A short bonus episode showcasing a few stand out moments from this week's guest interview with Russ Mashmeyer Meta AI) ~ 

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 Hey, welcome to another bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. This is episode number 28 of this season, and it's scheduled on a Christmas day. I kind of hope you're not listening to this on a Christmas day. I hope you're having time with your family, enjoying your roast potatoes or whatever the food that you have.

 And I wanna thank you for being here, for listening to these episodes and supporting the podcast because it's been joy to make this, and it makes me happy that you're here. As you know, I'm back to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversations, pulling out those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper in what makes them special.

I'm always on the lookout for those ideas that hit differently. This week, I spoke to Rass Meyer, a product design director at Meta. Her bridge is fine. Art, music, and artificial intelligence in pursuit of curiosity about how things work and what becomes possible next. The episode was titled Dare to Build At the Speed of Curiosity, and we talked about so many magnificent things about his career, and talk about his belief that [00:01:00] software is an artistic medium and that technology should accelerate human creativity rather than replace it.

 If you haven't checked out a full interview yet, let me start with these four moments that stood out from our conversation. 

Russell: I think kids really need to see adults play, right? They need to see that continuity, that that behavior that they just engage so naturally in as kids is okay in adulthood because so much of adulthood is about sort of taking care of priorities and getting down to business and and getting stuff done.

 But opening up that window to let your kids see you flub a line or fail, but do it with a smile and having fun and like doing something together in synchrony with other people that creates moments of, beauty and wonder and awesomeness. 

So, in the world of obsessed with optimization and getting down to business, Russ argues that we silently teach in children that creativity expires in adulthood, [00:02:00] creating a cultural crisis where entire generations believe that plays frivolous.

making things just because is irresponsible. He's not saying kids need to see adults succeed at creative projects, but specifically see them flub a line or fail with a smile. 'cause it's teaching them resilience differently than a competitive environment's. Not about trying hard and winning.

It's about continuing because the act itself brings joy. Russ argues that we must let children see you be bad at something, struggle with it, and choose to keep going. Teaching that creativity is a practice and not just talent. His son learning drums while watching his dad fumble through a song, teaches something most enrichment programs can't.

 Creativity is a lifelong practice, not a childhood phase. You graduate from when you become serious. We are in the middle of a society where children see adults working, managing, optimizing, but rarely playing or creating for joy. Training generations to believe creativity is something you're out of age, [00:03:00] contributing to epidemic levels of adult creative paralysis.

So this moment supports my book thesis about daring creativity. If kids never see adults dare fail and continue, we can't expect them to dare into creative careers. creative risk taking must be modeled as intentionally as responsibly.

Russell: I think people get really worried by the idea that AI can replace human cognitive function and creativity. But I actually think that that's not fundamentally what AI models do. AI models compute and deliver the mean the average of a particular request or topic.

And they trained to do that. That's, the goal of the model, is to deliver mediocre, average expected results. And that's just not what pushes culture forward, right? But if you have a particular area where you go really, like you're an incredible painter, but you're really bad at writing your artist abstract, well, [00:04:00] gosh, you've got a great tool to help you get your words onto the page in a way that can make sense to other people supporting your intent, driving your painting work forward, but supported by ai, not replaced by.

As you can tell, one of the reasons why I wanted Russ on the podcast is because he's at the forefront of AI development at Meta, and I wanted to know his view on this thing because I believe there's as much excitement about AI as there is a fear, and sometimes I think the fear is winning a lot more.

 Because the media, when you think about it, media, pedals, apocalyptic narratives, Andras, who literally designs AI products and meta reveals that AI is mathematically designed to calculate the statistical middle incapable of the cultural insights or lived experience that pushes fields forward. When creators fear AI replacement, they imagine something superhuman.

Shows that isn't a limitation that will be solved. It's fundamental to how these models work. [00:05:00] Produce an average by design, not breakthrough thinking. And in a world where everyone can create good enough content, instantly the the differentiator becomes having something interesting to say.

 having a perspective that matters or timing that's culturally relevant. Taste that cuts through the noise because AI raised the floor for everyone making the ceiling and your unique voice more valuable than ever. So understanding AI as inherently average helps you use it correctly not to create core creative work, To handle the average stuff you're not great at and while work that moves people still requires bringing something the models can calculate. so rather than making traditional creatives abilities obsolete AI's limitations prove that skills matter more.

 knowing what's culturally relevant, what resonates with humans, and what pushes fields forward, remains human territory that can't be averaged from training data. 

This actually [00:06:00] kind of connects to our earlier conversation about history a little bit, and I think one of the things that has been so important for me to understand or or to be able to somewhat reasonably have a sense of where things are gonna go or what's gonna hit, what's not gonna hit when you put it out in the market and let people try it is having that sense of cultural history, what things that came before, worked really well, why did those resonate for people?

Russell: And, and the more you kind of study the past and study history and study breakthroughs and sort of what was happening culturally around those things. Have that become like the lightning in the bottle that it became you begin to see like a lot of patterns that feel really immutable for people over time.

And I think like coming back to the point around ai, it's like there have been many cycles of this in the history of, in commercial. Activity and industrialization, I mean, particularly [00:07:00] in the art realm, like you, you go back to photography and Walter Benjamin and like his essays on just the cultural uproar over photography as like a fine art medium.

 Or even just as a mechanism to reproduce what artists traditionally had to do a hundred percent of, they had to paint every panel that came to a printer or sort of found its way to the public in one form or another. And of course, photography comes along and mechanical reproduction and suddenly it becomes almost industrialized.

 in the field, obsessed with what's next. Russell's advantage is understanding what came before, identifying Which patterns in human behavior are immutable across technological shifts, letting him build products that feel simultaneously cutting edge and inevitable because they address the need that have always existed while tech culture fetishizes speed and disruption at the expense of context, RAs argues that to build the future, well [00:08:00] you must be a student of the past.

The photography parallel isn't trivial. It's a framework for understanding what actually matter about AI versus the noise. Most feature of AI conversations are dominated by engineers discussing model architectures RA shows that more important skill is cultural literacy.

understanding why certain innovations click. Historically, it's opening space for artists, historians, and cultural critics to have essential voice in shaping AI's trajectory. by studying past breakthroughs and what's happening culturally around us, you begin to see patterns that feel immutable for people over time.

 in this moment, I really enjoy and understanding from Russ that every field has an ongoing conversation.

About what do we want this to become and what's possible? ' if you get good at ingesting context, after today, you immediately have jumping of opportunities to build into the space. with things that bring joy, value, [00:09:00] and help people do what's important to them.

Russell: I'm no longer in Figma, sort of like, plan, okay, what's the perfect UI for this experience? devoid of any actual interaction with the software or the model and I can just go plug into a model, start building UI around it. Like really, it feels like going from a place of having to perfectly detailed draw, you know, a realistic drawing of something to sculpt. I feel like I can sculpt software now where I'm bringing rough pieces together. Core functionality, big pieces, getting them locked in, getting them functioning together, and then slowly refining and honing the expression of those, the input, the output, you know, the interactions once it's functional and working to get it really dialed into a place where it's satisfying and compelling and already fully functional.

 And I think that's so magical. As a creator, as somebody who enjoys creating [00:10:00] software as as an artistic medium in, in a sense being able to do that solo and have that immediate feedback loop. Not having to convince an engineer to take hours to hand code some dumb idea that I had in five minutes and drew out on a napkin sketch, but just to literally take a photo of that napkin sketch and send it to cursor and be like, here's what I was thinking.

Two minutes later, being able to play with a prototype of that and make a decision about whether it's any good or not that's what I'm gonna be doing for the next five years I think.

 and this is a really interesting moment. 'cause for decades, building software required extensive planning because feedback loops by slow, Let's say you design something in Figma, wait for engineers, discover your ideas, doesn't work, et cetera, et cetera.

 Andras describes collapse in weeks into minutes. Sketch it on napkin, photograph it, prompt AI test, working prototype immediately. This isn't just faster. It's a different creative process entirely. to draw.

Something is about perfecting before committing. Every line [00:11:00] matters because erasure is costly. Sculpting is about getting rough material into space, seeing how it sits, and then refine it iteratively. RAs SHO's AI has made software creation three dimensional in a way it was never possible before. You can feel your way through ideas rather than perfectly conceive them upfront.

 Rasco is himself an artist working in a software medium. and that shift is real. 'cause when you scalp software solo with immediate feedback loops, not managing teams or convincing stakeholders.

You're directly expressing creative vision through code, like a painting with a brush. Historically, design is dependent on engineers to manifest ideas, creating hierarchy, even communication friction. Now designers can build anything prototype themselves, changing collaboration dynamics from convince someone to build my schedule to refined work and software together.

US grew up where everything was new all the time, felt constrained by software, slow [00:12:00] iteration cycles, and now finds himself in the moment where everything is new again. He can build anything he wants with immediate feedback, returning that childhood sense of possibility at scale.

Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode. Merry Christmas again, and I hope to see you on the next one.