Creative Unblock, Ethical Tensions, and Pragmatism with Luke Murphy

Luke: [0:16] Oh, I mean, have you seen the news recently? Uh, because th- it's hard. but, um, you know, to, to keep it positive. you know what? The biggest thing for me is the, uh, ability to do stuff these days. That's a very broad, way of answering it, the amount that you can just get shit done these days and get stuff started and, definitely what's getting me up, and the ability, like, to spin up ridiculous projects or start on stupid ideas or, you know, write a song and have stuff help you. That's the stuff that's actually been getting me excited in the morning. It's also stopping me from sleeping every night. So it's a really vicious cycle.

Brad: [0:53] One, I, I love that, and I love that framing. Not that-- Well, not the, not the you not sleeping part. You should And we should talk

Luke: [1:02] Yeah.

Brad: [1:03] I love what feels like here is this, this potential, and here is this, this, know, you're unblocked in many respects from actualizing the ideas that are in your

Luke: [1:17] Mm.

Brad: [1:19] we have an expanded, reading between the lines here, but it an

Luke: [1:25] Yeah. I mean, I don't wanna make this all about AI, but 'cause also it is one of those things I, you know, for my, uh, punk card and my socialist card, I have to say that I'm an AI skeptic, uh, which I am, uh, 'cause it is possibly gonna destroy us all. But at the same time, I don't know about you, but I feel like the democratization of anything, um, and making things more accessible is always a good thing. Yes, there's something-- there's some, you know, privilege that's wrapped up into that and, you know, only certain people have access, but let's park that for a second, which is, you know, an extremely privileged thing to say. but it's the same as, like, you know, back in the day when, you know, music, I know, you know, we're both massive music fans, and a large part of this is actually for me is music. Like, it's-- I feel like it's even un-unblocking music. But, you know, think back to when MySpace became a thing and all of a sudden we didn't have to- You know, schmooze A&R labels , A&R reps when they came to shows and, you know, you could actually get your stuff heard. And then, you know, democratization of like the home studio and being able to record stuff at home and like all the-- I think all of that is just phenomenal generally, and I do feel like we're at that point at the moment where it's kind of doing that for a lot of things now as well. it's just incredibly uncool to say, I feel in certain circles

Brad: [2:43] and, there's a lot there because as you said, there, there is a lot of the hard, and that's, that's been so much of the, tension and the unresolved tension in, in this moment in time, is that you're like, here is, here is stuff that is empowering people, is democratizing things, is making things more accessible that, that, that w- were, were out of reach before. a lot of really hard and gross stuff as well, and it's very, very difficult to, to,

Luke: [3:17] Unpick it.

Brad: [3:18] to, to live, Y- Like, 'cause we, we

Luke: [3:21] Yeah,

Brad: [3:22] this unresolved state.

Luke: [3:24] to me it is, it's the unblock as well. I have a real problem with a lot of, uh, you know, as somebody who, um, is self-diagnosed ADHD, I've never gone and got an official diagnosis, which I think is part of the official diagnosis, uh, 'cause I've, I keep getting distracted from not going and getting the official diagnosis. as an undiagnosed ADHD person, like I've got so many ideas constantly going through my head, but the blocker is then usually like, oh, you know, I'll get started on saying and then go, "Uh, this is taking too long." Um, so I'm just gonna, I'll park that. Um, you know, the amount of unfinished solo music projects that I've started and left, um, you know, if anybody does a deep dive on the internet, they can find horrendous remix projects. They can find-- I wrote a musical once. It was terrible, and I got halfway through it, but like we ended up staging it because, you know, why not? We'll just stage an unfinished product. But but you know, those like unfinished- But it is one of those things that I've always had a real problem with having that blocker and I don't know. I think that that is, it's definitely at the moment, especially on the music side, I'm just feeling at the moment like I don't know whether it is a mind state thing as well as, you know, the, the tools that are now, um, available, but, um, I'm just actioning all of them a lot, lot quicker and getting further than I ever have before, and it's a really nice feeling.

Brad: [4:49] This, this is great 'cause we get to talk about music, we about ADHD, we get to

Luke: [4:54] Yep.

Brad: [4:55] to, we get to talk about the

Luke: [4:56] Yep.

Brad: [4:57] we get to talk about digital stuff. This is great. This is fantastic. as a

Luke: [5:02] Yep. Oh.

Brad: [5:39] all of that stuff, all of just the this goes into this, and this goes into this, and why in the hell is this not working because I thought that this was there, the… And so you have that for, for each and every piece of gear that you have, you have a signal chain that needs to work in order to do it. I lo- I love people that are just like, "Here's me and my acoustic guitar," and is, and, and I, and I do that half the time as well. Like, I have this, like, little, like, bass ukulele, and that's, like, my go-to thing 'cause it's just, it's so visceral, it's so immediate. There's nothing to plug in. There's nothing to whatever. And but just even recording it, I, I almost never do anything with that. It's, it's just there as the, "I gotta play some music. Let's pick it up and go." But there's all this stuff, the electronic There's, there… I want to record it.

Luke: [6:32] Yeah.

Brad: [6:32] to put

Luke: [6:35] Yeah.

Brad: [6:40] all.

Luke: [6:40] And the time required.

Brad: [6:43] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. "Ah, I'm gonna sit down and play music," and I'm actually going to spend the next hour and a half, uh, messing around with, with wires and cable. this gets to one of my, that I'm trying to other people understand, is yes, there, are really gross applications of AI that are, in essence, sort of- Trying to do the, "Ah, yes, I

Luke: [7:10] Yeah.

Brad: [7:11] make the music for you so you don't have to We want

Luke: [7:16] Yep. Yeah. Yeah

Brad: [7:18] but because this is a general purpose technology, you could use this stuff to just keep your fucking instruments in tune and to make all of the things work together. And so what I did, I, I created like a whole Notion page where I just went through and I, like, barfed out every piece of gear I have and, and, like, screenshots of everything, and I just, like, took pictures of it all, and I'm like, "This goes into this, this goes into this goes into this."

Luke: [7:46] Yeah.

Brad: [7:48] it, diagram everything

Luke: [7:51] Yep.

Brad: [7:51] And when something doesn't work, I now say, "This isn't working," and it helps me, go, "Okay, so it looks like this is going into this. Have you considered this?" And it will, like, opportunistically pull for a piece of

Luke: [8:07] Yeah. It's the shortcuts, right? It's the shortcut. And, and I mean, that's the thing. Even then, like I-- 'cause I've been delving, I've been delving more into the growth side of it as well. Uh, but you're gonna have to hear me out as to why I think it's fine. it is one of those things, 'cause it's like I, I think, you know, even before all of this happened, all the AI, I think one of the biggest unlocks for me was, I've always felt like a massive imposter with music as well, 'cause I, You know, this is therapy time with, uh, Luke and Brad. back in school, I wanted to be good at music, and I was never great, and it w- there were always people who were better than me. And, but you know, I picked up a guitar, taught myself some chords, and like started to teach myself how to sing, and it was like just very gradual, and I was never as good as them. And then I remember when we were like choosing our final subjects for high school, I really wanted to do music, and so I like put, put it down. And the head music teacher came up to me and went, "You do realize that these last two years of school are basically a competition when it comes to music, so you'll be directly compared to the other people in your class. So what instrument are you gonna do?" And I was like, "Guitar and voice." And uh, he was like, "Yeah. The problem is, is, you know, Chris and Adrian are a lot better than you, so I just don't think that you're gonna do very well." Yeah, right? That, that's-- I'm pretty sure that's where my trauma started around music.

Brad: [9:30] Yeah, Here's a, here's

Luke: [9:32] one of… Yeah.

Brad: [9:34] person in a,

Luke: [9:35] Yeah.

Brad: [9:36] a

Luke: [9:36] Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: [9:38] just unpack that

Luke: [9:40] Yeah, yeah.

Brad: [9:41] a teacher saying that stuff. Like, I get

Luke: [9:46] Yeah. There's a… Yeah, it was… And I d- I do think part of it comes down, it's the systems that are in place, and I was a drama kid, and the drama department and the music department didn't like each other. So that was possibly part of it. Who knows? but from that, I just knew like I always had that level of, oh I'm not very good in comparison to other people. And even when I, you know, I went through, I did loads of… I, I mean, I ended up with a bloody music degree. Um, and, uh, but still thought, "Oh, it's not a real music degree 'cause it's not from one of the good music schools." and, uh, and, you know, did music theater. I ran my own cabaret company for a while. I was in bands back in Australia, and then when I got out here and started in bands. But even then, whenever I'd write music, I'd always be like, "Oh, it's derivative." Uh, because the way that I write music is I listen to other people's songs. I like, I like what they're doing. I figure out how to play it, and then I go, "Oh, I wanna write something similar to that." And, uh, the biggest unlock for me was after… You know, it didn't stop me, but, like, being in a band, starting to write music, and even then I think, you know, the guitarist in my band would always be like, "Yeah, but, you know, I can tell that you've written that having listened a lot to these bands recently." and I read a book, Frank Turner's Try This at Home, which is like he's a folk punk singer, a very big folk punk singer in the, in the UK. and he basically, all, all the book was was him going through individual songs and, where they came from, how he wrote them, all the rest of it. Every single song is, uh, this song is basically Bruce Springsteen's Dancing in the Dark, and I changed this chord and this chord to make it so it was more like me. And then when I took it into the rehearsal room, it morphed and, and changed. And I remember reading that going, " Oh. Oh, it's not just me then." Like, oh, successful people do this as well. that to me was like the first unlock in like I can do this stuff. And it's also why, I don't know, there's a little bit of me why I'm like less, timid about testing out some of the slightly grosser AI products is I'm like, yeah, I mean, they are heavily borrowing from, uh, established artists and patterns in, in songs that, that are happening. It's what every musician does, they just do it manually. So, so there's like a little bit of that. There's still… I mean, it's not as simple as that, and it is a lot more gray than that. Well, not gray. It's closer to black than that. But, so what I've been doing recently is, um, I have been using… Have you played with Suno? I've been using Suno to just basically, kickstart ideas and get like- demo concepts. And so like one of the things recently, and my band hate this because they're very, they're all extremely anti-I- AI. I figured out a nice chord progression on the guitar, on the acoustic. I played that into it. I said, "Here's the vibe that I wanna go to. Here are the lyrics that I've written. just give me an outline of a song." it, it came back with something and I'm like, "Cool, good start." it's the exact same chord strumming pattern I was doing, same chords that I was doing. It was the same because I'd hummed the melody line over the top. It was the same melody line. It made some slight changes. Some of them I was like, "That's a good idea." Some of them I was like, "That's terrible." and then split it out into stems, pulled them into Logic, messed about with them. All of a sudden I had a demo that I could show the band that then we can take it to the rehearsal room, mess about with and make completely our own. And I was like, "This process would've taken me three months before, and I did it in an afternoon, and this is phenomenal." it's been an absolute game changer for me.

Brad: [13:14] you're describing these things as, as, as materials, as

Luke: [13:20] Yeah.

Brad: [13:20] of the creative

Luke: [13:21] Yeah.

Brad: [13:21] rather than a wholesale replacement, right? There's, there, there is important

Luke: [13:29] Yes.

Brad: [13:29] between somebody-- you, you plunking in those, those chords, you then that through Suno, and

Luke: [13:41] Yes.

Brad: [13:42] as like, "Here

Luke: [13:43] Yeah.

Brad: [13:43] that I made." And it kind of technically is, and there's actually like a lot of stuff just even in that, that is, is worth unpacking, but we don't need to because what, uh, of what you said comes after. Good start in here, back at it, touching, crafting, sculpting, and then you're taking it a step further, which is to say you're then taking that to human beings, human beings, that have have lived their own rich lives and have their own musical, uh, ideas and textures and bring things together, and it's that alchemy of the human beings that like who, who-- wherever a song originated from, if it fell out of the sky, if one of the persons, like people in the group, uh, was the one that came up with the lick and then that got the ball rolling, or if somebody charted out all of the pieces, like exactly, even if somebody was like micromanaging the shit out of that this," the

Luke: [14:47] Yeah.

Brad: [14:48] it's just dialed in. But, but, but

Luke: [14:53] Yeah.

Brad: [14:56] right? So, so you're, you're, you're describing the, here's something that is kickstarting, that is facilitating getting over the finish line, which with ADHD is difficult to get there on your own, but at no point are you just like lazily like kind of using something, releasing it, and just saying

Luke: [15:16] That's it. And I mean, that's the other thing too. I, I don't know, the way that I always see this, let's, you know, let's get into politics now. the way that I always see it anyway is that the people who do do that lazily, there will be edge cases that are, uh, you know, basically gamed the system and rort it, and they make loads of money off of that. And, you know, we, we saw, we saw that from the first few people who did that and there was media about it and all the rest of it. In reality though, the people who aren't putting the soul into it and aren't putting the time into it and aren't aren't making it their own and are just doing the lazy put it in, release it, um, it's gonna be crap. And I-- it's, it's my one like libertarian bone in my body that goes, you know what? Let the market decide. Like, it's the same when people go, "Oh, you know, AI is killing our writing skills." And I'm like, "No, it's, it's producing a load of gray, middle of the road, beige content that will be filtered out because the market won't put up with it." Same with the image creation stuff, same with the video creation stuff. Like, you know, the, the only way that you can kind of make a lot of this stuff work and have it be a high enough quality output is if you've probably put enough time in it in the first place that you could justify it being a creative creation anyway. and you know, that is where I'm like, that's where I'm interested in like what, you know, all the stuff that, uh, Gem Gold's doing, um, because, you know, Gem's pushing that technology to its absolute limits and really messing with it and like trying to see what's possible and experimenting and playing with it. She's not who we need to worry about.

Brad: [17:00] Yep. Yeah. yeah. yeah. I think, I think you put a… It's like, it's like, yes, here's the grift, here's the

Luke: [17:07] Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: [17:08] here's the how can I make a buck off of this? Here's… Like, and, and there's, there's plenty of that stuff going around, but I think that, that, You're doing a great job, I think, at, at splitting this apart and, and helping describe the nuance involved in wielding things as creative materials but then you're exactly right in saying that it is about time and craft and intention and, you get to the other end, if you get to the other end, if you're like both you and me, it's like we've got a lot, of unfinished, uh, stuff that's just out in various for- i, i-

Luke: [17:47] Yeah.

Brad: [17:47] of undone. process itself can be massively satisfying, but then that feeling of, of creating something and putting it out there, uh, is also massively satisfying. So,

Luke: [17:57] think it is also, it's like, different strokes for different folks as well. Like, I think that, I think part of it for me, I've been really trying to dive into this internally with myself recently of, the understanding what parts of the process I like as well. and I think that it's, it's one of the good thing is-- So I'm not a… I, I don't like the messy middle. I'm actually not that much of a fan of the messy middle. I am very much a, at the beginning, I have all of the enthusiasm and all of the ti- And I will talk for days about, you know, ideas and how we could maybe approach this and like, oh. I'm very much that, like kicking it off, love it. Shipping it, love it. And the, you know, the impact that it has and like, uh, like I mean, for me, especially when it comes to music, like performing it and like getting it out there and th- that's the stuff I love. It's, it's one of the things that like I really struggle, struggle with, with the band is, is I love releasing records, hate recording them. that process of recording is boring as batshit. It is so boring. luckily, two of the other members of the band, they love it so much, so it's fine. That's what they prefer to do. You know, one of them gets anxiety every time we go on stage. Uh, that's, that's fine. and, and I think that that's one of the things as well is like- I think it's absolutely fine to have those proclivities as well. Like, there are people who love the craft and, you know,

Brad: [19:24] Yes.

Luke: [19:25] as a designer, I probably shouldn't be saying that love the craft that much. if I'm being extremely honest in job interviews and they ask me, like, what my weakness is, I would say my attention to detail is not great because But the output's gonna be amazing. But, you know, and that's fine. Like, I've kind of come to accept that of myself. So anything I can do to, like, shortcut those boring bits, I think that's great. And so it's funny, like when you were talking about the tool chain stuff, it was like I realized one of the things, I actually, I, I don't mind recording my own stuff occasionally. Like, I, I don't mind getting into Logic and playing around. I did audio production as part of my degree, so it's like I understand that stuff. Getting the right settings, like the right plugins and the right settings in the plugins to get good vocal, um, recordings, oh my God. Like, it's awful. And so yeah, one of the f- one of my first uses of like using an LLM to help me with that was just like, "Here's what my voice sounds like. Understand what it's like. Here's an example of a song that I like the vocal production on. How do I get from there to there?" And it just gave me a shortcut, and yeah, I could've spent more time tweaking, and I will, and I kind of learnt some stuff along the way, so that's good. But like,

Brad: [20:39] you're pulling this stuff in

Luke: [20:40] Yeah.

Brad: [20:41] You're saying, "I, you know, I have a vision of where I want to get. This is the, the, the raw track. I want it to sound a certain way." And I think that there's, there's something really interesting. I've actually been, uh, talking a bit with, uh, a music, of software. They make plug-ins and

Luke: [20:58] Yeah.

Brad: [20:58] that. and this ha- this has to, fingers crossed, be more, a

Luke: [21:07] Yeah

Brad: [21:15] you say, "I want this to sound like I'm underwater or in a big-ass hallway, and, and I want this to sound, you know, a lot richer than it currently is," like, words have, connotation that could then be translated into specific knobs and stuff. And that's… And, and, and, okay. It's like, here's this juice it up a little bit, bit. Like, I've always been bad. Uh, I love how you're talking about, um, your musical tendencies and your ten- and the tendencies of your bandmates too, 'cause I think that that's sort of something that, that people, uh, don't understand enough about themselves. So I really like t- and, and appreciate saying that because it's… People

Luke: [21:58] Yeah.

Brad: [21:58] I'm a musician," and musician comes with it this

Luke: [22:04] Yeah.

Brad: [22:26] you all bring with, bring to the, the, own gifts and your own anxieties and your own, I do this. And, and it's getting the Venn

Luke: [22:39] It's, yeah, that's, yeah. Okay, we've figured it out. Uh, I think we've actually solved it all, so that's good.

Brad: [22:45] We have an idea of what a musician is, and it's a very- Uh, or, or in the collective imagination of people. A musician is somebody who does this, and that's kind of usually as far as it goes. Meanwhile, within that, you're like, "Well, I, I am in, in certain respects like a, a front person,

Luke: [23:06] I don't think you could ever not be a front person, Brad. Like, it's, it's-- I, I think a- any, any situation you're in, you're like not only the talent, but also the personality hire. It's Yeah.

Brad: [23:17] but But, but, but, but, but, there's something to it, though, like, as, like, a musician. It's like, yeah, there's even that. It's

Luke: [23:25] Yeah.

Brad: [23:25] front person. Front you know, when we think of, of

Luke: [23:29] Yeah.

Brad: [23:30] it's, it's the spotlight's on me, and it's like, "Nah, I'm,

Luke: [23:35] Yeah.

Brad: [23:44] bit." And so, so it's, it's, it's very, very interesting. It's very interesting because, like, we, we tend to flatten things. good, AI bad. Musician Like, it, there's, much nuance in here, and,

Luke: [24:01] I think there's nuance, but I think that's the thing is that, in all of these conversations there's nuance. In all of these situations there's nuance. cause it is. It's like you know, if we, we stay on the music, it's like if you distill any of, any role in a band or any role as a musician down, it's like even then, uh, I mean, now we're gonna get into queer theory. Um, but it is, you know, that concept of it, it is almost binary thinking of like, well, this is, this is what a drummer is, and this is what a drummer isn't. And it's like, you know, the best drummers are-- Uh, there's a band that, um, I fell in love with years ago, uh, called The Spook School who are, uh, they're, they're now sadly, uh, RIP, because they, they went to the moon, um, and never came back. they were one of-- I remember s- the first time I saw them I just thought it was just such an interesting dynamic because they had three people at the front. They had, uh, two guitarists and a bassist who just clearly did not like talking. They didn't like talking to people. They loved singing, and they loved, like, writing the songs, and they loved standing at the front. But their drummer… And it's weird, they all met as comedians as well, which kind of doesn't track. I didn't understand it. But the drummer was the glue of the band in so many ways. Obviously, you know, doing the, the role that a drummer should do of keeping the, the, you know, the bed there and keeping things going along and providing that space for these three amazing people to shine. But then was also, I would say, kind of the, the front person of the, um, interaction between the audience and the band. So, you know, would handle all of the between-song banter, would be the person that if you were, you know, putting on them on as a- they'd be the person that you interface with. And like … It was such an unheard of thing in every other band I knew. The drummer was always the, the usually the guy at the back who kinda didn't wanna talk to anyone. And I was like, "This is-- this makes this band special," and also made me go, "Oh, yeah, actually, no, not all drummers are like that." Like,

Brad: [26:02] Yep.

Luke: [26:03] totally fine. Um, and yeah, it is-- And I-- But I do feel like that's the case with, you know, absolutely everything. And it is-- I mean, it is-- it's the case with everything, and it is the whole queer theory aspect of it, of it is you don't fit in one box. You fit in multiple boxes, right? Everybody is a multifaceted personality and has lots of different facets that make up their identity, and therefore, why do we try and put people into labeled boxes? and yeah, I do feel like it's the same with AI. I do feel like there's not much nuance at the moment with talk about AI. There are problems with AI. Um, many, many problems. And So again, going back to the music side of things, the scene that I'm in, it's very like AI, uh, AI. It's very DIY punk, uh, indie. You know, it's the, the socialist leftist, uh, punks, uh, queer punks, which I love, and I love. I, I have alignment on almost everything with them. however, does it feel like some people are just sticking their heads in the sand and hoping it goes away?

Brad: [27:09] but, but, but here's the I think that, that… Let's u-

Luke: [27:13] Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: [27:14] though, because I think that y- on one hand, you're like, on, everybody." Like, you, you kind of understand. let me, let me… you on the spot and guess, what it is that they feel uncomfortable about that is preventing them from getting to a, a place where they are, like, kind of going, "Oh, okay, yeah, it's like, it's useful for some things, but not m- but not for others." So it's like, ''cause, I have a feeling that you could understand and appreciate, especially as you're describing… You're, you're of, of punk

Luke: [27:52] Yeah.

Brad: [27:53] and and, and, and all of that stuff, and socialist. like, there's a to this

Luke: [28:00] Yeah.

Brad: [28:02] that runs pretty counter

Luke: [28:04] Yeah. It's, yeah, it's the, it's the, uh, ethical and environmental concerns which are strong, and we, we know that. That it's, it's extremely real and I mean, we just need to figure them out. Like that is-- It-- They, they need to be figured out because I was having an argument with somebody about this at the weekend. You know, these people who just go, "Oh, it's gonna burst and go away. A bubble's gonna burst and go away." And I'm like, "It's, it's just not though." Like, I just, I can't see a world where that is gonna happen at the moment. I do feel like a bubble may burst and it will contract, but, in the same way that, you know, I mean, the dot-com bubble burst. Do we still have the internet? Um, yes. Has it completely changed the way that we, operate as society and, you know, for the better and for the worse? Yes. Um, I do feel like the exact same thing's gonna happen with, with AI. So I do think, like the environmental stuff we need to figure out. Like that is, that's, that's 100%. and so yeah, people should keep talking about that. the ethical concerns, especially when it comes to, you know, the biases that are in there, the, uh, intellectual property, uh, all of that stuff, yes, and in that it kind of goes back to what I was saying before. I was like, this is a, you know, this is how, this is how societies have worked forever, in that everybody steals other people's shit, and that is, that is the reality of it. Um, yes, there needs to be protections in there. Are they the level of protect- 'cause I think that's the thing, if you dive into a lot of the intellectual property rights, they're usually, uh, the intellectual property concerns, they are also tied into extremely outdated models of how intellectual property works that actually supports the systems that are there anyway, uh, especially when we talk about things like music, books, entertain- entertainment generally, art as well. although art I think is, yeah, that's, that's a tougher one, so I'm just gonna leave that over, I'm gonna leave that over there. Uh, but you know, I do think that there are like the, the, the things that have been suggested to get around those problems aren't solutions. They're not tenable. you know, we can't just pay everybody for, for their art, um, because actually what's gonna happen is it's only the top .5%, .1% that are actually gonna get paid. so yeah, but I do think, yeah, that stuff also needs to be worked on as well, but not as much. And then there is also the, uh, the fact that it's run by a bunch of people who seem to want to, um, uh, end the world. Um, so there is also the enshittification part of it, right? and so I do also understand that. So that's, you know, when people go, "Oh, people who…" You know, it's like anybody who uses AI is a loser, and I'm like, yeah, I kind of understand that as well. But I still bring up the heads in the sands concept, where it's like we shouldn't stop shouting about these things, but we also shouldn't potentially find areas where it could also be useful and help, like genuinely help people as well. Um, and so-- But it is, it's incredibly nuanced. And so I don't have the answers.

Brad: [31:12] that's, that's I think the thing is, like, you're able be enthusiastic about the

Luke: [31:18] Yeah.

Brad: [31:18] of this that are, are, are genuinely helping you in your life, your creative life, in your, in your

Luke: [31:26] Yeah.

Brad: [31:26] and all of that. And, and, and there, there are a lot of, benefits that can unlock, right? think that th- there is a, a big difference in between, uh, something like this where, you know, and we're setting aside I, I al- I always invoke the… And then there's the curing cancer part, which is, uh, here are, here are these things that, you know, when we look and when we look at things, and then there's, there's, there's limitations to our, uh, technologies and our human eyeballs that to detect certain things at certain levels of granularity, very difficult to do. And so having technologies that are a- able to come in and just, like, rip through stuff and detect patterns and then ultimately go, "Oh. okay. this leads to this," all these things together and be able to get closer to, oh, these things are, are causal and… so, so there's that,

Luke: [32:25] Yeah.

Brad: [32:25] So, so, like, that's… And but that's th- not the, the

Luke: [32:32] I think that's--

Brad: [32:32] that, you are, that you just articulated. So, so it's, it's, it's again, it's, it is this very difficult place to be as human beings who, who crave and crave one answer specifically. That we're like, it's, it is this or it's that, and, and that it, it allows us to reach this state of, of equilibrium that allows us to, to, know, be, be comfortable, right? And so, so it's a really hard to cultivate, but I think it's incredibly necessary too, is to that, that being living in this uncomfortable, unresolved where lot of things can

Luke: [33:19] Yeah. The way that I keep, I just need this, uh, printed on my forehead or I don't know, probably a T-shirt. uh, I do feel like we can just extend the there is no ethical consumption under capitalism to just there is, there is no ethical living under under capital- Like, it's, you know, and it's like it's, it's massively, um, that maybe boils it down too much, but it is that thing. It's like, no matter what, in the world that we live in, the way that the systems are currently set up, and a lot of it does come back to systems. Um, the way that the systems are set up, um, you're gonna be a hypocrite somewhere in what you're doing, and it is your choice as to where you're a hypocrite. Um, and I respect other people's choice. So, you know, I, I do respect. There are-- I mean, there are folks, um, you know, just to, to call somebody out 'cause I know they can handle it. but like, you know, Andy Bell, perfect example of, you know, somebody who is just the most anti-AI person I've ever met and is like, "AI will never touch my code." and all the re- I respect Andy for that. I respect that Andy can do that. I respect that, Andy has the talent and, uh, has the fortitude and, everything else to be able to, to do that. But that is-- I, I also think that that's a choice that Andy's made, and it shouldn't be seen as the right choice I feel like the-- I mean, this is again, just the state of the world at the moment, you know, everything breeds division. But it just does feel like people are just consis- like constantly, um, and consistently picking sides on everything.

And I'm like: [34:58] "No, I just wanna stand in the middle on some things, if that's okay." Um…

Brad: [35:03] I think y- I think you're picking at, at something that's, that's important 'cause yeah, I, I, I know and love Andy as well, and I, and I really value hearing those perspectives, and I really value, you know, I… The comes to mind for me is, is Jeremy

Luke: [35:21] Yeah.

Brad: [35:21] It's like Jeremy is, Jeremy is, is another complete hero of mine, and I won- I, I will talk to him here, uh, eventually as well. this is what's healthy about taking those stands and putting those things out there done in the right way. 'Cause, uh, Andy's a great person, and he's able to say that, and I'm able to understand it as, as that personal choice, which I think you said really well right there. And then that helps hold up a mirror thoughts and, and perspectives on things. And, and that, that is the beauty of pluralistic, diverse society, that we're able to sort of hold things up and say, "Here's my opinion," not cross the line into, that yours

Luke: [36:18] Yes.

Brad: [36:19] extend this to

Luke: [36:20] Yes.

Brad: [36:20] religion, to, to any, any third rail issue that exists on the planet. to s- to share and articulate, "Here's why I hold these values. Here's why this is important. Here's the stuff that is wrong, making the decision to not go

Luke: [36:39] Yeah.

Brad: [36:39] because of those things." And then you're able to sort of say, Let me think about that."

Luke: [36:45] Yeah.

Brad: [36:45] Let me think cri- let me think critically that. Let me, let me, again, let me sit in the discomfort because, because my experience is a little different maybe. But so now I have one more perspective that I could take in figure out where, where I live with this. And, you do that enough, when you, when you cultivate that, when you go through that process so many times, through the old RSS feed, going through all of that stuff, getting to read all of these beautiful people's beautiful just perspectives, and you take it all in, and some of these with one another, what do you do? What do you do with that? Oh my God. we do, we do the, work, to go, okay, here's a bunch of people that I really love and respect are saying conflicting things." And I get to say, "All right, there's the validity there, and I understand that, but maybe coming to that particular conclusion, doesn't make me the devil's advocate version of this. Give me the, the whatever version of this. Give me this historical character might say. Give me what this, uh, you know, future civilization, uh, might say about this." Like, y- that's the thing that's crazy about this is that you can actually, like, get all of these different things and use this to critical thinking

Luke: [38:21] It's another tool. And it kinda goes-- But it goes back to what we were saying. It's around… I mean, I mean, everything comes back to systems. What I was saying before around, like, I wanna offload the things that I just don't have time to do or don't care that much about. And, you know, the reality is, is that, you know, when somebody is saying, "Output me this 20 tur- uh, 20-page term paper," it's probably because they don't want to write that 20-page term paper. Like, it's, but that-that's a slippery slope, right? It, it, it will cause the actual thing, 'cause there are things in life that everything can be sunshine and rainbows, and you, you sort of can't enjoy everything you do. But- Uh, I mean, it's why I'm also, to get into really deep territory, why I'm kind of… I am worried for the future around this topic and this area because I don't think that the education system is ready to, handle the fact that it's, like, actually teaching young people how important critical thinking is. Because it is usually one of those things that some people realize that it's important in their mid-20s. Um, and, and unfortunately not enough people. But, you know, at the same time, a large part of that is because of the crap that we've had to do throughout our life to get us to a point where we go, "Oh, actually, that stuff that I hated doing is, is quite helpful." It is. It is. It's just a lot of it is it requires a lot of systemic a- addressing the systems to fix the issues that we're seeing and sort of not just focusing on the … It's the symptoms of the problem as opposed to the actual problem itself. cause yeah, I mean, I, I do that as well. I sit there and, you know, especially for things where, like topics or ideas where I don't, I don't I wouldn't make the time to dive into them. Three years ago, I might have been, you know, walking down the road and had read a news article this morning and went, "Oh, I wonder if there's any correlation between this and this." And, then I go, "I should research that at some point." And that is as far as that will ever go. And then, like this morning we … So we've, we've just been going through some, uh, elections that are, are pretty catastrophic in the UK, where basically everybody's revoted their council elections, uh, revoted for their council members, and that is kind of… 'Cause it's halfway through the term, it's gonna be a bit of a, flag for what might happen in a couple years in the general election. and let's just say that those elections that happened yesterday did not go well, um, in my mind. but it was one of those ones where I was like, "Well, I'm reading this," and of course, you know, now I'm gonna sound like a conspiracy theorist. When you read the media, you're reading one person's perspective on these things, and it's quite often n- they're, they're trying to guide you to think in a particular way. Definitely. and I was curious. I was like, "Actually, how much impact the, do the council elections have on the general elections that, especially if it happens midterm?" You know, do we have historical precedent for this? Like, what is gonna happen? And so I just- Fed that into Claude, and it was just as I was setting up in the morning, and I just fed it into Claude and sort of let it run and asked it a couple questions when I was, like, between tasks, and got a much better picture than I ever would've got that kind of gave me a lot of the facts. I probably need to go and check some of those facts to make sure that they're right. But but it is one of those ones where I'm like, "Oh, okay." It quieted some of my anxieties, and also I felt taught me some things around, uh, around the UK politi- political system that I didn't quite know about in historical elections and whatnot. And it was just one of those ones where I'm like, "Jesus, this has made me do better critical thinking than

Brad: [41:55] Yeah.

Luke: [41:56] it wasn't there." and yeah, I am… I'm, I'm kinda loving that. But again, you know,

Brad: [42:00] But I, I think that, I think that you're, you're getting at something that is important, which is to say some of this stuff, a lot of bigger systemic things, complex systems, complex ideas, things that are outside of our, uh, immediate lived experience can feel really daunting and can feel really overwhelming and distant and, and all of that. That to kind of go near it, let alone even solve any- anything feels like, just like, "No way that's gonna happen," so I guess I'll just be, I'll be over here and just kind of, eating some cereal, I, I suppose. and, kind of the core, the core nugget of this stuff that runs counter to what we were saying earlier, which is just, like, they, the people responsible for unleashing a lot of this technology on are… Their systems are, are not

Luke: [43:00] Yeah.

Brad: [43:00] They're

Luke: [43:01] Yeah.

Brad: [43:02] But the technology itself, if we decouple that, we… Again, one of these things that we, we hold these things both to be true. People are lousy. technology Can also but it could also be really good. So exercise, the mission as it were, is how do we use technology and point it at good things using the right value system? Use… How do we point this at solving a lot of the core issues, including pointing it back at itself? Which is how uh, solve these environmental issues, and how can, can this technology, uh, be used to facilitate that? But more broadly, how can things, as I was just sort treating of this as mortar, that, that I'm, I'm able to sort of take my perspective and my lived experience, and you have your lived experience, we're able to better understand one might

Luke: [44:07] Crazy concept.

Brad: [44:10] a more just and equitable world? And, and that is the mission, and that is the stuff that, that doesn't get a lot of sunlight because this false binary thinking. it

Luke: [44:22] Yeah.

Brad: [44:23] is the, not, I'm not going to entertain that this actually might be useful for solving some of these, these hard issues, and I'm not going to entertain the ideas that, this stuff might be used and pointed at, uh, things that can be done to promote human flourishing rather than just the end of the world, there's the concept of, like, stages of, grief, right? and this, this concept, um, that was created not as a universal grief, uh, blanket. It was created through the specific lens to help kind of terminally ill, uh, people kind of process this, and that's, that's where this originated from. So put a big asterisk by it all, up, it, it ended up

Luke: [45:14] Yeah.

Brad: [45:15] context and ends up being used. And my wife, who, who worked, uh, uh, in a hospice setting as a, as a therapist is like, "It's, like, really, really dangerous because so many people get fixated on 'I'm in this grief.'" And they, they kind of identify that way and get, kind of get stuck there.

Luke: [45:37] Yeah.

Brad: [45:49] the… specifics- don't often understand grief not just death, we grieve a feeling. We grieve a, a place. Uh, we grieve, we grieve all sorts of, of non just, "Yes, this person died, and now I'm sad, and now I'm going, y- I'm going through this grief process." When we, as a society, have been just bombarded all right? Take COVID, take all of

Luke: [46:19] Yeah.

Brad: [46:20] There's these loss of s- losses of normalcy, losses of stability. There's all sorts of very real stuff to grieve. And then here comes this new technology that for, especially for us doing the work that we're doing, and, and being, oh, here's, here's a viable, um, you know, ooh, what feels like a stable, uh, uh, industry, something that's been, you know, respected, sort of, you know, people are well-paid, and you can earn a living and have a family and all that good stuff, right? And here comes this, like, super big disruptive thing. So, so, so that's the wind-up, where viewed through the lens of these stages of grief, we can look at, at the development of AI and how it's being processed. And people that you're

Luke: [47:08] Yeah.

Brad: [47:09] the head in the

Luke: [47:10] Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: [47:12] is, this is the

Luke: [47:13] Yeah.

Brad: [47:13] stage, which is just like, "Ah, this is… at, ha ha ha, here's the seven and like, "This is so shit," and, and theref- therefore I'm going to, to, you know, just push it away and pretend that, you know, this, this isn't a thing. Then into the anger phase, which rightly pointing at the shitty people who are, you know, out there trying to just step on the accelerator despite the very real risks and, and uh, you know, all of the environmental concerns and stuff, and there's a lot to be angry about, ab- about all of that. And then you get into the stage, which is, "Ah, you know, all right. Well, maybe I'll, I'll use it for, like, this thing, but, but, but not for, for this other thing. Um, you know, I'm never gonna let it touch my, my actual code or whatever," and stuff like that. then there's depression, which is like, "Well, what the hell have I even been… You know, so all of my career is just for naught because now just crap out a user interface in two seconds," and like, "Well, that was a waste of time, that sucks. That's a bummer." eventually a point of, of acceptance. And acceptance is very, very difficult thing to unpack and process because acceptance does not mean you're not angry acceptance is not the same as, as this. It's, it's actually kind of far from it. It's a very sort of like clear-eyed thing because when we lose someone in our lives, it's really, really hard. And the acceptance part is a recognition that that, that thing is, is lost. The loss is always there, which is why this isn't just a linear process, which is why it's like you weave in and out every single day. Like, the aspects of each one of these stages can hit you depending on the day. But as time goes on, you learn, you say, "Yep, like that, that person is, I- is gone or that idea is gone, or this time or this moment or this feeling is gone, but I now accept that." But part to it which is a commitment. So there's the acceptance, and then there's the commitment part. And what I've been unpacking is that I went through that process a little bit than what a lot of

Luke: [49:41] Yeah.

Brad: [49:41] are, are going through now. And, and, and it just happened to be that I was in a place where I was sort of subjected to this at like, as this was kind of emerging. so that… back on those times, I, it, I went through all of that. And so I'm now in this place where at it might look like I'm some just like,

Luke: [50:03] Yep.

Brad: [50:03] know, kinda techno optimist, like, "Oh, yeah, like, all of this is fine. Like, I'm all in on this." It's like, nope, nope, same as you. You know, there's, there's the very real stuff, but it's, it's, it's, it's a commitment now where I'm like, "Is this gonna just all go away?" No. It, it is not going to go away, but I am now committed deploying this in of, creating a better

Luke: [50:27] Yeah.

Brad: [50:28] and creating a, a world where people, can have their needs met, to, to be able to do more creative things, to unlock their, their potential, to, to create a more just and, and equitable society. it's not naive, that's really fucking hard

Luke: [50:45] Yeah.

Brad: [50:46] guess what? Like, that's, that, that is the work. That, that is the work ahead of us. So when we say like, "Oh, so what? So we're all just going to like, kinda like roll over like that?" No, no, no. It's we need- collectively to design these conditions. we need to, to do a lot of active work to point them at all of these are woefully neglected, all of these institutions and systems and just stuff that have not been serving us. And we have to better systems across the

Luke: [51:23] Yeah.

Brad: [51:23] And that requires all of the firepower we have, including

Luke: [51:30] Yes. Yes. I, I mean, I think that that was, that was said so brilliantly. cause I think that's-- But I do think that that's it. It's, it is, and I think that it is that key understanding of the… 'Cause I think that's where a lot of people fall down as well, is because they do feel like everything is being rammed down their throats, and that they are just being asked to blanket accept without any, um, anything else. It's just like, accept it, it's happening, move on, get over it. Uh, which is not it. It's accept- y- you know, accepting the situation and deciding how you're responding to it in a way that is aligning with your values and your, you know, y- your outlook and, you know, your ultimate goals as well. 'Cause, I mean, that, that is a thing. Even, you know, I, I feel like with that, it's like acceptance can also be, uh, still going, "No, I'm still gonna burn the world down, but I'm gonna do it clear-eyed." Like it's… That's fine. we, we still wheel out the gu- guillotines. I think, I think you're 100% right though, 'cause Cause I was very much in the, uh, a similar boat. I think I was probably just slightly behind you. But, you know, I was in companies in, in 2018, 2019, who were, you know, doing a lot, potentially earlier, doing a lot with like the first iterations of GPT and being like, "Wow, this stuff is terrifying." it's bad at the moment, but I can see the potential for it. and yeah, it's-- I've never really thought about it in that context of, oh, maybe I just went through those, those phases when it wasn't in a mass hysteria moment.

Brad: [52:58] right, so everyone has their own personal experience. Everyone, first contact with w- with stuff. Like, COVID was very strange hit the world

Luke: [53:09] Yeah. Yeah,

Brad: [53:11] Like, it, that literally traveled around the world and, like, everyone went through trauma at the exact same time. obviously not the exact same way, but the, the, the The physics of of that phenomenon was it, it hit the world kind of like evenly, even obviously each person's

Luke: [53:31] yeah.

Brad: [53:31] their own

Luke: [53:34] We had a big shared traumatic experience, yes.

Brad: [53:38] That we still to have not collectively unpacked or acknowledged in any meaningful way because everything still sucks, and the people that are, uh, supposed to be the leaders of the world are too busy utter and complete shitheads. So,

Luke: [53:56] Yeah.

Brad: [53:57] so, how might we, fill those voids, right? So, so this is, this is the thing is like the commitment part to it and, and the, the kind of getting through, uh, to that place is something that I'm, I'm very interested in. But, but viewed through this lens, I'm, I'm able to kind of view perspectives on how they feel about this stuff kind of like viewed in a way of it's like, ah, yes, okay. Here's, here's this. It's all still unfolding, and that's why it's worth having these kinds of like conversations 'cause it's not, now I understand, I'm, I, I immediately

Luke: [54:36] Yeah.

Brad: [54:37] this acceptance and commitment part." It's, it's more like a, this is a pro- like grief is a process. does not happen linearly. Grief does not ever fully go

Luke: [54:50] Yeah.

Brad: [54:50] and, that's that. And that's part of the hard around grief and is so poorly unders- like misunderstood and, and you know, I've learned so much from my wife, and my neighbor also does, uh, grief work and stuff as well. So I'm like, I'm kinda… fascinating to see people who are like

Luke: [55:08] Yeah.

Brad: [55:08] close to the metal on this, and then to be able to sort of like bring, like apply it to this, this

Luke: [55:17] Doesn't feel like it should be applied to, but it, it actually definitely should.

Brad: [55:21] for anybody like listening I think is, is just kind of like check in with you, and like, you know, viewed through that lens, even if you like you could, you disregard it, that's fine But if you entertain it for a

Luke: [55:35] Yeah.

Brad: [55:35] just be like, "Oh, like where am I at with this?" Like am, am I like just, am I in denial? Am I in the anger, uh, stage of this? Am I in the depressed stage of this? Am I, To be able to hold those thoughts in our heads at the same time, to, to be simultaneously excited but also be terrified at the same time is like, is a really difficult thing to, to and, and articulate, that you've done a really good job

Luke: [56:03] mean

Brad: [56:03] like being able to, to, to say it. Like, 'cause it, it just sounds like, like the, the circles you're running in

Luke: [56:10] Well,

Brad: [56:11] are…

Luke: [56:13] it is, and I mean, you know, a large part of it is I just, you know, end up keeping my mouth shut a lot of the time. But, but which is not the answer either. Like, I think that's the thing is that it is-- I think that-- 'cause I do, I do actually believe that, I b- you know, there is so much activism that needs to happen, and there is so much, there is so much shouting and so much protest that needs to happen. I do also think that, you know, you were talking before about, uh, not being a techno-optimist. It's like, actually, I just wanna put techno-pragmatist on, like, my… Like, I do feel like that there is something to be said for pragmatism to a degree. Like, pragmatism as an excuse to, to not care about things, uh, is bad. But I do think that understanding, you know, how systems work and understanding that things aren't gonna change today or tomorrow no matter what you do, um, and it's like how do you work within the systems that you have to make incremental change, and when the opportunity comes to big change, then make big change. And I think that that is, like, really important. Um, and yeah, it is a, um, it's a tough one 'cause I do feel like that it is just more people thinking about it and more people talking about it and more people, um, actually, you know, having the conversation and not shutting down the conversations either. Like, I think that that is, it's, you know, it happens a lot on both sides. and just being always being slightly skeptical of anybody who is too hardline on either side. Um, and being introspective, like you said, like understanding where you are with this and what your thoughts actually are and,

Brad: [57:41] Yep.

Luke: [57:41] how you can get to a point where you're making a commitment.

Brad: [57:43] that's really well said, and, and, and again, it's like by all like have those

Luke: [57:49] yeah.

Brad: [57:49] convictions and those strong things and be able to articulate them. And, and that's where I, I think kinda coming back to, to people like Andy and Jeremy, these are, these are people that we know to be just really, really beautiful human beings who, who are, to sort of like put

Luke: [58:09] Yeah.

Brad: [58:09] perspective strong opinions strongly held- But then also able to, to understand and, and to, to have that, that sort of respect. And, and, and I think that that's, that's the conditions by which, you know, good conversation… Like, we, we unfortunately, in, at least in part to how the internet has unfolded, the polarization and more of the conversations being shut down and, and more of the conversations not being able to, uh, us to be able to have healthy debate, in a way where it's like it's all grounded in shared understanding or, or a, a desire to, understand, a desire

Luke: [58:50] Yeah.

Brad: [58:51] address the problems of the world. it's just, you know, go to their different camps and information bubbles and, and hang out there because it's comfortable. And so, once again, how might we, uh, design the conditions by which more healthy conversation and

Luke: [59:10] Yeah.

Brad: [59:11] and stuff is able to happen that then translates into good action that is, that has been put through this friction machine that ultimately allows us to get to a place that, that, uh, guess what? You know, we're able to, to have actions that are considered or considerate of an entire spectrum of perspectives rather than my team won," like in, in the

Luke: [59:36] Yeah.

Brad: [59:37] and therefore we're going to steamroll, everything,

Luke: [59:41] is as well, like, you know, I think it's, it's, you know, that, that change does happen, that change happens slowly and incrementally and I don't know. There's something I'm trying to unpick it in my mind as to, you know… I, I feel at the moment like we actually need to learn from the Luddites, in that, you know, we look anybody-- you ask anybody in the street about the Luddite movement and what it was about, they were like, "Oh, they hated technology, and they were trying to smash machines." And it's like, no, no, they cared about workers' rights. Like that was-- it was literally a labor movement. it kind of does-- There's something about that. I mean, large parts of that is probably spin as well. It's, you know, it's, it's post-spin and post-recontextualization of the situation. But, you know, part of it as well, that message can get lost so easily, and especially when it is like a extremely like, polarizing way of doing it. there is a potential risk that it's like the, the modern lu- modern day Luddites, who actually, you know, do-- it's the same things. This-- They're actually shouting about the same things. They're sh- caring about the same things. might in the future get, you know, branded in the same way that it's, "Oh, they were just techno-hating, anti-progression conservatives."

Brad: [1:00:51] and that, and painted

Luke: [1:00:55] It is already how they're being painted.

Brad: [1:00:57] right

Luke: [1:00:57] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brad: [1:00:59] Yeah, it's like, "Oh, yeah, you all, you all just don't get it, and, you know, this stuff can cure cancer, so you don't wanna cure cancer?" It's like, no, no, no, we're just saying you're a shithead who's, who is, just trying to, to scale things and not, not consider its, its very real effects on society because you are incentivized to try couple billion, right? Like,

Luke: [1:01:24] Yeah. Yeah.

Brad: [1:01:25] that, that is, that is, that is needs to be dismantled because, like, we, we have to be like, yes, what's going on here and what this technology can do?" It, like, there's, there's a lot here, but it's like you're not the right person to, to… You're not the right people be shepherding this stuff

Luke: [1:01:46] Who--

Brad: [1:01:47] I think that you're

Luke: [1:01:48] Like, who knew that putting, like, straight white men in charge would result in bad morals and ethical-- bad moral and ethical decisions? Anyway, um, uh, that's, that's another one to unpack. Yeah.

Brad: [1:02:04] stuff and, um, I've been chatting with him, and he, he's kinda put together some, some stuff that's, like, some really good… You know, a- as we, like, look into the development of software, Went to, like, the Into Design Systems conference, and, like, every single talk was just like, these, workflows, you know, these multi-agentic workflows." And it's like… And it's, it's genuinely, like, impressive stuff, and it's very easy to see how, yep, like, this is, this is where things are going. This is what our course is, is, like, talking about, where it's like, "Oh, okay, yep, we do this. It gets passed off, it gets passed off. We do these things and w- and we have these, you know, all of these things that are there to inject quality at every step of the way, check quality, making sure that what comes out the other end is, is sound in, in what we're intending on creating, even as we're using these non-deterministic systems to make them." So that's this thing. Here's a b- machine, a big

Luke: [1:03:04] Yep.

Brad: [1:03:06] machine where out the other end comes some stuff. Now, this is what's very interesting because one of the biggest things about this, this new paradigm is that historically it's been people like us, the people who can write the code and, and design the things, that have held a monopoly on how the software gets built, right? One of the interesting qualities about this technology is that it is natural language, and nat- natural language, uh, comes in the form of speech and text, and well, guess what human beings do? We talk, as, as crappy as the education uh, may have, have evolved much, like, love that it

Luke: [1:03:52] Mm.

Brad: [1:03:53] uh, people generally know

Luke: [1:03:55] Yeah.

Brad: [1:03:56] Now, so what this means is that the people who been boxed out of the design and, software creation process, now have a voice can be plugged into, in meaningful ways, this Rube Goldberg machine, right? Because ultimately, we're sort of describing what our intent is, we're able to sort of, like, put that in there. So we have is the opportunity, as everyone's creating this whole Rube Goldberg machine, to, to basically answer the question, like, is it good? Well, we could put- Is it good the deepest levels into the the, stew, into the, into the mix, right? Into cauldron of, of how software

Luke: [1:04:51] Yeah.

Brad: [1:04:52] And that's what, what Dan's, Dan's been doing. Like, here's these things, like around harm reduction, around accessibility, around, you know, not being biased, around sort of, you know, being good stewards. 'Cause stuff is increasingly automated,

Luke: [1:05:06] Yeah.

Brad: [1:05:07] pretty fucking important to bake that into the process so that we're not ending up with a bunch of, a, a bunch more bias, a bunch more sort of just shit, right? So what does that actually look like? Well, out that there's been a organizations who've been doing a bunch of important work for a very, very, very long time, like the UN, on things like, you know, here are these global initiatives to end poverty, to address climate change, to do all of these things. And so it becomes how do we literally inject that, that thinking, that, here we have thought for decades upon about what a better world looks

Luke: [1:05:53] Hmm.

Brad: [1:05:54] And we have been outside of this sort of, the technosphere because, like, that's, reserved for the Silicon

Luke: [1:06:03] Yeah.

Brad: [1:06:03] types who, like, know how, how to write, like, the code and are, that are ultimately influencing things. So relegated to, you if you're lucky, in the EU yelling at and slapping the wrists from afar, these, these companies and stuff does it look like to actually weave them in?

Luke: [1:06:24] if you wanna talk about rose-tinted glasses, like, I mean, but that, th- there's a real possibility that that could actually happen. It's just who's making those connections? That's, you know, which of the tech companies are actually gonna listen to that? 'Cause it's really interesting, 'cause, like we've, we've been doing similar work at, uh, not similar work, but same concept work at Zero Height. Like, we've been looking at, like, okay, well, how can we actually bake in, you know, when, when we're… So when people are using an MCP server and, like, doing… Uh, like we were talking about it today, it's like, well, but you can't ensure good output no matter what. Like, you just can't ensure good output. And it's like h- surely there are ways that we can bake in base level rules around things like accessibility and things like, you know, um… To be honest, like, I, I mean, I was positing concepts around, you know, uh, harm reduction in, uh, products development and, and, uh, diverse and equitable language and things like that. Um, which, you know, is definitely pushing an agenda, but, um, it's the right agenda, so everyone else can shut up. but like, I do feel like this s- stuff is good, but I, I do feel like that is… It's the, um, the block is until it's baked in at the infrastructure level, you're relying on the end u- It's like Shell telling us need, that we n- all need to recycle, or BP telling us that we all need to recycle, right? To save the planet. And, and I feel I do have a worry that that is exactly where the conversation's gonna go in terms of like, there's real opportunity here that we can do this, uh, so you should do this as a user of these, these platforms. But that's paradigm shifting, right? If people are already using these tools to do things and baked into it is a level of harm reduction and inclusivity and equitability, we might have a brave new world and not in the dystopian sense.

Brad: [1:08:22] uh, Yes. And I th- I think, think, I'll also… I'll put something else on the table here, because I think that what's very fascinating, and this is… it's very fascinating to hear Dan talk about it, because he's, uh, he's been very, to the technology, I feel like, at, at a

Luke: [1:08:37] Hmm.

Brad: [1:08:38] that, that I understand, which is very, very interesting. But I think that one of the other things that I'm learning about this as, as a material is that it's, it's not necessarily, You don't need to have consensus. You don't need to have consensus anymore. Um, this is what's fascinating. If you get to something like the golden rule, right, as maybe, like, the bedrock of a lot of this stuff, right? Which is, uh, pretty much if you had to, like, boil it all down and look at different philosophies, world and so forth, like, there's all some semblance of

Luke: [1:09:16] Yeah.

Brad: [1:09:17] like, that's like a good… That's a good one to kinda just put down in, into the… That one's good. That's the, the… That's closer uh,

Luke: [1:09:28] Yeah.

Brad: [1:09:30] like, yeah, if, if you're like, "Eh, I don't, I don't really care about humans at all or the continued existence of the planet," like, nope, that doesn't, that doesn't make its way in that. That's, that's counter. But then you get into things like, okay, well let's, let's unpack things like, like gender, something like gender equality or something like that. Now, here's where some splintering might appear, right? 'Cause some cultures or some religions or some philosophies, like, think different ways about this stuff, but But it doesn't need to be resolved.

Luke: [1:10:01] Yeah.

Brad: [1:10:02] just needs to be surfaced and

Luke: [1:10:04] Yeah.

Brad: [1:10:05] and introduced into this thing where it's like, here's this general concept which people largely think is a good idea, and we, in order to strive towards these goals, which I think, like, the s- the 17 goals of the United, uh, Nations, the, the, or sustainable

Luke: [1:10:22] Yeah

Brad: [1:10:22] which is, like, no poverty, no hunger, good health and wellbeing, quality education, gender equality, clean water and sanitation, affordable and clean energy, decent work and economic growth, industry, innovation and infrastructure, reduced inequalities, sustainable cities and communities, uh, responsible consumption and production, uh, climate action, life below water, life on land, peace, justice, and strong institutions and partnerships for, uh, the, the further development of those goals. Now, that feels like a pretty good place to kinda go, those feel pretty good. been a lot of

Luke: [1:11:01] Yeah.

Brad: [1:11:02] to arrive at that, of that, at that mission and you ask any Are those

Luke: [1:11:09] Are those good? Yeah.

Brad: [1:11:11] They're, they're probably gonna say yeah. If we're, if you're making any software on the planet, it should be in pursuit or not actively, like, in, in conflict with those things. And what you end up with is kind of, like, almost, like, a linting situation where, you know, whenever it's like, "Oh, you wrote your CSS wrong," and it's gonna, like, yell at you. It's not necessarily, like, going to, like, fix it for you, but it's gonna, like, let you know. It, it means that, like, if you're just pumping in some, some into this Rube Goldberg machine and it's like, is, this is not

Luke: [1:11:48] This, this

Brad: [1:11:49] spirit of,

Luke: [1:11:50] your country, yeah.

Brad: [1:11:53] everyone's just kind of like, "I don't know." Like, uh, uh, "I'm head down on this stuff. Like, I'm… I don't have time to think about these, like, bigger issues." Well, guess what? Now this stuff just, like, is part of the, the fabric of, of software development and stuff. So is it, it a really, like, interesting thing. So it's like we get the spirit. Like, it… So long as we're able to be like, "We're all in pursuit of a better world. We have different tactics or ideas around, like, what that actually looks like, and I don't want you to resolve that, but I… But we want you to, to understand,

Luke: [1:12:27] Yeah. it's funny actually. I did see there's a really good article that came up today around having a, a… If you are using AI, to have an opinions.md file, uh, which I definitely recommend, um, folks do a Google for. But it was the same kind of, the same kind of concept, but obviously at a personal level. I like it better at a systems level. but even like, you know, for today, right now, it was like building up a, um, a corpus of information that is around how you think and what you value and where your, like, stances are to have it actually work within those, those frameworks. And I thought it was really nice 'cause I mean, mine already, I, I use it too much, so mine already does it. It started swearing at me, which I think is great 'cause like, I was like, if, if something was going to try and mimic my personality back at me, that's good first step. Yeah. I, I think that this is something that definitely should be figured out systematically. I, I… Maybe I am in the depression phase 'cause I just don't know how we get there. But that's for other people smarter than me, uh, to think about. There's definitely room for like grassroots movements of this kind of stuff. I mean, you know, are you in a products company? Do you currently work in squads? thanks Spotify. literally, like, yeah, these things can grow very quickly and easily. yeah, I do think that there is probably room for actually doing stuff, um, at a lower level. Again, I'm just jaded. I'm just, you know, BP have a lot to answer for, so, you know, they ruined recycling for me. But, uh,

Brad: [1:13:58] I think that that's, that's like one of the other things that, that is just like a, it's a, it's a hard thing with this, and, and maybe this is, this is where we like wrap it up, but it's like it is worth saying that it's like we're out here, this exists. It- we're without a, a safety

Luke: [1:14:18] Yeah.

Brad: [1:14:18] underneath us. Like, th- this, this is the reality. Like, people are making software. This technology continues to develop. People continue to still exist, and when we realize that it's we're out here. This is, this is a moment in time that's never happened before,

Luke: [1:14:39] we have to figure out a way through, and the potential is great. You know, I started this saying how excited I was because I'm making stuff, and it is. Like in the last month, you know, if I, I look at my sidebar of, of my browser of all of the weird tools I've built, and it's like, you know, everything from like a life OS for me that just pulls in from loads of ridiculous sources to kind of create some semblance of order in my brain to a, uh… I, I've got a few things that are basically trying to make me money at the expense of, um, uh, rich capitalists. Uh, but I don't think they're gonna pan out, which is sad. I've got a band organization system that I've built. You know, I was building today. I was like, there are no APIs left for gigs in, uh, anywhere, uh, because they all got shut down. And so today, you know, in half an hour I built a scraper that scrapes like 250 venues around the UK to create me a filtered gig listing. Um, and it's just like this is kind of stuff that even… I mean, you know, a bunch of this I knew how to do, but even then the repetitive, annoying tasks of, you know, like hitting every venue website and understanding what they were made in, understanding how the best way to scrape it was, like all that kind of stuff, that was done so quickly because it could just iteratively do it for me in the background whilst I was, I don't know, I was probably writing a slide deck for something. Who knows? I was doing something else that, you know, will probably get me paid. Yeah, like I'm, I'm worried about this, and I have a lot of concerns about it. But at the same time, like there, there's just, there is opportunity, and I think that that is something to be hopeful for. And, you know, if I do put my rose-tinted glasses on, there is still a world Where this technology could, could usher in an age of leisure because it does put us all out of work and they have to pay us a universal basic income. So just keep that in your mind as a, there, there's a potential world out there that we could literally just play the guitar all day and not have to do anything else 'cause the robots are doing it all for us and they're doing it well. I'm just saying it's a potential.

Brad: [1:16:48] y- you're in good company in saying it. That's-- It's not, like… It's not, it's not totally and completely naive, but I think at the very least, you're, you're saying, maybe there's a more people are going to see

Luke: [1:17:01] Yeah.

Brad: [1:17:02] it's easier to

Luke: [1:17:04] Exactly.

Brad: [1:17:05] where the gigs are and, and, and that's a

Luke: [1:17:08] Yeah. There's more, there's more families that, you know, uh, one of the things-- the next projects that I'm gonna pick up is a life OS for the whole house so that we understand where everybody's at and what they're doing and what's going on, and that makes for a more cohesive experience for everybody because everybody's on the same page and reduces conflict. Um, you know, there's-- I've, I've, I've known people who have built some amazing like, you know, grassroots activism stuff around like just, um, pulling together, like audiences together and pulling together ways to, you know, create things to, uh, go out and protest. Like there are, there are ways to actually use this against itself. Like you-- there are so many ways that you can use this to make things incrementally better in a multitude of ways. Um, you know, even if it is also just making stupid songs about Australian prime ministers who, uh, went missing in the sea one day, so…

Brad: [1:18:05] Well, speaking of, uh, stupid songs, uh, the, the, last question I have for you, uh, before we wrap up is, is what music, uh, do you want more people to listen to? Uh, we've been talking about music this whole conversation is a

Luke: [1:18:22] Yeah, how do you make me pick one, Brad? It's, it's, it's real tough. I will actually-- I'll, I'll recommend one probably mostly 'cause they're top of mind, but they deserve to be the biggest band in the world. there is a, a band called Future Teens. They're-- uh, they literally released an album, uh, today, their, which is their third album. But they are one of my favorite finds of the last couple years. Um, they're like an indie, emo, punk-ish, little bit of country in there, just that really nice mix of everything. queer band as well, and talk a lot about like, That experience and they're just, yeah, they're just one of those bands that I feel like everybody needs to listen to because they're just cathartic brilliance from Boston as well. So, you know, cool place.

Brad: [1:19:12] fantastic. then v- very last thing is, is where p- where could people go to find out about you follow along with what

Luke: [1:19:20] sure. I chose a very stupid handle back in university for myself online, which is Lurkmoofy, uh, if you can figure out how to spell it. but it's, yeah, it's L-U-R-K-M-O-O-P-H-Y, and it is generally the way that you can find me everywhere. These days, mostly on, Blue Sky and Instagram, and you can also, uh, check out the website lurkmoofy.com for all of my ridiculous side projects.

Brad: [1:19:43] Well, thanks so much, Luke. This was, uh, this was a real pleasure We're recording this on a Friday, so I'm going into the weekend,

Luke: [1:19:52] a fantastic chat. I loved it. It's great. Thanks so much.

Brad: [1:19:57] All right. Yeah. Thank you, everybody.