The artist using AI to sell brands | Joe Salvatore

Visual artist and brand content creator Joe Salvatore joins Reid Hoffman and Parth Patil to explain how AI is turning creative professionals into orchestrators of systems rather than makers of one piece at a time. Joe spent four years chasing every new image and video model out of pure creative curiosity before Parth pushed him to take a step back and become a director of these tools. He traces that shift, from generating a single image, to making 200, to running fully automated ad campaigns through Codex, and explains why the critical skill turned out not to be technical at all. As he puts it, he can outsource production, but he can't outsource his taste. He walks through a live campaign for Ketone-IQ, using a Hermes agent to research decades of proven advertising styles, then chaining models together to generate and grade hundreds of on-brand variations overnight. He and Parth get into how a shared creative agent learns from everyone it works with, why articulating an idea clearly has become the differentiator, and how AI made the gap between a sloppy brief and a tight one impossible to hide. Reid, Parth and Joe close on Wittgenstein, and why language no longer just describes the world but summons it. Referenced in episode: the Lord of the Rings x Wes Anderson AI trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrjL_TSOFrI

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I can outsource production, but I can't outsource my taste. Like, that has to come from the engineer or the creative professional. I'm actually learning now, how good of a director am I, actually? Because it's gonna be crap if I give it a half-hearted direction. It pulls me to something that you write about a lot. Limits in my language really are the limits of my world. Except now, language doesn't just describe the world, it kind of summons it.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  In creative, the model can generate any video, but everyone has a VFX team in their pocket with like image video models today. A lot of people are missing is like, not everyone has a storytelling skillset. They can create a story that actually someone wants to watch a second time. I feel that the writer's skillset is actually the most valuable thing that I was undervaluing. The Token Grantee Program gives $1,000 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.

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Joseph, awesome to have you here. Parth, tell us a little bit about Joseph. Like, how did you guys meet? Why did you select him for the kind of token program, etc.?

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Joseph, I met Joe about a year, a little, maybe like almost a year and a half ago now. We met at this creator studio that we work out of here in Venice, in LA. We work out of a place called The Lighthouse.

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Oh, I think I've been to that one.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. You've been there, yeah. So Joe and I work out of The Lighthouse. And he's one of the regulars, definitely. Like, you know, you go in, it's like, I see Joe. But when I first met Joe, at the time, I felt like I was maybe one of the few AI creators. And in a sense, like, definitely the first vibe coder at The Lighthouse, like, one of the few. And then I met Joe, and I realized Joe was deep in the, you know, his background is more in digital, in visual art, visual storytelling, and like, more like, brand-related, like, asset creation. And so Joe was very deep in the image and video model space. And, you know, you can tell because you ask someone, what's your favorite model? Why? What are your favorite workflows?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  How does it, how does it fit into like, the way we think about these new formats? And Joe would be the one that I would go to with my questions about the current state of image and video and what the, what the third-order implications are. You know, it's one thing to generate one thing, one picture, but for it to fit a more cohesive kind of brand thesis. So I've learned a lot from Joe over the last year and a half. And I also introduce, he's one of those people that's like, well, what if, what if I give him an agent? You know, what might happen to someone who's not an engineer at all? But like, when you give them coding agents, when you give them these types of systems, can we turn it into, what are we gonna, what will be learned? So that's, that's kind of like the story behind me and, me and Joe.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  But, what would you say, Joe?

• 3:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. Like, I had been experimenting with the tools for probably four years. I mean, I, I saw a group of filmmakers in like 2021. They made a really cool AI trailer that was, it was basically a mashup between The Lord of the Rings and Wes Anderson. And I saw it, and I was like, that's just really cool. I want to understand how to do that and just kind of have that creative weapon available to me. So from that point, I was just digging in and learning the tools and like, playing that game of trying to keep up with all the releases. And then when I met Parth, you kind of opened me up to the, the agent side of like, hey, why don't you try to take a step back and be an orchestrator of these things?

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Rather than staying so in the weeds of making one piece at a time? Which is, was like a really important shift for me. And I mean, you know, Reid, I know you talk about augmented intelligence versus artificial. Like, that's exactly what I've been personally experiencing. It's like I'm tapping into areas of my thought process that I actually didn't really know was, was accessible to me before these tools. So it's just stepping out larger picture for me, has been kind of the story.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  So what was the, what was the first thing? You saw the movie. What was the first thing you started diving into, like, in your kind of AI journey?

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, image generation. I would say mid-journey. The creative tool was the earliest thing, just, just throwing things out there. It was purely creative curiosity. There was no other reason for me to be using it other than that. And, you know, as I dug into that, I wanted to know the other tools that were coming out. I wanted to tap into the video capabilities. So it kind of just, it was a sandbox for me. And now it's to the point where I can functionally apply it to my career, which is, you know, I, I make content for brands.

• 4:57Speaker 00

  So now I'm at the point where that's evolved to, I am running automated, static ad creation through Codex. Thank you, Parth.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  But yeah, that was the start. It was, image generation was the start.

• 5:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:11Speaker 00

  It was very much, like I said, just keeping up with all the tools. What do these image models do? What do these video models do? And it's really only been recent where I've been able to, to say, okay, the real skillset here is my articulation of my creative ideas. And I'm actually learning now, how good of a director am I, actually? Because it's gonna be crap if I give it a, you know, a half-hearted direction. You know, I think it built out, it really did build out from, how do I prompt for a specific image that I want? And how do I control the image? And then how do I make a group of images? And then it went into, okay, how do I make 200?

• 5:55Speaker 00

  So, you know, being able to set those structures of, here is the creative process that Codex needs to go through. It's a brief, it is a, we're extracting all the different pieces of the brand, important elements. So it's kind of like, it feels like it was building a house for me. Like, the bottom floor was, just do one, and then do two, and then expand from there. So, I don't know if that answers the question, but it was a gradual process for me.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you feel a lot, I guess, like, starting off and like generating one image, but then moving towards creating systems that are cohesive or like a consistent kind of aesthetic, a consistent universe, is kind of like where you've kind of moved towards. Is that the kind of director approach? Is like having a broader vision across the set of generations?

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I think so. And, and, you know, to even answer that question deeper of like, okay, how do you get to the automations? I think there are really good tools available to see what that workflow behind the scenes looks like. Like node-based workflows, like Figma, Weavey. I think that is the foot in the door for a lot of creative people, marketers in general, to understand like, okay, if I can see that this node goes here, this node goes here, and I end up with 50 different images coming from one input, if I do that node-based workflow enough, then I can say, okay, wait a second. I don't even really need the node-based workflow anymore.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  I can just do that in, in Codex, or Claude, or Perplexity, because now I understand, in my brain, I see the path there, and I know what it is supposed to look like, and the, the, the points it needs to hit on the way to my output.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Right, and this is like chaining multiple models together and multiple like feedback rounds together. So it's more like the final output has a bunch of intermediary steps. It's not just one prompt or one generation. It's like a orchestration of this, many of these different models, right?

• 7:59Speaker 00

  100%.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  And in terms of being a director, a conductor, what are some of the kind of skills and insights that you've, you've gleaned, that you would kind of give as, you know, prompts, deliberate, pun somewhat deliberately intended, to other people who would start this journey?

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Well, I think, like, macro level, the constraint in prompting, I guess, produces better results. The more room you give it, the more frustrated you're probably going to get down the road. You know, for someone building it from, from the ground up on their own, I would say, lay out specifically what comprises of a good image for you. And that's the, that's the base level starting point. I don't know if that answers your question, Reid.

• 8:43Speaker 02

  Well, it's a beginning. It's a, it's, it's the first part of the prompt. It's also kind of like, like, you know, for example, when I'm answering it, but I'm curious, very curious about your answers, I go, well... Part of the thing is to think about like, these AIs are kind of good role takers. So prompt it to a role. Like say, you know, like when I was writing Super Agency, it was like, okay. You know, be a deep historian of technology. What and what I'm saying is right and wrong. What would you elaborate or argue against it? You know, like that kind of thing as a way of kind of elucidating better, kind of deeper points. But you're kind of artist, you know, kind of, you know, starting as a creator, as an artist and a creator

• 9:27Speaker 02

  more than a, than a coder. You know, this kind of conducting and, and, and directing and orchestration, I think is exactly right. But it's kind of like, how do we get people into that mindset? That's the reason why I was, you know, kind of, you know, prompting you on this.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  Yes, yes. No, it's, it's, it's funny. You mentioned it. I, I forget about those steps of the process sometimes and it's become intuitive. But yes, anytime that I'm going to go and build an image set, you know, if I wanted to make headshots, like you are an, an expert editorial photographer in the style, inspired by the style of Platon, like famous magazine photographer. And then, yeah, it's basically, I, I think what, what we probably call that is meta prompting, right? Like giving it high level directives, what to do, what not to do. Creating context for it, you know, if there's a product, creating context for that product. So it really is, in a sense, just a creative brief document, whether it's making imagery

• 10:30Speaker 00

  or writing a book. I think that high level direction of here's who you are. This is what you must do. This is what you can't do. That like, is the right term latency? That decreases the latency of the, the potential spread of information it's going to give you. So we're just compacting with that creative brief. The, the more specific we can get with our language upfront, then everything else is downstream after that.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  One of my favorite things about working with Joe is that he exists in this creative space, in a creative headspace, in a creative domain. And most of, before I met Joe, most of my work and exploration has been in the objective spaces. Like you tell it to, you tell AI to build an app and it's like, okay, does the app run? Okay, it's pretty obvious if it succeeds or fails. Did it build the feature right? You can, there's, it's like a very, it's like a yes or no. But that's not the case in creative work. It's not, it's not like one thing is better than another. It's, it's subjective. It's not, it's a, it requires someone who's seen many things to know what good looks like. And it's like, that's, this is something that I, I wanted to unpack with you because I work with agents and a lot of times I can just bark at them and be like, oh, this doesn't work or go fix it.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  But it's different in creative, right? Because why something works or doesn't work is unique to the person who's, who's creating it. So what would you say is counterintuitive about working with agents, co-pilot type systems on creative work in subjective spaces where it's not obvious what good or bad is?

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think the agent has no idea, no idea if the work is actually good. Like, like if it's making a picture or a static print ad, it's going to hand you the output and be like, this looks great with the same confidence of, you know, whether it nailed it or it produced slop. It's interesting to see that and, and realize that, okay, like I can outsource production, but I can't outsource my taste. So at least for now, like that has to come from the engineer or the creative professional or, you know, we have to intervene in that, that part of the process.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  And what would you say, I was like, like, I know a lot of people are talking about taste, but what would you say is how, how you develop taste? Like what, like what, how does someone develop taste?

• 12:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I, I think it's, it's really just like creative repetitions. It, it, like the pre-production process for me has become more important. Looking at Cosmos, different designers, looking at magazines, looking at old print ads. You know, looking at Pinterest, like getting a clear idea and cohesive theme in my, my inspiration, being able to communicate that so that that's the output I'm getting. So it really, it's making me go through my, the already existing production process just even more precisely.

• 13:22Speaker 02

  So Joseph, you've worked with all of these tools, you know, leading edge, Codex, Claude, Hermes. So walk us through, you know, a project of your choice where this, you know, kind of, you know, created an entirely new workflow and go into some of the details of it.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Right now I'm working, uh, working for a brand called Ketone IQ. It's a exogenous ketone beverage.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  I've tried it.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  Oh, really? What do you think?

• 13:51Speaker 02

  It's good. It's, it's a kind of a good like brain energy shot without sugar.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's it. I'm going to use that as an ad, Reid. Right now I have, I'm set up with Hermes agents and I use Codex for creative work or Claude. But for, through this scenario, let's say Codex. Hermes, and I haven't fully tapped into the capabilities of it, but I use it for research. So that would be step one. I went into Hermes and I said, hey, I want to pull deep research on 20 different successful static or print advertising styles that have proven across time from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and on to, to social media marketing today.

• 14:40Speaker 00

  What kind of information can we use as case studies, pull and prove that these templates will work in a sale of a product today? So I, I want to generate 20 templates that I can look at and, and, you know, use for Ketone IQ sale coming up. So basically what I, what it did is it went and it did research and answered the questions of here's why this might work, here's why it won't work, here's what you should change, and here's the template description. So I then took that into Codex where I already am connected to creative tools through file.ai. I like to use GPT Image 2 right now. I think it's one of the better ones. And I give it my product, so the little shot bottle.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  And I also in Codex create some copy, some marketing copy for that campaign. So we have our templates, we have our product and we have our copy for the sale. And basically I start off small. I have 20 templates, but I want to just do a run of two or three. Like let's select template one through three. Let's use some variation of this copy that I've supplied to you. And let's go through our image generation workflow. Cause I already have skills set where it's basically a creative image director. So it's going to go through my skill. It's pulling all of those elements, template one, product, copy.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  And I just let it, let it go and give it a, a grade at the end when it delivers it to me. Once I got a couple rolling, I said, okay, let's, let's run the full flight of templates and give me 10 different variations of each template. And then I just let it run overnight and it was finishing up its generation when I woke up in the morning.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's incredible. And you've like scaled a system around your, your direction of how you think about the, the, the brand media creation process.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And I, I just, that just comes out of, again, creative curiosity. It does, I'm not driven by fear around this stuff. And I know that's strange in the creative space because there's a lot of pushback on, you know, creative tools and AI. I think it's just cool. Like I, I haven't been doing it out of like the need for survival. Like I've just been doing it because I think it's fun. So if I can add value because of this creative exploration, awesome.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  And one thing I've, I've noticed about how you interact with the, I mean, of course you have the Codex and that's, that's one piece, but Joe and I are in a, essentially we're in a Telegram chat with one of our Hermes agents. Actually Reid, you've seen that, you've, you've talked to this agent, but it's one of our most creative agents. Why do I call it the most creative agent? I think it's because of the few people it's interacted with. Like it, it works with me on graphic novels. Even Joe has had it and produce a graphic novel. But then now it's gaining a bunch of abilities around how Joe thinks about ad creation and asset and, and media positioning. And so I feel that this agent is a reflection of all the people it's interacting with. You know, it's learning some stuff from me, it's learning some stuff from Joe. And that feels like the beginning of this kind of collective intelligence.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Like the agent that is at the core of the team of Parth and Joe, kind of gets superpowers from both of us, but then can bring that third lens to the, to the team. And then you're able to port those skills and abilities to other agents in your network. Right now it's manual, like he'll be like, okay, you know, package that as a skill, send it to me. And then he can work with Codex using that new baseline ability. I really feel that this like, the diffusion of skills between people and agents is something that I've learned working with Joe over the last year.

• 18:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, dude, I mean, it's, it's been quite a resource to be able to just open up Telegram chat and just brain dump and get really, really anything that I want from that, the brief that we've created, a morning brief. Another example, Reid, is like, I wanted to create a newsletter for Parth and I. It'd be delivered and scheduled at 8:00 AM every morning. And the prompt was something along the lines of, hey, tell us what's been going on in the AI space and tech space in the last 24 to 48 hours. Not only that, but your goal as a, as a newsletter for us is to be a future scaper. So we don't, I don't want you to give me information that is, yeah, it's the news. But what does it mean? What is it, what's coming?

• 19:00Speaker 00

  And how can we, you know, look at this information as something that'll inform, you know, future releases or things that are coming down the pipeline or trends? So it delivers us that at 8:00 AM every morning. I think working on projects like that has just been like, um, that's continued to unlock my language further of like, oh, like here's how I can think differently.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  No, it's, it's incredible. It's like an, every day I just, I open my phone and it's like, oh, we got the latest news report. And I, and I'm reading it and I'm just like, this is crazy. Like I, you're just, you're just passively more amplified and you're like, okay, what does this mean? What is, like the agent doing a little bit of that pre-thinking of like, where does this mean? What is this, where does this go? What does this mean? Helps us think about the future and plan, especially in, like, I don't think you can keep up with AI without AI. Like it's, we're at that point now. So Joe, what, what is one creative skill that you think matters more now, not less because of AI?

• 19:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's, it's clear articulation of ideas. Whether you're in a creative field or, or a tech field, it's, I think it's a linguistic skill.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, just being able to speak in a way that my ideas are clearly communicated. It's interesting because the more reps I get doing that, the more I see my communication is clear in in like photo shoot settings or in settings that I'm directing. It's it's having the reverse of of what people might think it actually does, which is actually increasing my efficiency in human communication. And yeah, also just giving me those repetitions day in and day out with getting better output with these tools. So yeah, I mean, it's what creative directors always have to do with humans anyway. But AI just made the gap between a sloppy brief and a tight brief much more visible.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:51Speaker 02

  So I have two kind of, which may not seem apparently, but they are related questions. So one of them is, you know, the kind of the tool habit or workflow that actually you had to kind of push yourself to get into and and and didn't kind of come naturally from step one, but was really important to do. And then another one is, how does this play in the multiplayer game? Like when you're working with other people, like not just the amplification of your yourself, but like in, you know, AI in the multiplayer game?

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the for the first one, it took a while for the running automations to click for me because I'm very visual. That's how I've always learned. And I needed to see it first before I could go in and just tell an agent, take me through this process. So I really do think that was an evolution of using the tools first, seeing what they're capable of. Okay, now I can see it in my brain. Now I'm going to go here and do it and I can see it happening, but it's it's kind of behind the box. So it was automated workflows and now I've kind of unlocked that by doing the repetitions upfront. You know, in terms of the multiplayer, I'm dealing with that. I'm figuring that out right now.

• 22:02Speaker 00

  And, you know, I'm doing some consulting for brands that want to learn about these things and bring them into their marketing process. And for me, Reid, it's showing them weavey workflows. It seems to be that light bulbs go off because I think a lot of people have the same position as I did. It's like, yeah, automation sound cool and everything, but I can't, I don't understand how it gets from point A to Z. So I feel like weavey is is more of a teaching tool for me to open up the door for automations for these brands.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Right. Being able to see the system before you sell the system, like being showing them, here's what's happening under the hood. Here's what we're going to be doing. It gives people more confidence in the in the process and brings them along.

• 22:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. We have time. Joe, if you have some questions for Reid and and I, I would love to give you an opportunity to bring it to the table.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  Notice how he emphasizes me versus versus him, but you know, that's part of credit.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  Well, Joe and I would chat every five minutes.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 23:09Speaker 00

  I could talk to you guys both all day about this stuff, I'm sure. But yeah, no, the the one thing that I've realized doing this work every day is my my articulation is differentiator like we talked about. And it's the specificity of how I express the idea. That's making the world that we're creating land here. Which, you know, I it pulls me to something that you write about a lot, Reid, and I know that you studied a lot is Wickenstein. Limits in my language really are the limits of my world, except now language doesn't just describe the world, it kind of summons it. My question is, like, what does someone in today's professional world have to practice to play this game well? And, you know, going forward, like, what is the skill that needs to be built up to be a contributor?

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Well, that's one of the reasons why I've had you on. I think you've you've given a bunch of of of good starts and I think it's an infinitely long path, which is good for us as as as as people and as creators and as, you know, innovators, workers, etc. I think there's a couple of things. One, on the on the kind of Wittgenstein side, you know, it is, he was trying to figure out how it is language actually works, that that, you know, we we're like fish in water or we communicate with each other. But we don't really know how it works. We don't really know how the thinking works. And so that was kind of his philosophical project to kind of understand that there was a lot of philosophical problems that were misunderstandings of actually how language works. So let's try to figure it out since we don't actually understand it.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Now, on the, as exactly as you say, that it doesn't just limit the world, it now creates the world through AI. It's kind of the the imagining what's possible. I think it's it's it's work to get better, not just in your imagination, but you're in your expression of your imagination so that and and by the way, AI can be useful to that because you can say, hey, I'm I'm trying to be more expressive and so forth. So what I would like you to do is run me through exercises and ask me about this and and interact. And and when I say this, what could I have said better? What could what could be better? And and kind of explicitly go through that loop. And it's part of the reason why, like, you know, I was kind of prompting you back to your early days for for

• 25:21Speaker 02

  for kind of most people, because it's like, well, don't just go, so give me a script. It's like, well, of course, you're going to get a pretty vanilla dumbass thing on that. But he said, well, you know, what if, you know, kind of we were looking at the script for this film, but we were thinking about it the way the Matisse thought about impressionism. And we thought about the kind of the pointillism and the kind of the way that hit the eye. What might be the way that this script might be reinterpreted in that way? And by the way, what might come out as garbage? That's fine, because then you go, well, all right, let's try it with Dadaism or let's try it with, you know, Dostoevsky were writing the script. What would Dostoevsky, you know, kind of, you know?

• 26:05Speaker 02

  And and by doing that and by summoning, you know, kind of characters, agents, colors, synthetic alternatives, that'll expand your own kind of language expressive palette and will teach you to be more specific. So because part of the reason, like, for example, we would say something like, you know, Derrida says in language, there is no there there. I used to pun, you know, for, you know, in Derrida's case, he's right. I'm not sure it's universally true. But like, the reason why you summon specific people like Derrida or an aphorism or a quote or or a parallel is because that allows you to suddenly get much richer context much faster. And I think that's the thing that we all need to be learning in our language.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  It doesn't have to be that we're all poets, but we all have to have a much richer richer language of gesture expression tools. And by the way, I think that makes us more human. It's actually part of the reason why I think AI and super agency is kind of a more human story. And I think, you know, you're you're living it.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  It's it's like when you ask the AI to go back into the 50s and the 60s and draw inspiration on visual techniques that worked a long time ago. And I think it's like, it's us connecting with the people that were before us to attack a new, modern problem, even though they're not here anymore. So I think that's amazing. I mean, it's a form of it's a form of time travel, right?

• 27:29Speaker 00

  It's like if you have any, if you could ask anything at all, like, what are you going to ask? And I think that paralyzes a lot of people.

• 27:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, but just start and iterate.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  I don't want to ask about like what jobs are going to be the most sought after jobs, but I I am curious about that from your perspective part. You know, I I'm very much a bloomer as as Reid describes, but like, what do you think like the creative space might look like or even like the software engineering space looks like in, I don't know, two to three, two to three years?

• 28:02Speaker 01

  When when Fable 5 was out for three days, I didn't sleep for three days and I felt like I saw a clear picture. I thought there were things that I saw that I thought were five, six years out that I think are now two years out. So it has updated my my notions here. I feel in in the, I'll say, first I'll talk about like technical creativity, then I'll talk about like the expanded regular, like other forms of creative that we've been talking about today. In technical creativity, we are going to have the ability to build any software that you need on demand at a very, very like low cost. And that, because it's low cost and very quick to create software, we're going to create more software, but also we will modify that software.

• 28:45Speaker 01

  So I feel that software becomes more liquid. So when we're interacting with Codex, it builds a little app. I didn't show you, but this weekend, after you showed me weavey, I had Codex build me my own version of weavey for my video model pipelines. I got to show it to you tomorrow. But basically, like, the interface that we need will show up when we need it because Codex and these systems will build the interface that we need. Right now, Codex is speaking at 50 tokens per second. Imagine if it's at 1,200 tokens per second a year from now, running on a different inference chip. Then everything you ask for can be modified even faster, right? Like, then I feel that software becomes, in that point, software becomes liquid. It becomes what you need. It takes the shape of whatever interface that you need in the moment. And the agent kind of brings that to you. I I'm very excited for this future.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  I think people are sleeping on this this realization. And then I think that also blends back into creative, which is that like we use all these tools, but sometimes we prefer working with the agent and the agent builds the tool that we need for the job. And so we have ephemeral software. We have things that are, we have the tools that are created just in time for us, for our unique project. And then in broader creative, I feel that there are things that you can't automate that I've realized now, these are the most important remaining skills that I've now placed a huge premium on. Like, technical skills are kind of being commoditized. The model can kind of generate code. So you you don't get points for memorizing code. You get points for designing the right system. You get points for architecting. In creative, it's it's like the model can generate any video, but

• 30:14Speaker 01

  it's it's like everyone has a VFX team in their pocket with like image video models today. But actually, what people are missing, a lot of people are missing is like, not everyone has a storytelling skill set. That's like, here, they can create a story that actually someone wants to watch a second time. And I I feel that like the writer's skill set is actually the most valuable thing that I was undervaluing from in my past life. It's like I wish I took writing as a more serious skill myself because now I feel that's the thing that's missing when I'm trying to create a show, trying to create a piece of content is. So then I go back and I study the good stuff, right? Like, I watch the good movies now with a different lens. I pay attention to every dialogue, every frame. You know, we're working on graphic novels.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  So then I take my best friend and like my friend who reads graphic novels and he makes a recommendation and I go buy it, right? And then I'm like, I got to go study what's good. I got to figure out what good is because we can ask for anything, right? So I think writers become world builders. Soon we'll be generating game worlds and interactive experiences, not just broadcast media. So it's going to get very interesting very quickly.

• 31:17Speaker 00

  It's almost like people that want to stay relevant, at least in the creative field, they they need to learn how to be a director.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Yeah.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  I think everyone's going to become a director. And not necessarily all director of like movies or video. It's directors of lots of different kind of work.

• 31:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. I had another thought. I didn't think I'd have time for another Wittgenstein. If I'm pronouncing it correctly.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  There's the quote, if a lion could speak, we could not understand him. I was just kind of like bouncing back and forth with Claude on this. Like when ChatGPT says, I understand, or I think, or I feel. Is it really saying the same thing that you mean when you say those words? Or is it like the lion, like it looks like English? It sounds like English, but it's only coming, it's coming from a different form of life. So is it actually understanding the words that we're saying? Or is it, is it something else entirely? Is it just mirroring you?

• 32:17Speaker 02

  Well, this, this is, I've actually, so funnily enough, I spent a couple of weeks in Oxford in April and went to go talk to my old Wittgenstein tutor. He's not old. He's actually only a couple of years older than me. But, but, but of old is probably Bill Child, who's one of, I think, the world's leading thinkers on Wittgenstein. And it was precise to this because it was kind of the question of what Wittgenstein was trying to do is say, hey, I'm trying to figure out, like, things have meaning in part because they have truth conditions. Or the truth that is, that the language is appropriately applied to the circumstances you're in. And he's trying to understand what that is. And his, and first theory was kind of this called picture theory.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  And the second theory was following a rule theory. And it was like, well, but you know, if a lion could speak, no one can understand him. Because that seems like a different form of life from how, you know, we speak. So does that understanding work? Well, now we're running this real world is almost like this invention of the world that you're mentioning. You know, kind of experience where we're inventing like, like kind of language stuff here. And you're like, the fact that there isn't some kind of understanding going on between us and, you know, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Gemini, et cetera, seems to be odd claim. Now, maybe there's an understanding there and there's an understanding here, but there's a very robust set of language games.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  So maybe the sense of what of this is, is interesting. Now, in part, one of the models that I use to think about, you know, frameworks that I use to think about these AI models is that they're kind of like alien life forms of sorts that have been intensely trained to be human. Right? And it's that quasi-alien and human that's the interesting thing. And then what does, what would a Wittgensteinian philosophy about understanding, truth, epistemology apply to this? And, you know, you know, we're like, well, someone should write that up. So, you know, who knows? I probably won't ever get to it.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  But it, but it's, but it's, but it's a super fascinating question. And it has all these things to do with, you know, our world is, to jump to a different metaphor, like, you know, the force and mitochondria and language is how we interface with each other, how we interface with the world. And now that is all in a state of amazing evolution.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  So much fun talking to you, Joe, over the past years, but also very glad we could bring you on to this episode with Reed today. So thank you. Thank you so much, Joe.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Thank you guys for having me. That was fun.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Possible is produced by Palette Media. It's hosted by Ari Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Sean Young. Possible is produced by Tanasa Delos, Katie Sanders, Spencer Strasmore, Imo Zoo, Aman Suri, Danny Garrison, Trent Barboza, and Tifadzwa Nima Rundwe.

• 35:19Speaker 03

  Special thanks to Surya, Yala Manchili, Sayida Sabieva, Ian Alice, Greg Beato, Parth Patel, and Ben Ralas.