Speaker 1: Today's episode of What Future with Joshua Topolski is a
Speaker 1: re release. It's a really interesting listen. We will be
Speaker 1: back next week with an all new episode.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, hey, and welcome to What Future. I'm
Speaker 2: your host, Joshua Topolski. Now, I don't know if you
Speaker 2: have been following any of this stuff with this new
Speaker 2: artificial intelligence machine learning driven AI driven bots, So there's
Speaker 2: several bots that do this. One has recently become widely
Speaker 2: available to the public. It's a bot called mid Journey.
Speaker 2: From a user perspective, From a person's perspective, what you
Speaker 2: can do is you can sit down and type something
Speaker 2: and it will generate based on all of the images
Speaker 2: it's ever looked at, which are billions of images on
Speaker 2: the Internet and wherever else. Databases they feed it and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. It will generate what it thinks you
Speaker 2: want from a prompt from a sentence. You actually use
Speaker 2: it through Discord, which is like kind of a chat
Speaker 2: you know network, which was popularized by gamers. But Discord
Speaker 2: you can basically go and talk to the discord bought
Speaker 2: from mid Journey, and you can say, for instance, Dracula
Speaker 2: explaining his vamporism, to a crowd of onlookers, and it
Speaker 2: will generate four different images that it thinks capture your idea,
Speaker 2: and they're insanely accurate. They look like somebody painted a
Speaker 2: picture of something that you wanted. It is essentially like
Speaker 2: the closest thing to being able to visualize a dream.
Speaker 2: I don't know that I've ever had my mind more
Speaker 2: blown by anything a computer has ever done than this
Speaker 2: piece of software. I mean, it is hard to articulate
Speaker 2: what it feels like when you write a sentence of
Speaker 2: something that seems completely impossible and then see a pretty
Speaker 2: good representation of it in a matter of like thirty seconds,
Speaker 2: forty five seconds, maybe a minute, to see your first
Speaker 2: four versions of something. Let's just say you're not an artist,
Speaker 2: You're not a designer. You're not going to make your
Speaker 2: living off of doing paintings for magazines or whatever. You're
Speaker 2: just a person from a pure, like thrill level as
Speaker 2: a person, I think this is fucking amazing. It is
Speaker 2: like the most fascinating and most amazing thing I've almost
Speaker 2: maybe I've ever done on a computer. And I've done
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff on the computer, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean, But this is like trippy I mean it's
Speaker 2: fucking insane. It's like, like I said, it's sort of
Speaker 2: like as close as you might get to you know,
Speaker 2: you had a dream, and you can then see the dream.
Speaker 2: I would also say, what's interesting is that it is
Speaker 2: like a computer dreaming. I mean, what it is is
Speaker 2: you giving This is like what I consider to be
Speaker 2: fairly abstry input to a computer and the computer deciding
Speaker 2: making all of these really creative decisions about what that
Speaker 2: thing should look like. Anyhow, I'm not an artist. I'm
Speaker 2: not a painter. I have been working with mid Journey
Speaker 2: to create art for this podcast, and you can see
Speaker 2: some of the prompts for these, some of the ones
Speaker 2: that I did science fiction paperback book cover about society
Speaker 2: in the future. One of them is a phrase from
Speaker 2: Blade Runner attack chips on fire off the shoulder of Oryon,
Speaker 2: which is Rucker. Howard has this monologue at the end
Speaker 2: of Blade Runner, and that's one of the things he says,
Speaker 2: and it created imagery based on that sentence, Dracula explaining
Speaker 2: his vamporism to a crowd of onlookers. You can see
Speaker 2: several variations. I mean, they are fucking beautiful pieces of art.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, like legitimately beautiful pieces of art. There
Speaker 2: is some art in figuring out how to get this
Speaker 2: thing to do what you want, or to at least
Speaker 2: create a result. Is that is pleasing? Now? Anyhow, what's
Speaker 2: interesting about this? There's many interesting things about it, and
Speaker 2: like I'll just go down the list of some of
Speaker 2: the ones that I'm thinking about. First off, there's obviously
Speaker 2: this question about art, like what is art and is
Speaker 2: this art? And what kind of art is it? Meaning
Speaker 2: As a guy who who's run a lot of newsrooms
Speaker 2: and a lot of publications, I could see this is
Speaker 2: very functionally important in like an organization that needs original
Speaker 2: art for things, but maybe it doesn't have the budget
Speaker 2: or the time to generate original art for everything they'd
Speaker 2: like to generate original art for right, So there's an
Speaker 2: implication there, like for me that I'm like, oh, that's
Speaker 2: really interesting, Right, that's really exciting. I follow a bunch
Speaker 2: of designers and artists on Instagram and they've been talking
Speaker 2: about this for a while. I mean, this opens up
Speaker 2: an enormous amount of serious questions, like, for instance, the
Speaker 2: bots are obviously taking content and material and analyzing it
Speaker 2: and learning from it, and in some cases, replicating it
Speaker 2: in some way from a real artists right from historic
Speaker 2: you know, pieces of art up to modern pieces of art.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, in essence, these ais can
Speaker 2: go and look at and then learn from. But there's
Speaker 2: this little bit of controversy, or not a little bit,
Speaker 2: maybe a lot from some artists who say this is
Speaker 2: you know, it's theft of our work. You know, they're
Speaker 2: using things we've created without any license to do so
Speaker 2: and creating new works based on it. That argument, to
Speaker 2: me is a little bit like every artist uses somebody
Speaker 2: else's work to create what they do. I mean, as
Speaker 2: we know, remixing in music has become one of the
Speaker 2: baseline ways you make music now, no pun intended on baseline.
Speaker 2: So the idea of like sampling somebody else's art to
Speaker 2: create something new is not new. I think what's sort
Speaker 2: of insane and threatening on a bunch of different levels
Speaker 2: is that this is creating real art, really interesting pieces
Speaker 2: of art and imagery that have real applications, whether it's
Speaker 2: hanging in a gallery or using for an illustration in
Speaker 2: a magazine or whatever, and it is just removing a
Speaker 2: person completely. Basically, this image that I created for the
Speaker 2: podcast is a perfect example, I could sit with a
Speaker 2: designer and tell them about what I wanted and show
Speaker 2: them examples can you make something like this, and we
Speaker 2: could work through it over and over again until we
Speaker 2: got to something that fell right. The idea that I
Speaker 2: could just say it and it could be like, this
Speaker 2: could be it. This could be the art for the show.
Speaker 2: And that's one job that a artist is not going
Speaker 2: to get now, like for sure, right, there's an implication
Speaker 2: for people who work in these fields that is way
Speaker 2: different than what we're talking about. Like I was like,
Speaker 2: at a pure human level, this is thrilling, but on
Speaker 2: the flip side of that, there's entire industries that potentially
Speaker 2: are wiped out by this. What does this open up,
Speaker 2: I think is a question that I don't know the
Speaker 2: answer to, which is, in five or ten years, this
Speaker 2: is going to be so much more capable to create
Speaker 2: things like this, capable to a point where I think
Speaker 2: it's likely in the next five to ten years you
Speaker 2: can simply tell it to do something whatever it is,
Speaker 2: and it will create a perfectly photorealistic version of it.
Speaker 2: I mean, and there are versions of this where you
Speaker 2: can say, you know, show me this thing and show
Speaker 2: it to me in these different styles, and it'll show
Speaker 2: you an image in the style of this painter, or
Speaker 2: or like it was a photo taken from this era,
Speaker 2: or like it was you know, shot on a certain
Speaker 2: kind of film. What that means going forward is almost
Speaker 2: like kind of frightening. Like people are like talked a
Speaker 2: lot about deep fakes, you know, and they're like, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: like they're going to fake a voice, or they're going
Speaker 2: to fake a person's face or whatever. Like this is
Speaker 2: essentially like we're getting to the point where you can
Speaker 2: just fake any situation. You can just create visually any
Speaker 2: situation you can think of. And I think the logical
Speaker 2: thing is that eventually, pretty soon, I would imagine it'll
Speaker 2: be able to do this with video, right, and I
Speaker 2: think with moving images sound is not too far behind it.
Speaker 2: You start to think of how this could be applied
Speaker 2: to all sorts of other things. I mean, presumably, if
Speaker 2: it can do this with art, with visual art, I
Speaker 2: think it can do it with other forms of art. Right.
Speaker 2: Will we discover when it's like you could have any
Speaker 2: art available to you, any type of content available to you,
Speaker 2: perhaps that like what you want is somebody else's brain
Speaker 2: in mind, Right, like I want to like understand or
Speaker 2: see something or hear something from somebody else's brain, but
Speaker 2: I don't know what it's like if if the other
Speaker 2: brain can just create any of those things that I
Speaker 2: would be intrigued by, Like this art is a great example. Clearly,
Speaker 2: this non brain entity can create things that surprise and
Speaker 2: delight me, that feel as authentic and original as any
Speaker 2: art that I've looked at. It's obvious that the systems
Speaker 2: that are creating this are very advanced, and they are
Speaker 2: only going to get better. They're not going to get worse.
Speaker 2: There is no going back to a state where this
Speaker 2: is not possible. And so when you think about what
Speaker 2: that looks like down the road, like maybe not everybody
Speaker 2: feels this way, but I can kind of like in
Speaker 2: the middle of my brain, I get this like very
Speaker 2: upsetting feeling when I think about what space actually is,
Speaker 2: which is like this endless nothing and actually nothing and
Speaker 2: what is that like? It's very upsetting to think about
Speaker 2: to me. When I think about like the future of
Speaker 2: this stuff, it's sort of a similar kind of weight
Speaker 2: in the middle of my brain, which is like where
Speaker 2: does this go? Like it feels like all of real
Speaker 2: is almost called into question by the technology, and maybe
Speaker 2: I'm overstating it, maybe I sound crazy. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: the computer sension, or it's alive, or it's got a
Speaker 2: soul now or anything. But there's something in between the
Speaker 2: lines of all this where it's just sort of like
Speaker 2: it leaps beyond even my understanding of what is happening,
Speaker 2: Like it leaps to a place that's almost like, I
Speaker 2: don't want to say spiritual, but it leaps to a
Speaker 2: kind of almost religious place where it's like, how can
Speaker 2: this be? You kind of feel like when you do it,
Speaker 2: how can this be?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 2: How is it possible? My guest today is David Holds,
Speaker 2: the founder and CEO of mid Journey. David, thank you
Speaker 2: for being here.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Just before this, I said, can I say CEO? And
Speaker 2: you didn't want me to, but I've done it anyway.
Speaker 2: We're all going to have to live with the repercussions.
Speaker 4: I no, I've been exposed.
Speaker 2: Okay, Let's say you and I met at a party.
Speaker 2: Let's pretend we're at a cool party. You don't know
Speaker 2: where I'm coming from, and I'm like, what do you do?
Speaker 2: And you say, I'm the founder CEO of mid Journey
Speaker 2: and I go, what's that? How would you describe it
Speaker 2: to somebody just randomly at a party.
Speaker 4: I try not to. I'm pretty low key, but.
Speaker 2: If they ask, they're like, what does mid Journey do?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I I never really wanted a company. I just
Speaker 3: kind of wanted a home, and so like mid Journey
Speaker 3: is sort of meant to be like my new home
Speaker 3: for the next ten years, to work on a lot
Speaker 3: of cool projects that I care about, with with cool people,
Speaker 3: and that hopefully are are good for everybody else too.
Speaker 3: I know we have sort of themes that I want
Speaker 3: to work on, but I had to put in three words.
Speaker 3: It's like reflection, imagination, and coordination. Like in order to
Speaker 3: flourish as a civilization, we're gonna have to like make
Speaker 3: a lot of new things. And making new things involves
Speaker 3: those three words. Wow, and we need a lot more
Speaker 3: around them, like infrastructure, new fundamental forms of infrastructure really
Speaker 3: around each of them. We were actually originally working more
Speaker 3: on the reflections and coordination tools. We were doing some
Speaker 3: imagination stuff, but then there were certain breakthroughs on the
Speaker 3: AI side that were happening. It was about like a
Speaker 3: year and a half ago. Now it looks like everything's
Speaker 3: blowing up. But like a year and a half ago
Speaker 3: in San Francisco, we all went to the same Christmas
Speaker 3: parties and stuff. All the AI people are kind of
Speaker 3: out in here, and we were kind of all together,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, these diffusion models, it seems different than
Speaker 3: the other stuff.
Speaker 4: And they're like, yeah, no, this is different, and well,
Speaker 4: what are you gonna do?
Speaker 2: What are you gonna do?
Speaker 3: We're all kind of just talking, and I'm eventually like,
Speaker 3: I think there's going to be a human side of this,
Speaker 3: that it's not just about making pictures, but that there's
Speaker 3: a sort of a back and forth. There's like a
Speaker 3: lot more to this that's gonna be hard to figure
Speaker 3: out from just optimizing a single number and up computer program. Right.
Speaker 4: There may be some taste involved, and no one knows
Speaker 4: what that is. And I'm like, i think there's something
Speaker 4: I have to contribute to, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine? Though I'm a guy you just met
Speaker 2: at a party. I've got no context whatsoever about mid
Speaker 2: jourdy and you just told me that, which, all, by
Speaker 2: the way, all very interesting. I have many questions related
Speaker 2: to what you just said. Yeah, I had dumb it
Speaker 2: down a little bit only because maybe not every single
Speaker 2: person will know, but ah, mid Journey is known right now.
Speaker 2: The company has risen to kind of a place in
Speaker 2: the spotlight because it is what I think we're all
Speaker 2: sort of talking about now, is like an AI art
Speaker 2: tool or a tool to create art based on artificial
Speaker 2: intelligence and machine learning and all of these sort of
Speaker 2: other very complex technologies that are kind of fusing together
Speaker 2: to make something that is relatively new. So I think
Speaker 2: most people would say, you've built a tool that can
Speaker 2: take human language tax like basic like English prompts or whatever.
Speaker 2: Maybe you do in different languages, I don't know, and
Speaker 2: convert a prompt like a description of something into a
Speaker 2: piece of art that is created basically wholly by a machine.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I try to avoid like the word art almost
Speaker 3: to be honest, okay, because I think that it's like
Speaker 3: not really about art. It's about imagination and sometimes people
Speaker 3: use their imaginations for art, but usually not right, And
Speaker 3: so I usually think of it as we're trying to
Speaker 3: create these machine augment imaginative powers. Sometimes I almost call
Speaker 3: it like a vehicle, right, you know, to really like
Speaker 3: to ask like what are we doing? Like is it
Speaker 3: like the invention of photography and how it changed painting, right,
Speaker 3: And I tend to say no, it's much more like
Speaker 3: the invention of the combustion engine and the car. And
Speaker 3: like when we invented cars, they're faster than us, but
Speaker 3: we didn't chop our legs off.
Speaker 4: We don't have to really move somewhere.
Speaker 3: You move through vehicles, So it's kind of like a
Speaker 3: vehicle for a magines If you really have to go somewhere,
Speaker 3: you're going to unit these vehicles like jets and boath
Speaker 3: and cars.
Speaker 4: We never have a little robot as like our icon.
Speaker 3: It's like a sailboat, right, you know, very much trying
Speaker 3: to kind of help people explore and imagine these like
Speaker 3: seeds of like esthetic possibilities.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting that there's a little bit of
Speaker 2: like a defensive stance you have to take now because
Speaker 2: the art aspect of it gets under the skin of
Speaker 2: a certain part of the audience that's like, wait a second,
Speaker 2: you know, what is this thing doing? What does it mean?
Speaker 2: What does it mean for all these different industries. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people feel and maybe you
Speaker 2: guys have had to play some a new round of
Speaker 2: defense because of it. That this is an engineer to
Speaker 2: kind of like up end industries, right, But you're saying
Speaker 2: you don't really view it that.
Speaker 3: Way, No, And that to me is actually very uninteresting.
Speaker 3: Like the idea of like making fake art is really uninteresting,
Speaker 3: like who cares? Or making fake photos it's really like
Speaker 3: to me is not like I think, what's interesting is
Speaker 3: making stuff that never could have existed before. I don't
Speaker 3: like it when somebody makes a deep fake photo of
Speaker 3: the dog, we make it really ready to do that.
Speaker 4: Other ones do that well.
Speaker 3: To me, the most interesting images are the ones that
Speaker 3: don't look like anything we've ever seen before. They don't
Speaker 3: look human, they don't look like the AI made. They
Speaker 3: look like something new, and all we know is that
Speaker 3: it's this new thing, it's this new frontier.
Speaker 2: Right. I should tell you that the art for this podcast,
Speaker 2: as of right now, and I don't think it's going
Speaker 2: to change, is generated by mid Journey Cool, and it
Speaker 2: ended up producing results that I think are like at
Speaker 2: once very familiar to me, like in terms of stylistically,
Speaker 2: there's something very familiar to me about it, but there's
Speaker 2: also something about it that is like totally original, I
Speaker 2: think to your point, now, I'll tell you this, like,
Speaker 2: I'll give you my stance a little bit, because one
Speaker 2: of the reasons I wanted to talk to you, one
Speaker 2: of the reasons I want to talk about this at
Speaker 2: all is, as you know, I'm a huge nerd and
Speaker 2: I've spent my entire life like being, you know, sort
Speaker 2: of mesmerized and interested in emerging technology in all sorts
Speaker 2: of different forms. And when I started using mid Journey,
Speaker 2: mid Journey's producing something that to me feels I'll try
Speaker 2: to avoid using the term arte, it feels like it's
Speaker 2: creating something very original. I could say, like, Okay, I
Speaker 2: know where some of this stuff is coming from, Like
Speaker 2: I can kind of understand, like there's certain styles that
Speaker 2: are present, or if you give it a prompt to
Speaker 2: get a certain style, you can get that. But to me,
Speaker 2: it was like, and I still feel this having processed
Speaker 2: it now for you know, weeks and months, maybe the
Speaker 2: most amazing thing that I've ever seen a machine do.
Speaker 2: I totally understand the idea that you're not trying to
Speaker 2: build a tool that is like a new photoshop, although
Speaker 2: I think or applications that are obvious that are in
Speaker 2: that realm. When I first asked about what it was
Speaker 2: you use three words. What were the three words that
Speaker 2: you used.
Speaker 4: Was reflection, imagination, and coordination.
Speaker 2: Okay, so coordination and reflection. I want to talk about
Speaker 2: like what that means because I understand the imagination part,
Speaker 2: and I think I understand how you are thinking about
Speaker 2: like what mid Journey does now in that department. But
Speaker 2: tell me about like those roots of reflection and coordination,
Speaker 2: Like what was this before it was? What it is?
Speaker 3: We were working on a lot of things trying to
Speaker 3: like understand human minds, like individually to help people reflect
Speaker 3: and then also to kind of help people come together
Speaker 3: and like work on things better. And so we were
Speaker 3: doing a lot of like quantitative psychology and like structured
Speaker 3: thinking to kind of like create like boost up of
Speaker 3: a hive mind as fast as.
Speaker 4: You can kind of a future is going to say
Speaker 4: lots of weird things.
Speaker 2: No, that's good. Are you saying that? Like the roots
Speaker 2: of this are kind of like can we get this
Speaker 2: thing to think on a collective level for us to
Speaker 2: like solve problems? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think there's two areas.
Speaker 3: There's both like how do you help somebody think about
Speaker 3: like who they are, what they want and just kind
Speaker 3: of like deal with their things. Uh. And then there's
Speaker 3: also like how do you help them find like the
Speaker 3: right people anything big nets other people, So how do
Speaker 3: you kind of find the people?
Speaker 4: And I don't know.
Speaker 3: When I was like twenty, I would say, you have
Speaker 3: to have your goals and then you align people who
Speaker 3: share the goals.
Speaker 4: And then I've done that.
Speaker 3: And it turns out that the second the goals change,
Speaker 3: the groups blow apart because like it's about values or something.
Speaker 3: And then if you a lot of people on values
Speaker 3: and then over like five or ten years, it blows
Speaker 3: apart again because it turns out that our values like
Speaker 3: change in our lives, our experience change, right, And so
Speaker 3: then maybe this idea is like we need some higher
Speaker 3: than values, and maybe it's aesthetics. It's like not about
Speaker 3: what's like right or wrong or what's important on importance.
Speaker 3: It's like really deep down, it's about like what we
Speaker 3: feel is beautiful and what we feel is ugly that
Speaker 3: like really leads to the things that we value, the things.
Speaker 4: That we actually tried to build.
Speaker 2: It's interesting.
Speaker 3: And so there's this idea of like maybe aesthetics themselves
Speaker 3: are like some of the highest things, and maybe aesthetics
Speaker 3: can be like a foundational layer of like a social
Speaker 3: world in a way that like is beyond where it is,
Speaker 3: because right now it's like the Internet, what is it?
Speaker 4: It's about?
Speaker 3: Like Facebook, it's like who's your mom and who went
Speaker 3: to school with? And then like on Twitter, it's like
Speaker 3: almost like like you say one thing a day that
Speaker 3: pisses people off and then half of them will follow you, right,
Speaker 3: And like those are both shitty foundations for like a
Speaker 3: better social world. I would never want to build a
Speaker 3: team that way, so that there's something really interesting on
Speaker 3: like mid journey where people come together and they're like, man,
Speaker 3: you love like Egyptian space pyramids too, That's like me,
Speaker 3: And then like you have nothing else in common, but
Speaker 3: you both love Egyptian space pyramids and it actually like
Speaker 3: means something really deep, right. I think that like aesthetics
Speaker 3: have the potential to be a foundation of a better
Speaker 3: social and cordant player in a way that's like really
Speaker 3: hard to understand, but that is actually like really interesting.
Speaker 2: I mean that's a fascinating and frankly I have so
Speaker 2: many questions around just the basic concept there, but like
Speaker 2: I would agree with you that aesthetics do tend to
Speaker 2: bring people together. I mean, but aesthetics conceptually, the idea of,
Speaker 2: you know, having a taste or a preference for something,
Speaker 2: there's a limit I would imagine too, people who identify
Speaker 2: around an aesthetic position. Meaning my mother, who's a wonderful,
Speaker 2: wonderful and extremely insane person. She could talk about things
Speaker 2: she's visually finds beautiful or whatever, but I would not
Speaker 2: say it's like a central part of her personality or
Speaker 2: something that she has an enormous amount of interest in. Right.
Speaker 2: The thing about Facebook is that a raw opinion or
Speaker 2: sharing something like oh, I found this article interesting or
Speaker 2: whatever is very straightforward in the sense of we all
Speaker 2: know what an idea is or an interesting article or
Speaker 2: an opinion. But I don't know that everybody thinks on
Speaker 2: an aesthetic level. Maybe I'm not giving everybody enough credit.
Speaker 2: It's possible. I think you're right.
Speaker 3: People don't think about it, but it's there, right, Like
Speaker 3: I tried this, I'd like, what are your aesthetics that
Speaker 3: lead to your values, that lead to your goals? Like
Speaker 3: you can ask the question and almost nobody can answer it. Right,
Speaker 3: It's a really hard question, But all of a sudden
Speaker 3: you give them something like mid journey and it's like
Speaker 3: you can make a picture of anything, what do you want,
Speaker 3: and like everything just spills out and then they go
Speaker 3: through this whole like heroes and mid journey and like
Speaker 3: the process of looking through that journey, like you like
Speaker 3: it's all there and it's very clear, like a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff comes out.
Speaker 2: Actually, But if I'm like a and I'm gonna give
Speaker 2: you like a really extreme example, and so forgive me
Speaker 2: if this feels like a like a a gotcha or whatever.
Speaker 2: But if I'm like a neo Nazi, for instance, yeah,
Speaker 2: I might love Star Wars. Let's say, although I always
Speaker 2: find it fascinating when like people who are really into fascism,
Speaker 2: like are like I like Star Wars, I'm into the
Speaker 2: Rebels or whatever. I'm like, you know, it's but okay,
Speaker 2: let's say I like Star Wars. You like Star Wars,
Speaker 2: but like one of us is a white supremacist and
Speaker 2: one of us isn't. We may share some aesthetic interests, right,
Speaker 2: or we may both love a certain artist, right, you know,
Speaker 2: we're Lichtenstein fans or whatever. But like, at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, deep down, I don't know that that
Speaker 2: aesthetic preference has any deeper resonance on who we are.
Speaker 2: There's a limit, right, well, so.
Speaker 3: Like for example, like you know, you're a rebel obviously,
Speaker 3: and then like a Nazi nowadays is also rebel in
Speaker 3: their own way, so you do have something in common. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but like, but there's probably also other things. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's that is a leap, I would say. I mean,
Speaker 3: I get what you're saying. They're definitely going against the grain, right,
Speaker 3: I got it. Yeah, I get the grain. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 3: I mean they were Yeah, definitely a lot of us
Speaker 3: are rebels, and they're types of rebels, but we are rebels.
Speaker 3: But now, like I think there are other things too, right,
Speaker 3: So you don't want to just lock on rebels. You
Speaker 3: want to have something it's like a little bit broader
Speaker 3: and more interesting. It's the question is after you make
Speaker 3: a bunch of picture of rebels, what's the next thing
Speaker 3: you do?
Speaker 4: You know, and then what's that's? What's that all come together?
Speaker 2: You know? I mean, now we're like very far afield
Speaker 2: from Like I've got a mid journey bought that I
Speaker 2: can talk to and it can make images for me.
Speaker 2: I mean, how would you describe it? You describe it
Speaker 2: as ai?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it is it is ai. I don't like.
Speaker 3: I kind of avoid the words ai and art actually
Speaker 3: both together. Weirdly, problem with words like AI is that
Speaker 3: people give it a lot of agency and like will
Speaker 3: and purpose and meaning right and so where it's like
Speaker 3: this thing it doesn't have a story or a narrative
Speaker 3: or like any will.
Speaker 2: Right, ascension doesn't have a soul.
Speaker 4: It does learn actually from lots of people, and it
Speaker 4: changes and there's a co evolution. It's almost like mid
Speaker 4: Journey is a flower and then the users are bees,
Speaker 4: and like the flower is trying to be beautiful for
Speaker 4: the bees, but the bees pick which flowers are the
Speaker 4: ones that get to survive, and so like there's this
Speaker 4: coevolution between the flowers and the bees.
Speaker 3: Like there's not a lot of will. There is some will,
Speaker 3: there's a will to be beautiful, and then there's only
Speaker 3: weird about flowers being beautiful because we find them beautiful too.
Speaker 3: It's like, what does that mean? It's because they're not
Speaker 3: really for us specifically. It's like why do both us
Speaker 3: and the bees find something beautiful? Like it's sort of
Speaker 3: speaking some weird objective thing.
Speaker 2: No, And I can understand that from a philosophical level.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, what is it doing.
Speaker 3: It's a program, Yeah, it's a program. It's a program
Speaker 3: with a lot of models in it. There's a model
Speaker 3: that models language, and there's something that models the connection
Speaker 3: between language and images. There's other thing that tries to
Speaker 3: model what images look like.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: There's actually also models that try to understand like beauty,
Speaker 3: like what is beautiful actually? And then there's other models
Speaker 3: that try to understand like trade offs between like diversity versus,
Speaker 3: creativity versus like how literal should you be?
Speaker 4: How metaphorical should you be? How do you read things?
Speaker 4: And so it's kind of a it's.
Speaker 3: Like a structure and there's a lot of like ducta
Speaker 3: and you know, it's it's weird because like people will
Speaker 3: be like is it alive? Like, well, how is it
Speaker 3: understand thing? If I say something like sadness or happiness?
Speaker 3: How is it able to make an image of an
Speaker 3: emotion that it's never had? Like they go ask these
Speaker 3: questions like what is this like that's it doesn't not
Speaker 3: like a piece of software, you know, but it's not
Speaker 3: an AI because it's never had those experiences, right, Like
Speaker 3: what does it mean?
Speaker 4: There's a lot of really interesting questions.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people they hear AI they
Speaker 2: think there's like a machine somewhere with like a glowing
Speaker 2: red orb in the middle of it, and like it's
Speaker 2: like pulsing. Yeah, exactly, And there's like some neural net.
Speaker 2: You've built some custom hardware where there's like there is
Speaker 2: the neural net. It's like a digital brain. It's like software. Right.
Speaker 3: These programs they do share things with our brains, like
Speaker 3: like how an airplane share something with a bird, Like
Speaker 3: they both share aerodynamics and physics and the sky. Like
Speaker 3: these things are sharing some physics of thoughts.
Speaker 2: Right with us. Right. But I'm just saying, like, it's
Speaker 2: not how you built software. The software does some pretty
Speaker 2: sophisticated things. It is hosted on like a AWS rack
Speaker 2: somewhere essentially, I mean maybe now use AWS. So what
Speaker 2: is the product? Like, you've got investors, right, No, you
Speaker 2: don't know your boots dropped? Yeah, okay, now I listen.
Speaker 2: I've paid for a subscription. I'm a mid journey free now,
Speaker 2: So is that the product people pay for subscriptions to
Speaker 2: use it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: I try to have very honest business.
Speaker 3: It's like you're not going to run on your computer
Speaker 3: ground the cloud and then we're gonna pays takes money
Speaker 3: and then we'll take some margin on that, and that's
Speaker 3: the business.
Speaker 2: And you feel like that's a good foundation for like
Speaker 2: whatever this thing is going to be, Like you can
Speaker 2: build off of that. Yeah, you don't have like Mark
Speaker 2: Andrews in company being like, I'll give you X number
Speaker 2: of billions of dollars if you can let me turn
Speaker 2: this into whatever Mark Andrewson wants.
Speaker 4: We do have a lot of vess coming to us
Speaker 4: offering us lots of money.
Speaker 2: You're not taking the money.
Speaker 4: No, we haven't taken anything so far.
Speaker 2: That's pretty amazing. Can the business be profitable like this?
Speaker 4: We're profitable already? You are, Yeah, that's one reason not
Speaker 4: to take money is we're already profitable.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, if you're making money, it's definitely good
Speaker 2: reason not to take it, right Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean if people come to us and they offer
Speaker 3: us money and I'm like, what am I going to
Speaker 3: spend it on? And they're like it's good to have it,
Speaker 3: you should have it, And I'm like, where you have money,
Speaker 3: We're trying to spend it already, and they're like, well,
Speaker 3: you just have money.
Speaker 4: They just take us take our advice.
Speaker 3: It's not about the money, it's about advice, or like
Speaker 3: they try to make those arguments and so far having
Speaker 3: curt a very compelling argument.
Speaker 2: So you're happy to iterate on this product where it's
Speaker 2: at now and let the user sort of maybe dictate
Speaker 2: some of the direction because of the way that they're
Speaker 2: using it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's kind of beautiful.
Speaker 3: It's like we make something and people like it, they
Speaker 3: pay us money, and then if they don't like it,
Speaker 3: we don't make money.
Speaker 4: But like so we have We're like we're trying to
Speaker 4: make something.
Speaker 3: People like because it supports our stuff, and like it's
Speaker 3: very sort of honest to straightforward, and it's the easy business.
Speaker 4: I keep it this way. I would keep it this way.
Speaker 2: I mean, presumably there's commercial applications for this, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think of this because I'm like a guy who
Speaker 2: runs like media businesses. Yeah, I think, oh wow, there's
Speaker 2: all the time, like I want art for something, and
Speaker 2: I'm actually going to get into a bunch of questions
Speaker 2: about the art side of it. But all the time,
Speaker 2: like I'm in a newsroom, I'm like publishing you know,
Speaker 2: twenty stories a day or fifty stories a day or whatever,
Speaker 2: and every one of those pieces has some art attached
Speaker 2: to it, Like presumably you're already doing more enterprise level
Speaker 2: stuff where like I just want like some design for
Speaker 2: a story or for a blog that I'm writing or
Speaker 2: whatever that you could generate that any sort of infinite
Speaker 2: iterations of original pieces of art, Like, is that a
Speaker 2: part of the business.
Speaker 3: I would say, we're a consumer business that also has
Speaker 3: like some professionals. So it's by like seventy percent consumers
Speaker 3: and thirty percent professionals. Right, the professionals are mostly using
Speaker 3: it for like brainstorming and concepting. Then the consumers are
Speaker 3: having fun and sort of having these reflective, spiritual personal experiences.
Speaker 3: I'm not that excited by professional use, even though, like
Speaker 3: I'm happy when I see people are finding it to
Speaker 3: be useful. Right, the regular people have definitely been a
Speaker 3: lot more motivating and inspiring to me, even the professional uses.
Speaker 4: I have very little interest in the world as it is.
Speaker 3: I want to like make it really different, and it's
Speaker 3: much easier do thing really different fornsumers than it is
Speaker 3: to like have that immediately impact the sort of professional worlds, right,
Speaker 3: and so like for video game people come to me
Speaker 3: to like well, and like they literally they have to
Speaker 3: file us under their photoshop budget because like the video
Speaker 3: game is already budgeted out and it takes sixteen months,
Speaker 3: and I have to wait for them to make their
Speaker 3: next video game. And I'm like, this is bullshit, right,
Speaker 3: I'm so happy that my business isn't reliant on somebody
Speaker 3: finishing their video game in sixteen months, you know.
Speaker 4: And that's what that world.
Speaker 2: Is like, right, Listen. I thought a lot about this, Like,
Speaker 2: if I'm making a video game, especially if I'm like
Speaker 2: an independent developer, like an indie dev I need art,
Speaker 2: I need assets, like I want to make like I
Speaker 2: want to make this world that hasn't been made before,
Speaker 2: and like normally, and this actually gets into this part
Speaker 2: of the conversation I want to have about art and
Speaker 2: about the sort of implications of it. You know, I
Speaker 2: might go and hire an artist or whatever to do that,
Speaker 2: but now, like mid Journey, potentially, like if I'm using
Speaker 2: in that way, I can create assets and backgrounds and
Speaker 2: scenery or even brainstorm off of that to build something from.
Speaker 2: Like That's that's not the exact thing, but a kind
Speaker 2: of iteration of it. But there is a certain very
Speaker 2: vocal segment of people out there in the world, and
Speaker 2: there are people who are artists who are you know,
Speaker 2: digital artists, or who are working artists today, or even
Speaker 2: people who are doing fine art that's like hanging in galleries.
Speaker 2: And they're like, one, this is theft because it's using
Speaker 2: our work. It's using work that is out there that
Speaker 2: is available to see as inspiration for these works. And
Speaker 2: two it's like they're not getting anything when it does
Speaker 2: create new work. Not only is it making their jobs
Speaker 2: more sort of obsolete, but it's also like doing it
Speaker 2: on the backs of all of their work. It's not
Speaker 2: a non compelling argument. There is some reason to think
Speaker 2: that all of those sort of notions are in some
Speaker 2: way true. Like what's your take on that.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of misunderstandings around the technology, and it
Speaker 3: makes sense that like artists really aren't going to understand
Speaker 3: what this is doing. Some of my favorite images I've
Speaker 3: made with any of these models that looked artistic. We're
Speaker 3: trained only on photos and so but this is is
Speaker 3: it's a system that understands what images look like like.
Speaker 3: If you've seen enough photos in your life and then
Speaker 3: you see it anything you could describe the painting without
Speaker 3: having ever having been trained on paintings, and so like,
Speaker 3: what this is the thing that understands images, and then
Speaker 3: it understands language of the connection with languages and images,
Speaker 3: And there's some elements of like knowing what a style
Speaker 3: looks like requires having seen the word and the style before.
Speaker 3: So there's like some connections to it, right, But like,
Speaker 3: largely speaking, it's not I think working like the way
Speaker 3: they think it is. And so the problem is that
Speaker 3: the artists are scared about being in the data set.
Speaker 3: But literally you can just take one of their pictures
Speaker 3: and feed into one of these models where that ever,
Speaker 3: never have it seen it before, and it can make
Speaker 3: pictures like that.
Speaker 4: So it's not about the training data. First off.
Speaker 3: If it understands images, it's game over for that battle.
Speaker 3: It wants to seem enough general images enough to like
Speaker 3: know what textures are and know what colors are. You
Speaker 3: can show it a picture and it can make pictures
Speaker 3: all like that, never having seen that specific car asia before.
Speaker 2: Right, So I mean you know that obviously raises like
Speaker 2: all kinds of weird questions about like you know, how
Speaker 2: fine tuned does that get? Can I pick any artists
Speaker 2: like a photographer I like on Instagram and say in
Speaker 2: the style of this Instagram photographer, and like it'll do
Speaker 2: something well.
Speaker 3: I mean, you could certainly put a photo of theirs
Speaker 3: into another service and I'll give you a photo that
Speaker 3: looks like it. So you know, that's I think that's
Speaker 3: really the more that's kind of the technical thing, right,
Speaker 3: And so basically, if these systems understand images, they'll be
Speaker 3: able to copy anything you show them, regardless of whether
Speaker 3: they're trained on them. So I think the training data
Speaker 3: is the wrong battle to fight, But there is potentially
Speaker 3: a battle to fight over like use of these tools,
Speaker 3: like what is good and what is bad use? And certainly,
Speaker 3: like the law covers out already, if you make something
Speaker 3: that's really derivative of another artist, like too derivative, it
Speaker 3: does not okay even legally, right, So like there is
Speaker 3: it is covered a little bit by law already. Maybe
Speaker 3: there should be something more strict because like it's getting easier.
Speaker 3: But that's that's the battle to fight. I think it's
Speaker 3: like what's too similar, not like this training data thing,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: I think about like CGI in a way, if you're
Speaker 2: building an environment for like a film or something, right,
Speaker 2: like and you're like I want to make a mountain
Speaker 2: or whatever. You're not going to hand draw every polygon
Speaker 2: that builds the mountain, right, the computer is going to
Speaker 2: figure out and even now, like it'll just basically terraform
Speaker 2: a mountain right in unreal or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And once upon a time most people couldn't read
Speaker 3: and write, and now everybody can. And there are more
Speaker 3: writers now and more readers now professionally than they're ever
Speaker 3: were before.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, it's kind of like photography, yeah, right, Like
Speaker 2: everybody has like a kind of pro grade camera in
Speaker 2: their pocket all the time now, and so like we
Speaker 2: were just a wash in really high quality photos, whereas
Speaker 2: like if you go back fifty years, not even twenty
Speaker 2: five years, the best phone camera you could have was
Speaker 2: really shitty and was obviously low quality. We weren't a
Speaker 2: wash in just photos everywhere. Right, And like in the
Speaker 2: last twenty five years, pretty much everybody's become like somewhat
Speaker 2: of a pro am photographer. Yeah, maybe this is a
Speaker 2: straw man. I don't want to throw strawma at you,
Speaker 2: But like, is there a question about like deep fakes
Speaker 2: and sort of like creating reality that does not exist?
Speaker 2: Is that something that you guys grapple.
Speaker 3: With yeah, I mean it's a real risk for us. Specifically,
Speaker 3: we did some special algorithms. It's very hard to make it,
Speaker 3: make it deep fake what it does. If you ask
Speaker 3: me to make a photo, it'll look realistic, but there's
Speaker 3: like something to it in the lighting and the shading
Speaker 3: and the hues where it's like just far enough away
Speaker 3: from a photo that it looks very realistic, but your
Speaker 3: body like knows it's not a real image immediately.
Speaker 2: What if I'm imagining something that looks exactly like a
Speaker 2: real image, We're not doing that right now. My imagination
Speaker 2: has a limit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right now it does. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Would do you think that limit will be lifted for
Speaker 2: certain users? Maybe for this guy, I guess the very
Speaker 2: creative ideas. Maybe let me check it out.
Speaker 4: There's lots of pros and cons to doing that.
Speaker 3: So we found that when we flipped it over that boundary,
Speaker 3: sometimes it looks perfect, and then sometimes it looks really
Speaker 3: like Uncanny Valley zombie like right, it's like upsetting. And
Speaker 3: so right now, if we flip it, it's like kind
Speaker 3: of say fifty fifty fifty some times looks perfect, sometimes
Speaker 3: looks like uncanny, and the uncanny is so like upsetting
Speaker 3: to me, as like a visual aesthetic person, I don't
Speaker 3: want to make anything that looks like that, right, and
Speaker 3: so like I just it's better to just not.
Speaker 2: Allow that at all.
Speaker 4: Maybe in the future it'll be so good that it
Speaker 4: never looks unkenny and it'll take the technology is not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's no chance, just to be clear,
Speaker 2: there's no chance that in like five five years from
Speaker 2: now that we won't be at a point where mid
Speaker 2: Journey or other programs like it will be able to
Speaker 2: create completely photorealistic, if not full moving images for sure,
Speaker 2: still like in five years time, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, There's got to be multiple directions here.
Speaker 3: I think one I'll be trying to like make photo
Speaker 3: realistic duplications of reality, and I think the other want
Speaker 3: to be like making things that are sort of super real,
Speaker 3: like beyond real, right, And I think the beyond real
Speaker 3: stuff is where it's both interesting as a human and
Speaker 3: probably where all like like consumer and commercial stuff is.
Speaker 2: I will say, I'm unabashedly like a fan of this thing,
Speaker 2: but like I also can understand people's fear about it.
Speaker 2: But people are afraid of a lot of things that
Speaker 2: computers do, and for very good reason. I would also say,
Speaker 2: and this is kind of your problem. People are afraid
Speaker 2: of people like you. I don't mean you personally, You're
Speaker 2: a lovely person as far as I know, but like
Speaker 2: you are like, hey, I am interested in imagination all
Speaker 2: these things. And like if you ask like a Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 2: like the early stages of Facebook, you know, he would
Speaker 2: be like, I just want to connect people, you know,
Speaker 2: I just want people to like get together in this
Speaker 2: social and environment or whatever and connect. But like, actually
Speaker 2: down the road, as that thing developed, Mark Zuckerberg made
Speaker 2: a lot of like really crazy, weird, bad decisions. They
Speaker 2: don't have to go on record by agreeing with me,
Speaker 2: but I think in your heart you know it's true.
Speaker 2: And so what do you do to protect against like
Speaker 2: these things that feel like creative decisions now? Right, Like,
Speaker 2: we couldn't have seen the misinformation machine that Facebook was
Speaker 2: going to become, with like all these bad actors and
Speaker 2: all you know, sort of the ways that you could
Speaker 2: abuse the systems, Like we didn't know that that was
Speaker 2: going to be a thing until like we started to
Speaker 2: see the actual abuse. How do you protect against the
Speaker 2: things where you've got to take in like the worst
Speaker 2: of humanity? Like, are you doing that on an active basis?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Because like the thing with a tool like this is
Speaker 2: that the best parts of humanity will find like amazing
Speaker 2: things to do with it. But there is an equal
Speaker 2: opposite actor there, right, who will do the worst things
Speaker 2: with it. So tell me, like how that you build
Speaker 2: a product like this and don't let it become destructive.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So my life philosophy is that creators imbuing their values
Speaker 3: and the things they create, whether they know it or not,
Speaker 3: and that those things have a way of spreading those
Speaker 3: values even when they're no longer around. That does actually
Speaker 3: put a lot of blame on people like Zuckerberg. It
Speaker 3: implies that he made Facebook with the wrong values. I
Speaker 3: don't know, Mark, But an interesting example that I like
Speaker 3: to think about is the defaults of something like Facebook
Speaker 3: versus MySpace. Like obviously he was aware of MySpace. We
Speaker 3: know that, right, definitely with the main compeditor.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And when I remember going out to MySpace for the
Speaker 3: first time and my page was blank and it' said
Speaker 3: I had one friend, I was like, who's my friend?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it's Tom, Right, Who's Tom? You know,
Speaker 3: it's this nice guy he's the guy maker of MySpace.
Speaker 3: This is cool, Like Tom's my friend. He must care
Speaker 3: about me. I bet I could make other friends that
Speaker 3: I don't know, like my face's places where I can
Speaker 3: make friends, right, and Tom cares. And when you sign
Speaker 3: on to Facebook, you have no friends and markus certainly
Speaker 3: not your friend.
Speaker 2: I never consider this. But he's not your first friend
Speaker 2: on Facebook. That's definitely like what the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 2: What the fuck does that mean?
Speaker 3: Not only is he not your first friend, but you
Speaker 3: have no friends when you join right right right? When
Speaker 3: you join Facebook, you are this friendless non person then,
Speaker 3: and you have to try to grab out to anybody
Speaker 3: who you already know, like please, somebody who already knows
Speaker 3: me be my friend on Facebook? Right?
Speaker 2: Interesting? Huh?
Speaker 3: And like these there's like these really deep details that
Speaker 3: are made by real people who have values, Like he
Speaker 3: had to think about this, obviously he thought about Like
Speaker 3: he's not dumb, like he must have thought about it.
Speaker 2: I mean maybe he wanted to be your first friend,
Speaker 2: but they were like actually, like MySpace, Tom could sue
Speaker 2: us for like IP stuff like infringement if we do
Speaker 2: the same thing that he did.
Speaker 3: You know, I think we know he wasn't that cautious
Speaker 3: about being suited because it happened, right, Uh, that's true.
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of interesting things like that. I think
Speaker 3: that actually maybe everything is that way. The goal is
Speaker 3: like not to not make things, but to make things
Speaker 3: with like really good values and and to have people
Speaker 3: with good values making things, and like that making things
Speaker 3: is not equivalent between any people.
Speaker 2: I agree with you, but like what is the expression,
Speaker 2: like the road to Hell's paved with good intentions? Whatever?
Speaker 2: I mean, I agree that that you can avoid some
Speaker 2: of these mistakes like if you have a different set
Speaker 2: of like goals or values, But like do you already
Speaker 2: do things with mid Journey where you're trying to sort
Speaker 2: of protect against like misuse, right, Like yeah, obviously like
Speaker 2: hate speech or images of violence. I mean I definitely
Speaker 2: like tried some stuff that I didn't think was like
Speaker 2: going to produce a violent result, and it was like,
Speaker 2: we don't do like this kind of image or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I actually have a question about porn, which is a
Speaker 2: big one. Go ahead, Yeah, I mean my guess is
Speaker 2: if you wanted Mid Journey to create like incredible original
Speaker 2: like porn scenes, because there's a lot of pornography on
Speaker 2: the Internet, right, would you say there's quite a bit
Speaker 2: of it, and it's all a visual medium basically. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean there's obviously some erotica out there. There's somewhere
Speaker 2: You've got the X rated Mid Journey instance running right
Speaker 2: where I can create like full on porn scenes, right,
Speaker 2: don't lie to me. I know the truth. Somebody there
Speaker 2: is doing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, when I first thought about this problem, I
Speaker 3: was like, who wants an AI generated booty?
Speaker 2: Who doesn't?
Speaker 3: And then like, honestly, as the albhims get over time,
Speaker 3: like I see some booty, then I'm like, it's a
Speaker 3: pretty nice booty, Like it's pretty good, pretty good. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like it obviously can do really good like just how
Speaker 3: you can make beautiful anything else.
Speaker 2: I mean that's a huge deal though, Like I can't
Speaker 2: even do like a Renaissance painting of nudes like tasteful
Speaker 2: artistic news with mid Journey correct, No, right, Like is
Speaker 2: there a tier where I can do nudes? This is
Speaker 2: really just I'm asking for myself. But like, you know, no,
Speaker 2: you're not gonna let anybody ever do a nude.
Speaker 3: I you know, I think it's about like, what is
Speaker 3: the thing that like helps the world, like what and
Speaker 3: so like. For example, there are two things we have tried.
Speaker 3: I can give you two stories. Okay, Well, one is
Speaker 3: when their system wasn't filtering well enough, you'd have people
Speaker 3: trying to basically create like their fantasy person basically and
Speaker 3: they're like becomes super fixated on like this redhead whatever,
Speaker 3: like it becomes this very specific thing over time. Right,
Speaker 3: I don't know if that feels healthy. It's certainly a market.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, by the way that phrase, I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's healthy, but it's certainly a market. Is
Speaker 2: like ninety percent of the things that are available online,
Speaker 2: like literally social media is like I don't know if
Speaker 2: it's healthy, but there's certainly to.
Speaker 3: Someone's going to do it, and I think it's not
Speaker 3: going to be healthy right now. There are other things
Speaker 3: that we tried. So for example, we did this thing
Speaker 3: where we created this chat room and we called it
Speaker 3: not safe, don't judge, and we threw like a hundred
Speaker 3: people into it, and we turned off all the filters,
Speaker 3: oh my god, just to see what would happen, Oh
Speaker 3: my god, And it was really interesting. We put them
Speaker 3: all in and we go, there's no filters everybody. You
Speaker 3: can do whatever you want, but everyone else is going
Speaker 3: to see what you see. There's got to be some
Speaker 3: people who would be shameless in that scenario. It was
Speaker 3: very quiet at first, and then someone goes boobs and
Speaker 3: then there's some booth pictures and someone goes like ass
Speaker 3: and that it was a good ass picture, and everyone's
Speaker 3: like kind of startled it for us, like they didn't
Speaker 3: know what to do, right, and then somebody goes, uh,
Speaker 3: fifty percent orgy in a Walmart and it just like
Speaker 3: these piles of good bodies in a Walmart sounds very disturbing.
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden, everyone else goes, uh,
Speaker 3: it was fifty percent orgy in space, alien orgies, and
Speaker 3: then all of a sudden everyone starts losing their minds
Speaker 3: and it gets really strange. Eventually it went to like
Speaker 3: Bill Cosby eating out Hitler, Like it got pretty intense.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I mean that's a very, that's a very,
Speaker 2: that's a full cancel on that image. I would say, yeah, everything, But.
Speaker 3: What was happening was like it became so absurd, Yeah,
Speaker 3: that everyone just started to kind of like let go
Speaker 3: of all of the bullshit that they knew that like
Speaker 3: that they would normally be outraged of. And when somebody
Speaker 3: finally did Bill Cosby eating out Hitler, like that was
Speaker 3: like an hour in okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and is that when you shut it down? Was
Speaker 2: that this was that when you closed that?
Speaker 4: I shut it down shortly after.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But that's like such a small sample and like
Speaker 2: it went immediately to a place that would defend like
Speaker 2: probably ninety nine percent of the normal users of the Internet.
Speaker 3: But I think what's interesting to hop about psychological experience
Speaker 3: of all people had in this room as it went
Speaker 3: from like boobs right to like, you know, they kind
Speaker 3: of escalated to like fifty percent orgy in Walmart.
Speaker 2: Isn't that what always happens though, like you're testing the limits.
Speaker 3: No, but like no, but what happened was it's like
Speaker 3: at some point they kind of like let go right
Speaker 3: during this process and they were like it doesn't matter anymore. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Bill cosbyah Hitler, that's really funny. Or someone else did
Speaker 3: like Michael Jackson's asshole and it did like a buttthole
Speaker 3: where the hole was Michael Jackson's face.
Speaker 4: It was funny, it was weird, you know, those people.
Speaker 2: Thought it was funny, but like a very large audience
Speaker 2: would not think that was funny. So the thing so like,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not funny, like at it at a
Speaker 2: kind of basic level, like you know, the Cosby stuff
Speaker 2: is really fucked up and Hitler is Hitler. So like
Speaker 2: at a really kind of basic level. If you're like
Speaker 2: in good taste, that's very very not in good But
Speaker 2: there was no taste anymore. It was like everyone just
Speaker 2: like lost it.
Speaker 3: They're like, look, nothing matters, like it's all bullshit, like
Speaker 3: it doesn't really like everyone kind of let go. It
Speaker 3: felt very ethartic. At first, they were really shy, and
Speaker 3: by the end they had all let go. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: was kind of a beautiful process. I don't know though,
Speaker 3: but like it went to a place that was pretty offensive, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm glad that you don't allow that particular
Speaker 3: type of use in the broad I think it was
Speaker 3: really interesting and I would say everybody who was involved
Speaker 3: in the Spear and stelt it with like cathartic, right,
Speaker 3: and a positive like spiritual experience, right, because they realized
Speaker 3: how pent up they were in stupid ways and like
Speaker 3: maybe the last thing was bad, like we could.
Speaker 4: Say that was bad, but there was something.
Speaker 2: No the last thing was bad. The last one was bad.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't want to be like a you know,
Speaker 2: like the policing culture or whatever. But I mean you
Speaker 2: could do it, but no. But the reality is like,
Speaker 2: actually like it. I think that raises an interesting sort
Speaker 2: of scenario, And it's like, what do people do when
Speaker 2: given this kind of unbridled power to create whatever's in
Speaker 2: their mind? Like I like to think people come up
Speaker 2: with like really cool stuff that's like awesome, but definitely
Speaker 2: for sure, there's a segment of the audience. And this
Speaker 2: is actually gets back to what I was asking, which
Speaker 2: is like, so you ran an experiment with a roomful of people.
Speaker 2: They were just like users, like test like beta users
Speaker 2: or something.
Speaker 4: There was a bunch of users.
Speaker 3: We did it for one hour, right, and I said,
Speaker 3: if anybody leaked an image, I would ban them for life.
Speaker 2: Right. So that's your little kind of window into it.
Speaker 2: You're like, Okay, this could get pretty crazy. Oh yeah, obviously,
Speaker 2: the way you've built the system is that you cannot
Speaker 2: do those things. I guess. Like the question is like
Speaker 2: do you have to be constantly vigilant about like the
Speaker 2: ways that the thing might be abused? Like how do
Speaker 2: you counter like abuse you haven't even thought of yet.
Speaker 3: We have like forty moderators who kind of watch things
Speaker 3: and then they just they have they have a little
Speaker 3: slash band commands, so they say slash band titties and also,
Speaker 3: no key is the word titties anymore?
Speaker 2: Right? Are you actively like yesterday, was there something that
Speaker 2: mid Journey produced that was like a surprise to the moderators.
Speaker 4: I know that there are words that were banned today.
Speaker 2: Like what what was banned? I'm super curious, Like, but
Speaker 2: today you're way far into it. There's like, how many
Speaker 2: people have used mid Journey? Do you know the numbers? Million,
Speaker 2: millions of people. Yeah, so millions of people have been
Speaker 2: in there. But you're still today as of October fifth
Speaker 2: or whatever. Yeah, you've banned words. I'd love to know
Speaker 2: what the last band word was.
Speaker 3: Moderators came back recently and they're like, David, we want
Speaker 3: to unband the following words blood, bloody, sexy, kill, killing, cutting, disturbing,
Speaker 3: and gut.
Speaker 2: Wow. What an image.
Speaker 3: They're like, what do you think, David? We could probably
Speaker 3: unban those things. And I was like, Okay, let me
Speaker 3: think about this. Uh, child with guts, Bible across the ground,
Speaker 3: disturbing huge pools of blood and like, ooh, yeah, we
Speaker 3: probably don't want that right where I was like a
Speaker 3: little girl cutting themselves, Like oh yeah, that seems bad right.
Speaker 2: Well key, But so here's my question for you, And
Speaker 2: I think you've got like kind of a crazy responsibility.
Speaker 2: And I'm not saying this to be a jerk at all,
Speaker 2: but like you're just like a guy who's interested in
Speaker 2: creating this product and create this kind of beautiful and
Speaker 2: imaginative and exciting images and beyond. But you're not like
Speaker 2: a linguist. I don't know you're all of your background,
Speaker 2: but I mean, like you're not like an ethicist. Do
Speaker 2: you employ an ethicist at the company? Do you employ
Speaker 2: like linguistic experts? How diverse is the team? I think
Speaker 2: these are like things that people are going to want
Speaker 2: to know, which is like you mentioned the Bill Cosby
Speaker 2: Hitler thing, and I can think of like a bunch
Speaker 2: of people who are not like a white Jewish guy.
Speaker 2: And I say this as a white Jewish guy who
Speaker 2: would be much more offended about some of that stuff,
Speaker 2: or people with different experience.
Speaker 3: That as an example of a pretty outrageous thing that
Speaker 3: was my outrageous and I get that, and no, no, I
Speaker 3: understand it.
Speaker 2: Like you were in this experiment, somebody took you to
Speaker 2: this crazy place and then you're like, all right, we
Speaker 2: got to shut it down. This is sort of what
Speaker 2: I was trying to get to is like, how do
Speaker 2: you make a company that has all the lofty and
Speaker 2: interesting and exciting ideals I think you have, but also
Speaker 2: protect against building a product that ultimately ends up repeating
Speaker 2: the mistakes of the facebooks or the twitters of the world.
Speaker 2: And the question does come down to, like when you're
Speaker 2: having those conversations, who's in the room, who's having that
Speaker 2: conversation with you? Like, what are you going to do?
Speaker 2: This is my being putting my hardcore journalist hat on,
Speaker 2: Like what are you going to do to make sure
Speaker 2: that you have conversations with a big enough set of
Speaker 2: people and with a smart enough set of people who
Speaker 2: are experts in these fields, like in the fields of
Speaker 2: like ethics and linguistics and like you know, history, and
Speaker 2: that it's a diverse group, like to actually make a
Speaker 2: product that serves everybody and not just one that feels
Speaker 2: like cool to like a couple of you know, Jewish guys,
Speaker 2: like us, but may not work for a million other
Speaker 2: people in the world.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's a lot of questions there. I'm
Speaker 3: okay not serving everybody. Like if this is I Maginty's
Speaker 3: a two million person thing, is ever bigger than that, I'm.
Speaker 2: Happy with that. But you want to make it inclusive,
Speaker 2: I would assume, Yeah, I want it to be inclusive.
Speaker 3: But also if it's only two million people, I'd be
Speaker 3: okay with that, Like I don't, like, I'm not I
Speaker 3: don't have this like this desire.
Speaker 2: You want two million of the same people, though you
Speaker 2: don't want two million to the same people, two million
Speaker 2: white Jewish guys.
Speaker 3: If it makes two million white Jewish guys really happy
Speaker 3: and improves their lives in a significant way, like they've
Speaker 3: made the world better. Now, obviously I'd like to make
Speaker 3: it diverse, like and we try really hard there. But
Speaker 3: like I mean, at the end of the day, it's
Speaker 3: it's more important that it's good for the people who
Speaker 3: interact with it then that it has as many people
Speaker 3: as possible.
Speaker 4: And that's the first trade off.
Speaker 3: That's the first that's a huge trade off, because most
Speaker 3: people decided to not make that trade off.
Speaker 2: No, I agree with you that, like, if you're thinking
Speaker 2: of like the infinite audience, obviously you don't want to
Speaker 2: be like every person should be in this thing or
Speaker 2: using this thing or whatever. But like, I guess it's
Speaker 2: such a sensitive space where like you've built a tool
Speaker 2: that can create something out of nothing, Like you build
Speaker 2: a tool that can make a dream look like real basically,
Speaker 2: And so yeah, you know, how do you do it
Speaker 2: the right way? But I feel like here's a chance
Speaker 2: to bring a bunch of people into the conversation that
Speaker 2: were never there at Google on day one. When I
Speaker 2: think about any new technology like this, I always think now,
Speaker 2: and perhaps because I've been so abused by the technology
Speaker 2: companies that have existed before us, you know what could
Speaker 2: go wrong? Right? And how do you prevent that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there are a lot of things we do, so
Speaker 3: like I do office hours every week for four hours
Speaker 3: where I just talk to as many people as I can.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'll do a theme thing like I brought up
Speaker 3: like twelve women once and I said, like, let's have
Speaker 3: a women panel, and I want to ask everybody how
Speaker 3: do you feel about bikini photos? Like should I ban bikini?
Speaker 2: And that's one way of getting the women's side of things.
Speaker 3: Because every single day I heard some asshole dude who's like,
Speaker 3: hits are natural. I like, bikini photos, have as many
Speaker 3: as you can, and then like women who are uncomfortable,
Speaker 3: And I was like, you know what, I just want
Speaker 3: to hear a bunch of women talk about this issue
Speaker 3: of how do you feel aout the bikini photos and
Speaker 3: like I will do whatever you say.
Speaker 4: I was like, should I ban bikinis? That was like
Speaker 4: the simplest question.
Speaker 2: Did you ban bikinis?
Speaker 3: They decided group like we do not want you to
Speaker 3: band bikinis, like ninety five percent. It was like pretty unanimous,
Speaker 3: but we want you to hide them so that none
Speaker 3: of us ever have to see some dude making a bikini.
Speaker 4: And so that's what we did.
Speaker 2: It's a good middle ground. To me, this is so
Speaker 2: weird because like the reality is like the naked human
Speaker 2: body is that I'm not like, on its face offensive
Speaker 2: to me in any way, Like it's like very normal.
Speaker 4: I agree, Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: It's like funny to think that you've got a buffer
Speaker 2: against like people abusing the system who are making weird
Speaker 2: like you know, sexual bikini photos or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean what the women basically said on the
Speaker 3: on the whole is that they're like they're basically even
Speaker 3: we like a little cleavage, but like.
Speaker 4: What an average guy thinks it's sexy.
Speaker 3: It's really easy for most of us to find creepy
Speaker 3: and unwelcoming, and so basically we don't have we don't
Speaker 3: feel like we should have to see that like against
Speaker 3: our will.
Speaker 2: That's so true both in AI and in life.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of these sort of nuanced things like technically,
Speaker 3: it probably should be able to do a tasteful nude,
Speaker 3: but it shouldn't be able to do like a hyper
Speaker 3: sexualized nude. Like technically like that seems right, you know,
Speaker 3: but it's it's hard. That's a really hard boundary, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean it's a question of art, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: what's porn? It's like, well, you know when you see it,
Speaker 3: and it's like, but there's different levels of that, right,
Speaker 3: have we even trying to teach the system? Actually lately
Speaker 3: some of these nuances. We have certain users who go
Speaker 3: in and they rate images randomly. Right, We find that
Speaker 3: on the whole, people very rarely say anything is offensive,
Speaker 3: like very rare, so when they say it, it's interesting, right,
Speaker 3: And then we and we aggreate all those together, and
Speaker 3: then we teach the AI. We're like, hey, regardless of
Speaker 3: whether or not something is offensive, this is how people
Speaker 3: are responding to your images.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 4: And then what it does it actually changed its behavior?
Speaker 2: Do you worry you're you're creating a kind of prudish AI? Like,
Speaker 2: do you worry that, like you're actually making a sexually
Speaker 2: repressed AI that like is going to be weird about
Speaker 2: sex and human bodies.
Speaker 3: I think the question is, like when we build these technologies,
Speaker 3: like what battles do you want to fight?
Speaker 4: And where do we want to push the world forward?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: And like me, I want the world to be more imaginative,
Speaker 3: like and I want to push the boundaries of like
Speaker 3: aesthetics in creation. I think that's really interesting and it
Speaker 3: is really worthwhile. But I can be a little picky.
Speaker 3: I'm not as interested in doing that or violence sexuality. Right,
Speaker 3: there is an argument we have to push the batteries
Speaker 3: of sexuality. Let's make the world way more sexual. Someone
Speaker 3: else can do that. I just don't feel.
Speaker 4: Spiritually compelled for that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I think that, like there's this broader thing,
Speaker 3: which is like letting people reflect. The average person comes
Speaker 3: in here and they say something like Maltese dog in
Speaker 3: heaven and I reach out. I'm like, hey, why'd you
Speaker 3: do that? That's interesting and they go because my dog
Speaker 3: just died. And I'm like, oh shit, are you okay?
Speaker 3: And they're like yeah, this is making me feel better.
Speaker 3: Where there was like another woman and she goes like
Speaker 3: she was putting in these weird lyrics and I'm like,
Speaker 3: what are you doing? Like these don't show up on
Speaker 3: Google and she goes, When I was very young, my
Speaker 3: older brother died and all he left me was this,
Speaker 3: like this cassette tape.
Speaker 4: Of these thongs.
Speaker 3: And I'm literally just putting lyrics in and I'm feeling
Speaker 3: closest person never got to be part of my life.
Speaker 4: Wow, it's not always death.
Speaker 3: There was one person who was like Temple of Donuts,
Speaker 3: Like why are you doing Temple of Donuts? And like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm an atheist, but I don't really understand worship or religion,
Speaker 3: but I do understand like donuts and sweets. It's like
Speaker 3: combining all the things I don't understand one of the
Speaker 3: things I do understand, and I'm like trying to understand,
Speaker 3: like what is worship?
Speaker 4: The Hong Kong girl. So she said, I'm a woman.
Speaker 3: I'm in Hong Kong, and the one thing your parents talk,
Speaker 3: I never want you to be as an artist. And
Speaker 3: so I'm a banker and I'm a good banker. But
Speaker 3: now as I'm starting to get to use Mid Journey,
Speaker 3: I'm starting to get to feel like I'm getting to
Speaker 3: be the person I never got to be, and I'm
Speaker 3: having to think about that.
Speaker 4: And so like these are like the good stories.
Speaker 2: They're like, no, those are great stories.
Speaker 4: Somebody else is.
Speaker 5: Just like huge chits covered in blood and it's like
Speaker 5: I don't care about that person. That's not a real
Speaker 5: human story, and like maybe there's something going on there,
Speaker 5: but it's not interesting. Like there's so many interesting things
Speaker 5: going on, and I want to create a space for that,
Speaker 5: and I'm doing that. There's a path that we see
Speaker 5: over and over again with people in Mid Journey almost
Speaker 5: call like the heroes in Mid Journey. And what happens
Speaker 5: is they come in and they realize they can make
Speaker 5: pictures of something they like. For me, with cats and cyberpunk, right,
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, I make sappunk cats.
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, I'll make tarpunk shitte.
Speaker 3: Pre Charpuk Ninjas and make Starapunks and I'm making chappok everything.
Speaker 3: And then all of a sudden, like you combine all
Speaker 3: the things you like and then you just burn out
Speaker 3: and you're like, oh my god, I never liked sypunk.
Speaker 4: I never want to see starpunk again. Starpunk isn't me.
Speaker 3: And then and then it's like month one, Month one,
Speaker 3: and then month two is You're like, but then who
Speaker 3: am I? And then you start looking at everybody else's pictures.
Speaker 3: You're like art deco, am I art deco? Or like
Speaker 3: vapor ways, am I vapor waves? And then you start
Speaker 3: like looking at everything and you're and you're kind of
Speaker 3: saying like you know, and you're trying to do this
Speaker 3: path of like who am I?
Speaker 4: What is my real aesthetic? And then you learn a lot.
Speaker 3: People learn like all this hard history and all these movements,
Speaker 3: and they start putting things together into like the sense
Speaker 3: of who they are. And then like month three is
Speaker 3: like you have this like aesthetic universe and you're starting
Speaker 3: to like apply it to everything. You're like, it's like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's a little bit of this, a little
Speaker 3: bit of that. It's all these things together and you're
Speaker 3: like creating all this stuff, and it's like you're like
Speaker 3: having to like your people are paying.
Speaker 4: Off pathetic debts.
Speaker 3: They're like exploring the nature of their identities and then
Speaker 3: they're like expressing it. They're like it's like they're working
Speaker 3: on all this shit, and like it's really really healthy
Speaker 3: and it's literally just regular people and almost nobody shares anything.
Speaker 3: It's crazy, like almost no pictures ever shared and almost
Speaker 3: no pictures ever sold, right, And it's just like it's
Speaker 3: mostly just regular people having this like really healthy experience.
Speaker 2: So to be clear, basically you see this as a
Speaker 2: form of therapy. Is that correct?
Speaker 4: At least thirty percent of all the use is literally
Speaker 4: art therapy.
Speaker 2: Right, Wow, mental health through ai I was.
Speaker 3: Entirely unexpected, but it's really important. It's clearly this tool
Speaker 3: for reflection. And then people are starting to meet each
Speaker 3: other like and they're starting to like form these groups
Speaker 3: and they're like pushing these aesthetic boundaries and discovering new
Speaker 3: things and like that's really beautiful and it's obviously part
Speaker 3: of an honest and positive future, right, and like that's
Speaker 3: what I care about.
Speaker 2: Okay, really quickly, and then we got to wrap up,
Speaker 2: But do you think that like there's a future state
Speaker 2: where it's like mid Journey is its own Instagram.
Speaker 3: There's gonna be like that, but it's crazier. I think
Speaker 3: the future is more of like, well, it's more like
Speaker 3: liquid imagination swirling around the room and like forming mountains
Speaker 3: and little trees and animals and little ruins. You're trying
Speaker 3: to figure out how to get people's surfboards or boats
Speaker 3: like surf like oceans of liquid imagination, like discover entirely
Speaker 3: new lands. But it's like very different thing, and it's
Speaker 3: like it forms like a new substance that you kind
Speaker 3: of can create the world with and manifest through and
Speaker 3: like reflect through, and like that's what it's about.
Speaker 4: It's like creating a new substance.
Speaker 3: It's really not about like making an Instagram or making
Speaker 3: poor or huge tips. It's obvious that all that stuff
Speaker 3: will happen, but that it doesn't matter, Like it's not
Speaker 3: the real thing. It's like there was a civilization before
Speaker 3: engines and after engines, and now the fun thing is
Speaker 3: moving to a civilization that has these engines of imagination,
Speaker 3: and how does that transform things?
Speaker 4: Like how did engines stright?
Speaker 3: I think we have highways, we have boats, we have
Speaker 3: like huge international trade, Like there's.
Speaker 2: Like a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's all stark. A lot of people in technology
Speaker 3: feel like we have no pasts. A lot of regular
Speaker 3: people literally feel like we have no future, right, But
Speaker 3: like I feel like like we're really mid journey in this,
Speaker 3: Like we have this rich and beautiful past behind us
Speaker 3: and this like wondrous and unimaginable future ahead of us, right,
Speaker 3: And like the whole goal of making anything is to
Speaker 3: figure out what we can be and what that can
Speaker 3: be in like a positive and explorative and wonderful, humane way.
Speaker 4: And like I don't know. That's what I'm trying to
Speaker 4: do and hopefully it shows up a little bit in
Speaker 4: the stuff.
Speaker 2: But like I agree, I'm so on board with that sentiment.
Speaker 2: Like I one hundred percent agree, Like we don't know
Speaker 2: yet what all of this is going to be be.
Speaker 2: It's like we have to figure that out. And that's
Speaker 2: why like people are like we're done, and it's like, no,
Speaker 2: we just really got started, like with technology, I think,
Speaker 2: and what it can do. I agree, Like you, you
Speaker 2: are echoing a sentiment that I have definitely spoken on
Speaker 2: on more than one occasion. David, this is first off,
Speaker 2: super fucking interesting shit that you're building. Extremely fascinating conversation.
Speaker 2: We should do like a check in like a year
Speaker 2: from now or something to see all of the new
Speaker 2: mid journey things that have been created.
Speaker 4: So it's gonna get really scary. Even the next six months,
Speaker 4: six months is going to be really intense.
Speaker 3: Like six months is the farthest I can see twelve
Speaker 3: months actually, I actually don't.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll do a six month check in. We'll see
Speaker 2: if bid journey is that it's like three quarter journey.
Speaker 4: It's gonna be.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's gonna be.
Speaker 4: It's it's gonna be moving really fast.
Speaker 3: It's kinda seemed frightening to a lot of people, but
Speaker 3: it's like it's it's like an honest shot at the future.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I'm ready, David, Thank you so much. Well, that is
Speaker 2: our show for this week. We'll be back next week
Speaker 2: with more what Future, And as always, I wish you
Speaker 2: and your family the very best.