer.

• 7:54Speaker 00

  It's not only resistance, it's like a, it's a disdain. Like they would rather spend the time arguing with you about how it doesn't work, right? You can come in and like, I, I can talk about it now. Like I want a can lion for a project that just has AI all over it. But I still get in arguments with people about how AI will never be, you know, sort of award-winning material. And it's a, but, but I can, I can just say from a personal and indisputable point that like, no, it absolutely is. But people will still spend more time arguing with you. And again, but students on the flip side, I, Reed, I was joking with Parth. I, I was presenting kind of like how to use green screen with AI, build VFX environments, those kind of things.

• 8:39Speaker 00

  And one of my students, he just goes, yo, Prof B, why do we need green screen? And I was suddenly like, Reed, I had that moment, you know, when your mom can't reset the microwave after a power outage? I felt like that. I was like, oh God, I'm about to be old. Like whatever he's gonna say, he's about to make me old. And he's like, why don't we just use depth mats and then turn them into LumaMats and then just keep people like that? And I was like, you are right and I am old. All right. Thank you.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  I see the same thing in programming, too. It's the experienced programmers tend to be the most resistant. And then the ones that are the most naive tend to be the ones that learn the most and have less institutional baggage that's holding them back, definitely.

• 9:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  What is something that you can finally make or do now that would have been impossible or too expensive a few years ago?

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, Parth, how long do we have? Is this a three hour? What is this director's cut?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Well, we'll make sure we have enough time for this.

• 9:39Speaker 00

  I mean, this is, um, so I'll start, you know, again, I tend to approach everything either as a director or a dungeon master. So the director in me, I now have made, again, award winning spots. We had a spot that aired during the Sugar Bowl. Like, I'm using AI in commercials now, which I could not have done a year ago. Like, I do think like the sort of, you know, the accretion of visual quality is finally at a point that we can use it on air. It can show up on your big screen TV. It can, you know, it can run during a bowl game. So I'm really excited about that space. And then, you know, on the personal space, thanks to you.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  I have finally been able to, Reid, I'm a part of, like a subset of being a dungeon master is you also have to be a comic book nerd. That's like my, yeah, so that comes with.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  By the way, I was also a dungeon master and also a comic book nerd. So totally get it.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. All right. So you'll absolutely love this. So this is something that came from talking to Parth for a while was like, I've always been a huge comic book nerd and, you know, this is, this part is fact. There are more players in the NBA than there are comic book illustrators. So when you think about it, there's less than 500 professional comic book illustrators, people who can go and finish a book for you. And that's assuming you have the time, the money, the resources to even get involved with them. So one of the things I'd always dreamt of was like, you know, essentially like comic book creation for the masses. Right? Kind of beyond AI, like actual, not only to be, and so, you know, if you imagine like, it's called Block Block. And it is TikTok for comic books.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  So imagine a place to sort of, you know, develop, create, share and explore comic books online in a super safe space. And, you know, see above, there's only 500 comic book illustrators or fewer. So you know that, you know, given that every human being you meet has a story, let's say we've got at least a billion storytellers and 500 people who can draw it. We need AI tools to help here. And so what I did was I integrated all these, you know, fantastic, you know, front end comic book tools with AI. And so, you know, what Block Block allows people to do is you go in, you create your comics, you can lay out your word balloons, you can, you know, you can change the size of the neck, you can curve the neck, you can, you know, we've got the big sound design, like,

• 12:03Speaker 00

  it's the ability for you to create comic books in an instant. And then it's also the platform for you to share them on. And so, you know, for me, I mean, Parth, like, what couldn't I do a year ago? Is all of it a good answer? Like, I mean, it's everything, right? It's, it's, it's everything from like the front end to being able to finally develop my own, you know, app that runs both on Android and iOS. It's, it's the database system. It's, it's the security system. It's, you know, being able to, like even invites and CloudFlare and just, I can't tell you how mind blowing it is. Reid, and I apologize, Parth, I feel like I'm saying everything to you that you've already heard.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. I love hearing it, man.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  This is what we're doing this for.

• 12:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Okay, cool. I, yeah, so Reid, I, you know, for me, what I'm realizing too, it's like, as I go through and I'm developing all of this. By the way, thanks to y'all. Now, you know, now that I've got my file tokens, I can send everything to friends and let them go wild. What I began to realize too was, you know, there's this iceberg of creation, right? Which is, you know, then we think about the iceberg analogy, there's like 10% that's above water. But in reality, what's really going to sink your ship is the 90% that's below water. Right? And so it's one thing to develop, I think we've all like vibe coded a, an AI powered to do app at some point in our life, like that's our, that's our modern hello world.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  So we've all, we've all done that, but then it kind of stops there and you never really get to realize like, oh, what you didn't do is tie that into a database system. What you didn't do is tie that into GitHub publishing. What you didn't do is build a CloudFlare system that keeps it secure. What you didn't like, and so you begin to realize like the depth of the work you have to do becomes so much greater. And now all along the way, you know, I have, I have Claude writing and Codex checking what Claude is writing right now. And sometimes I'll flip that just to, you know, spice up life. But I, I just think like even the ability to think this way didn't exist before. Right? For me to, to explore deep enough to learn what I don't know didn't exist before.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  And so I just think this, this, this growth journey has been insane, but it, it is only now that I could do this.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  So one of the things that Parth mentioned to me, only by this phrase, so I'm going to ask, talking raccoon?

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Oh, sure.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  That's my code name. That's our safe word.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Okay, now I understand.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, man, I mean, so the talking raccoon was, I guess I can't name the client yet because I haven't won the job. But there was a, there was a project that had a talking raccoon in it. And, you know, they were, we were just chatting about how difficult it would be in these VFX teams that would come in. And then what do you use for facial motion capture? You know, are you using Markless motion capture? Are you, you know, like, what are the different systems? And then do you want to use Maya? Do we want to do hair in Maya? Do you want to do spleens? Like, it was just all these stories. And then suddenly I had this moment of like, well, wait, I wonder if this just works in AI.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  And then the reason I, I think this is such an important story is we're now at a spot where you just go and test it. We no longer have to, you know, sit in a big boardroom or on a bunch of Zoom calls discussing like, do we think the raccoon can talk? Do we think that this, can we do, I literally, Reid, I just acted out the part of the raccoon. And, and then, you know, piped it through, like there's a great thing called Live Portrait in ComfyUAI. And so now, and then within 30 minutes, I went from, does this work? To I have this gorgeous talking raccoon who's me saying everything I want him to say. And then I used Move AI, so he's acting like I act in the wide shots. Like, Reid, this ability

• 16:04Speaker 00

  for us to bypass all of that and get straight to creation, right? That we are, we're moving on to this. And again, like democratization is even too lighter term to me. Like, we're, we're beyond democratization. We're the, this facilitation, this speed at which we can move and test and iterate and explore. And, and know within a half hour, not only does this work or not work, it's like, I went from, does this work to this is amazing. And then I think maybe part of, part of what you were also implying is like, I then read, I was like, why aren't I doing

• 16:40Speaker 00

  a talking raccoon show? Where's my, where's my, you know, we bear bears of, of live action talking animals in the woods? Like, you, this is how we think now. It's insane.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  And it almost feels like, I mean, specifically like the motion, the new kind of motion capture. I mean, I think Gen AI feels like the new kind of VFX, but there's also this like new kinds, new kinds of mocap with like Luma and all these like facial acting. It almost feels like the Andy Serkis is now, anyone can take an Andy Serkis kind of approach to create a character creation.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  That's, that's.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  My precious.

• 17:17Speaker 00

  Although I might even, Parth, I might even double down and say like, Andy Serkis is more valuable now than ever.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:25Speaker 00

  Right? The, the person who understands the medium, I've had good fortune to work with people like T-Pain. And we, we did some music videos together. And one of the things he mentioned was like, he had to learn to sing poorly. So that auto tune would transform him into that perfect T-Pain voice.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  And to me, that's also what Andy Serkis is doing, right? It's sort of learning the sort of values and limitations and accentuations of the system. Understanding these sliders in live portraits so that you can, so that he can adjust his performance to be perfect for the medium.

• 17:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Um, right, like in, for example, bring it back to Talking Raccoon as I'm, maybe that's the whole episode title here. Ben Hansford, Talking Raccoon. Um, is that they had, you know, they have these beady little eyes. So I really had to go huge with the eyebrows. Like you, your performance has to get bigger and your head has to move more, to sell more. Like, I, I think the, if, if you're a budding actor, learning to perform in these mediums is going to be like actors of old, learning the difference between a close up in film and a wide shot in film. Between being on stage and, you know, and being in front of the camera. Like, i- if you can develop those habits, cause now Parth, you can be anyone, anywhere.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Like I did, you remember when I, when I showed you the, the, um, I'll call it the space film for privacy reasons. Uh, uh, Reed, there's a, a project I'm developing and it was all an animated, uh, deep space film. And I play all the characters, you know, and it's a, it's always my face doing the work. I'm transforming my voice in Eleven Labs. Like the, the, whoever's gonna take over those roles in our troupe, in the, you know, in the Parth, Reed, Ben troupe. That is, it's gonna be like Shakespeare troops of old, like people being able to play lots of roles. Develop more, develop faster, like create what you wanna create, when you wanna create it. Like it's pretty dreamy.

• 19:25Speaker 02

  Man, it is surreal to see, man. I feel the same way, even the small experiments that I'm doing with Reed when we're like trying to, you know. We're working on some comic books too, you know, we're, we're messing around, yeah, yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 19:38Speaker 00

  I'm gonna send you an invite to Block Block. And both of y'all.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Excellent.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Uh, what is one thing that you think filmmakers should be learning right now that isn't taught in film school?

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Obviously, it starts with the letters A I. I, I, I hate coming back to A I like this, I really do. I just can't, I can't imagine people proceeding without it. And like, if, if y'all don't mind, like a long answer getting longer, I'm watching what's happening with like, uh, Backrooms and Obsession.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Which are just both phenomenal. But underpinning both those stories is they were both made at relatively shoestring budgets. So, developing filmmakers are going to have to do more. It is probably gonna have to show up on other platforms. It is gonna come in different formats and they're gonna have to do it for less. I hear everyone hating on A I right now. Everyone's like, A I's killing us, A I's taking away jobs. It's, which is, uh, can we swear on this show? I can't, I don't know. Okay, cool. It's bullshit. It's not A I. Your budgets have been going down for two and a half years. I'm, I'm a director, I've been watching our budgets constantly get shrunk. So now what's happening is in a world where you have to do the same, but with less. You have to find tools to supercharge yourself.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  And, um, in fact, I might even take a step back and, uh, Reed, I was telling Parth, like, I, I know everyone keeps calling A I a tool. Everyone's like, well, it's just a tool, it's just a, it's not a tool. Like, um, my hammer's a tool, my saw's a tool, my paintbrush is a tool. But I, I can't put my, I can't go to bed and put my hammer down and say, build me a bird box while I sleep. Right? And wake up in the morning and see a bird box. But I can, I can go to bed and tell Claude, like, hey, redesign the front end of Block Block to be more like this for anyone who's doing desktop development. And Claude, you check whatever, uh, sorry, Codex, you check whatever Claude posted to the GitHub. I, I can't tell my hammer to do that.

• 21:34Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 21:34Speaker 00

  A I has autonomy. A I can build momentum. A I, like, A I is, uh, again, coming back to everything being film crew or, uh, being director or dungeon master. A I is a crew. A I is a team, A I is the Navy SEALs. It, it, you can give it a mission and whether or not you love the results, it is going to accomplish it. Like I, I always think about like, you know, um, Jack Nicholson technically is a tool of Stanley Kubrick's. Right? In the, in The Shining, he's technically a tool, but Jack's gonna do what Jack's gonna do.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Right? And, and Stanley can nudge it and he can say some things, but when he calls action, Jack's gonna jack. And I, I think the same thing is happening with A I and I, I think people are, I don't know why people keep trying to undersell it. But to me, that's, that's why, even when you ask like, what do I think filmmakers need? They have to evolve these tools. You have to like, I mean, even, oh, I'm sorry, I'm going on, but, um.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  No, but like Jack, it's, you can handle the truth. You just need to.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Exactly. And, and that's, but getting people to their read is like.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's a, uh, yeah.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  So when people panic about A I and creativity, what's the thing you wish you understood? And, and Parth mentioned something about a student protester.

• 22:55Speaker 00

  I'll start with the protester story and I think that'll kind of answer the whole thing, which is like, one of the times, I, I've had a protester almost every semester. Which I love, by the way, they're all nineteen, they should, they should, you know, they should be yelling, fuck the man. Um, so I like it. So a protester showed up at class and he was like, uh, he literally told me, very sweet. He was like, I'm here to protest your class. And I told him, I was like, you know, class is about to begin, I was like, this is fantastic, will you do me a favor? Will you sit in on the class? Uh, we're gonna be watching a bunch of students work and then let's, let's chat after class. So he sat in on the class, uh, it was kind of lucky for both of us. It was one of the days we were doing, uh, project presentation.

• 23:37Speaker 00

  And he got to watch how every student, even though they were all using the same tool, had a, had a project that was so definitively them. Like one student had taken a voice recording that he carried, uh, from his dead grandmother. Uh, she was in China, it was one of the last messages she left him about how he was an accident. Uh, and his mom had to go back to, I mean, it's just, I, uh, I'll get goosebumps and start crying talking about it. He took that and reenacted the whole story with A I with his dead grandmother as the voiceover. We had another, you know, you, we had all these students using the same exact tool. And every project was so definitively personal.

• 24:20Speaker 00

  It was so definitively them, like, not only did none of them look the same, but none of them shared the same anything. And so afterwards, it was really sweet, like the protester waited for all the students to filter out, you know, and we're saying goodbye, dapping each other up. And, uh, he came up and he's like, I have to tell you, I'm really impressed with what the students are doing. And I was like, you know, thank you so much, that, that, that means a lot, they're incredible students. He goes, I still don't like what you're doing though. And I was like, right, no. I was like, yeah, I mean, yeah, fuck the man, fuck, fuck the man. But, but I think that's the point, that's what people don't understand is they're, they're so busy yelling into the void.

• 25:03Speaker 00

  They're not watching what filmmakers are actually doing with it. Or maybe even at times I, I don't think they see what, how personal filmmakers are, are, what sort of personal project filmmakers are making with this stuff. And I, I think that, that's to me a huge regret. I wish people, more people saw it.

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Ben, I think you have a question for Reed.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Or maybe Parth, who knows?

• 25:26Speaker 00

  Or me. Yeah. I, I have lots for both of y'all. Um, I will, I'll start, I'll start here, Reed, if you don't mind. I mean, I, God, and this goes back to me, uh, fanning out earlier in our call over you. You, you are, you are to me like one of the great blue flame thinkers, uh, of our time. And I think that span, if you don't mind, and you can edit this out, I think that spans well beyond technology. I think the way you are interacting with the world, the way you are engaging with politics, the way you are engaging with world leaders, the way, the way you, uh, comport yourself, the way you operate in the world, the, the, I just think you're top of the tops. You're one of the greatest. Uh, apologies for the compliment.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  I, I would love, you know, so again, kind of bringing it back, like, I do think. Moving forward, we do have to have a framework. We AI needs a framework because otherwise we're gonna keep, we're gonna stay in this realm of like, the people who are angry are gonna get angrier. And the people who are passionate about it are gonna get more passionate about it. And I'm, you know, to coin it, to steal someone else's phrase, I worry about our discourse getting more coarse. That's Scott Galloway, Prof G.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yep.

• 26:42Speaker 00

  I worry about our discourse getting more coarse. Given that you've literally met with world leaders, given that you see this from the top of the mountain, do you have ideas on like what framework we should adapt with AI for the betterment of humanity? I know it's big.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  It's huge. There's a couple of quick things, I think. One, people have to experience the benefit. Like part of what shifts the discourse is they go, hey, I get it. It's at least in these things, good for me. It's a little bit like your protester is like, well, what the students are doing is cool. I don't know if I like you teaching the AI to them, but what the student is doing is cool. And it's like seeing some of the benefit. And the way that, you know, like in government leaders, it's like make a medical assistant available to everyone who has a smartphone or has access to a smartphone. Because then, you know, the level of human elevation, make a legal assistant. You know, most people, you know, don't know how to read the rental contracts or other kinds of things.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  And that kind of thing, education and tutoring. And also, obviously, you know, part of our dialogue today, human expression. So I think that's one. I think two is to, and this one's a little bit more murky, but one of the things that I've been trying to do, super agency, other things, is to focus, you know, kind of the build on amplification intelligence. We're obviously gonna have a bunch of things that are replacements. By the way, that's progress. You know, I mean, you know, a lot of horses have gotten replaced with cars, you know, and so forth. And that actually, in fact, you know, it's progress and we want, but we want also other zones of enablement.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  So like, what are the things that are being created? How are the ways that were amplified in terms of doing it? And I think that's actually one of the things that's great about your class. Because it's like, look, this isn't, this isn't taking away your creativity. This is giving you entirely new universes, not palettes, not tools, but new universes of creativity. And once people kind of begin to understand that, I think that changes the discourse to, you know, kind of something much more nuanced and fine weaved and sensitive and not, and not coarse in that. And it's, it's one of the reasons why, like, for example, when, when, you know, when Parth and I and Ian and others

• 29:07Speaker 01

  were, were kind of saying, hey, how should we start expressing what changes in music? Because obviously, the music industry is fearful that you say, well, I don't need Taylor Swift. I'm just gonna order up my own Taylor Swift. And it's like, well, but there's a lot of other zones, like making quality Christmas music. Right? Which most Christmas music is terrible. So let's, let's make something that's at least listenable. Anyway, and then it's like, oh, that's cool. We got zero pushback from that because like, oh, that works. And that's part of, I think, changing the discourse.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Oh, I love that idea too. I love both of those, changing that discourse. And then also, the minute you said it, right, getting, getting people to experience it themselves. Like, that was what happened to me was just the fact that AI allowed me to start winning more directing jobs was what suddenly made me realize, oh, that's great. Super agency, we talk about it a lot. I have now found one thing I was not ready for, which is people can't really handle you when you can do more than one thing. You are one of those people who can do so many things and are building agents to do the things you can't. How, how do you express that to people? Does that make sense?

• 30:22Speaker 00

  Like, I've started to notice the minute I'm talking about, I'm a commercial director who's also making Block Lock, who's doing that, like, people start going, oh, this dude's out of his mind.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 00

  But you're, you're, you're capable of doing it. I've, I've chatted with you about some of the projects you have running all the time. How did you do it? What is, what is that communication secret that you have that made that possible?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  For what it's worth, I think a lot of people, when I interact with them, especially people that knew me before AI, think I have this new, some new form of psychosis. And I think it's a result of just like, no, it is. It's like the idea that you think, you feel like you can do anything. But then the, the reality is you can't do everything. So you still have to choose. You can do more than you could before. And so like, that's why we don't sleep as much. I had to get the Oura ring to balance that out. And now the agents check my sleep score before they talk to me in the morning. Because it's like, this isn't, this isn't that important. Maybe don't hit me up at 6:00 AM with like, I did this like, you know. So I think I'm starting to learn like the levels of management in the orchestration around me,

• 31:23Speaker 02

  where it's like, I need to focus on the few things that uniquely require my attention. And then training, training the like exocortex of agents around me to review their own work and come back to me when it only really is something that requires a human perspective. Because what I can't multiply is my attention, right?

• 31:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  And agents do a lot of work, but that means there's a lot of work to review. And so trying to figure out however much you can give them the ability to self review before they come to you. Like, I would rather watch the five minute episode. I'd rather read the, like, I'd rather read the graphic novel that I'm working on than spend all my time in the code layer, tuning every single prompt. It's like, like, the final artifact is easier for me to review than the intermediate steps. So I think playing defense for your own attention as agents and all this technology is a huge attention suck. So figuring out where your attention actually needs to go is probably the hardest thing. I don't think I've solved it, but I am, I am getting there. I'm getting there, getting to that place.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Well, unfortunately, in terms of where our attention needs to go, we will do this again because this is fucking amazing. But I think, you know, Ben, awesome. I think it's not just surfing the waves, but surfing the mind and surfing creativity. And Parth, always a pleasure.

• 32:44Speaker 00

  Oh, beautiful gentleman. Thank you all so much. Reid, a pleasure to meet you, Doctor.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  Thanks so much, Ben.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  Awesome. Thank you.