迪伦·菲尔德：AI 会取代设计师吗？设计即新代码，创造力走向平权

Jason Calacanis (00:00:00): Dylan Field, welcome to the all in interview. Dylan Field (00:00:02): Thank you. Thanks for having me. Jason Calacanis (00:00:04): We are here in beautiful Napa, Yountville, California. Dylan Field (00:00:07): Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:00:07): You're three drinks in. We're a couple drinks in, and we decided to go on camera. Dylan Field (00:00:12): Yeah. Why not? Jason Calacanis (00:00:13): Why not? Well, what are you doing here? Speaker 3 (00:00:16): I'm going all of you. Jason Calacanis (00:00:20): As your wealth grows, have you noticed how much more complex things get? Between investments, tax strategy, and estate planning, managing it all is a full time job you didn't ask for. Creative Planning can help. Their coordinated team of investment managers, CPAs, and affiliated estate attorneys can do much of the heavy lifting so you don't have to. Creative Planning, where wealth works together. Go to creativeplanning.com/ all in. Dylan Field (00:00:46): I was... For this event that you're going to be at tomorrow as well. Jason Calacanis (00:00:50): I'm at an event tomorrow. Dylan Field (00:00:51): Yeah. Same event. And we were basically talking about design, product development. I suck in a little bit of security. Thought that'd be nice. But overall, a lot about just, like, how product development is evolving. And in my point of view, the thing you'd expect me to say too is that design is the new code. And what's happening right now is as coding models get better, I'm not saying that you don't need engineers. We definitely need engineers at Figma. We love our engineers. But also the nature of programming is changing. And as it changes, the value is rising in terms of differentiation to the top. Right. That's design. That's brand. It's marketing's point of view. It's being bold. And it's like the emotional reaction you're able to elicit. And I think that a lot of people are missing that. We also talked a lot about, like, AI and just kind of like Jason Calacanis (00:01:46): Okay. So you did a thing on stage today. You talked with Nikesh. Dylan Field (00:01:49): Yeah. Sorry. I was recapping the interview here. Jason Calacanis (00:01:50): Sorry. It's great. Like, it's good. Like, we can fast forward. But I wanna back up. You're the CEO of Figma, publicly traded. Maybe Maybe you can just give the quick elevator pitch on Figma. And when did you start the business? Dylan Field (00:02:01): Yeah. We started Figma back in August 2012. And the quick pitch is this is where we wanna make it so that the bets... Best teams in the world can design and create and build the world's best software. We're also used for all sorts of stuff. So marketing, advertising, slides, whiteboarding, diagramming, you know, you name it. Like, if it's visual at all, someone's probably doing it in Figma even if it's not meant for that. Jason Calacanis (00:02:30): People call it a design software. Is that a fair characterization, or does it not capture the full spectrum of what the service is? Dylan Field (00:02:38): No. I mean, I think that design is really our center and our core. And, like, when I'm in a product review and talking with the team, we talk about designers. We talk about what they want. Design is also a term that's, like, so interesting because there's, there's, like, like, a a 100 definitions of design. Right. I I think about a lot of... A lot about the definition of, like, it's, maybe creativity meets problem solving. But there's, like, so many others you can find. And then also design can refer to everything from interior to industrial to product design to brand design and so on. And so people think about a lot of things when they think about design. Jason Calacanis (00:03:16): Just to get caught up on the history of the business. You started in 2012. You raised some venture money. The business takes off. You're selling enterprise software. You're doing really well. And then Adobe offers to buy the business for $20,000,000,000? Dylan Field (00:03:29): Yeah. Correct. Quite the fast forward. What year Jason Calacanis (00:03:32): was that? Dylan Field (00:03:33): It was a few years back now. Right. Jason Calacanis (00:03:35): I'm skipping through literally building the business. Dylan Field (00:03:37): Like Yeah. You're like Yeah. You know, ten, eleven years in. But the... No. I mean, we... I've always respected Adobe, still do, and a new generational, incredible company that, like, started everything from printing to making Photoshop what it is and, like, the entire graphic design revolution. Jason Calacanis (00:03:55): By the way, I was on Adobe Photoshop since 1990. I did graphic design pre layers? Actually, you and I haven't talked Were you pre layers? Yes. So I did graphic design pre layers as a kid on computers, and I did it as, a service for, like, people in the neighborhood and small businesses and stuff. Dylan Field (00:04:14): So cool. And so how'd you get access to it? Jason Calacanis (00:04:16): I was, I... At my school, and then I... Well, I was on a Macintosh. I got the first Mac original 1984, and I was always fascinated with graphic design. It was like something I love doing as a... Literally a hobby. You and I actually never talked about this. And then I used, like, Bryce three d and all these early three d tools. And then when Kai's power tools came out Dylan Field (00:04:35): Kai's power tools is really cool. Jason Calacanis (00:04:36): It reinvented Adobe Photoshop. And for me, it was like this incredible, like, expansion of creative potential and what you could do with Photoshop. So I've been a big Photoshop fan since the earliest days and a big user as a personal hobby and, like, I made money on the side doing graphic design and stuff. Dylan Field (00:04:53): That's awesome, man. As a kid. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Photoshop, of course, is like a product that is very mature and maybe beyond mature too, in that it has so many different parts of it that have been added over the years, which I think is the nature of a lot of software. It gets more bloated over time if you're not careful. But there's just so much that's possible with it. And, you know, Adobe as a company has been very inventive. So I've always had respect since I was a kid too. Jason Calacanis (00:05:22): Totally. Dylan Field (00:05:23): And it felt like it was a time when, you know, we could join and not be totally absorbed. If we were smaller, I felt like maybe we would just kinda dissipate. And, yeah, we we signed the agreement. We said yes. And then various world governments decided that they didn't like it. Right. Jason Calacanis (00:05:41): And So the Like, antitrust got involved, and they blocked the deal. Dylan Field (00:05:45): Yeah. I mean, it's... It... Antitrust is kind of like a broad way to refer to it. Right. But you have The United States, European Union, CMA, and, you know, it's very different vibe in And they said years ago than today. Jason Calacanis (00:05:57): Adobe would be taking out a big competitor. Dylan Field (00:06:00): They said a lot of things. Jason Calacanis (00:06:01): They said a lot of things. Dylan Field (00:06:02): But the... I think most important part for us was that we just kept putting our foot in the gas. I mean, yeah, I thought it would be, like, sort of... We would just go right through. And as soon as a month or two in, it was clear that was not the case Jason Calacanis (00:06:15): Yeah. Dylan Field (00:06:16): It kinda became okay. Like, we gotta, like, really power through as an organization here Yeah. And ship and build, like, the next stuff. Yeah. Because if we don't power through and keep our foot on the gas, you know, what's on the other side? We don't know what's on the other side. We gotta make sure everything's fine no matter what. Jason Calacanis (00:06:31): So this is 2023. How many employees did you have? Dylan Field (00:06:37): I wanna say it was about 1,100, 1,200. I have to double check. Jason Calacanis (00:06:41): Okay. So when I heard this story, I was fascinated by... And I think I saw you in 2024, March '24. I don't if you remember I mentioned this to you. But for me, the story of telling 1,200 employees of a start up, we have one of the most incredible exits in history, 20,000,000,000 exit of this company, and it's not gonna happen. What was the all hands like when you get in front of everyone and you tell everyone, guys, this isn't gonna happen? And how do you get everyone to realign on building a business and continuing forward when it feels like the floor... For some people, may have felt like the floor fell out from under them? Dylan Field (00:07:20): Well, I think you'd remember the length of the regulatory review, which definitely needs to be fixed somehow because it's... You know, if you're in a situation where it's actually anticompetitive, which I don't... I still don't believe the Adobe thing was for what's worth. A lot of people, you know, on the Internet probably would say it is, like, or least did it back then, but I thought their arguments were poor. And they were fighting past battles, not looking at the future and what this all would become. But the... And I say that not because I'm not... Like, I'm stoked to be independent too. I'm stoked to be running Figma. That was the plan for Adobe was just to run Figma. Either way, running Figma, I'm happy. Independently, we do move fast. I'm glad... I'm grateful for that. But, to go back to your question, it's like, we had sixteen months of regulatory review. Sixteen months of regulatory review for any company is punishing. And, in an actual anti competitive situation, that could be, like, very destructive for one of the parties. Right. Or both. And I think Roomba is a great example, actually. Right. Roomba was gonna be acquired. Small deal. Yeah. It wasn't like a crazy deal. Huge. Yeah. But they wanna pun punish Amazon. And so they did not let it go through. And because of that, Rainbow went bankrupt and the entire market at the time basically went to China. So from The United States standpoint, it made no sense. Jason Calacanis (00:08:47): Right. Dylan Field (00:08:48): Anyway, I go on a tangent, but I do think it's an important point. There's some policy stuff here that's like, when you go for the ideals... The idealism, it doesn't always practically, like, help America. But it's also an important point, which is Jason Calacanis (00:09:00): almost all markets now are more expansive than they have been historically. And nearly anything that looks like, oh, it's it's the market. Mhmm. That's not actually the market. The market is AI, turns out. Dylan Field (00:09:13): I mean, exactly. Jason Calacanis (00:09:14): Market is this massive market, and this deal is 10.2% of the market. Dylan Field (00:09:20): Yeah. It's like do you define the market looking back at the history, which is like the only logical way you do it as a regulator? Or do you do it as a technologist looking forward? And that could be very different in terms of how you think about markets, but sizes. But in any case, the all hands. It was actually the first day of a winter break, which is pretty funny. So we had told everybody, okay, you know, enjoy the holidays. We actually have way less traffic during the holidays because we're a work product. And that was a Friday. And then, realized sort of over the weekend, okay. This is going to come to a conclusion. And on Monday morning, sent a message to everybody saying, hey. All hands at noon and, dial in if you like, and here's what's going on, and here's, like, the full sort of, details. And so... First of all, so much the company showed up. That was awesome just to see the turnout, you know, first day of break, really. And secondly, I'd say just like the mood was relief because it wasn't about relief of not Adobe. It was relief of not having ambiguity. To have ambiguity that long is really intense. And people have to kinda have two worlds in their head. They're not exactly sure what the future holds. So that was the immediate mood. It was kind of like lighter. And then from there, yeah, I think that the question you asked is right. How do you make sure everyone's all in? And the way that we did it was we said, look, I I just kinda put a video out into the company Slack and emailed everybody and said, hey. If you're tired after working really hard, if you're someone who joined during this period thinking you're gonna go work at Adobe and actually the startup thing is not for you, like, please know we're gonna be working very hard, hustling hard. And no shame, like, we're still on good terms. If you wanna leave, here is a few months pay, and you're welcome to just let us know. We'll make it super easy. Dylan Field (00:11:30): And from there, you know, six months before you can reapply. That's the only condition. After six months, you can reapply, and we'll reinterview you. And it was a pretty small percentage of people that took us up on that. But overall, it was healthy. And some people actually ended up doing total career pivots, like, in wild ways, went on different life paths. Like, I I think it's healthy for everyone. Jason Calacanis (00:11:59): You continue to build the business. It grows. You go public. And I just wanna fast forward to earlier this year. You guys announced a partnership with Anthropic, Claude Design. Dylan Field (00:12:12): Oh, we... Not quite. We we had been working with Anthropic as a partner. Was Anthropic separately announced Claude Design. Yes. Jason Calacanis (00:12:19): Oh, sorry. Yeah. That's right. But you had a connector with them that you announced earlier in the year. Dylan Field (00:12:23): Yeah. We have an MCP. We MCP. Partnered with many companies. Yeah. Jason Calacanis (00:12:26): They announced Claude Design. Was that surprising to you when they did that? And how worried were you when they came out with Claude Design relative to what you guys were offering? Because the market looked at it and said, oh my god. Figma's dead. Claude is gonna crush Figma. Dylan Field (00:12:43): I mean, the nature of online discourse right now is we're so back, it's so over, and it's just a a cycle. Jason Calacanis (00:12:50): Right? Right. Dylan Field (00:12:51): I mean, how many times have Yeah. You've been all over Yeah. In the last, like, month? Yes. Probably Yes. You know, a bunch of times I don't even know about. Yes. Jason Calacanis (00:12:59): And Everyone's Dylan Field (00:13:00): think I'm kind of used to that at that point. Right. Because, you know, you... When when you kind of die so many times and then you're actually like not dead Right. You kind of realize at some point maybe maybe this is like not the truth. Social media is actually like not reality. But, yeah, I I was overall surprised at the way that kind of communication happened. I think that, you know, look, everybody wants to do good usually. I mean, there's some exceptions, but for the most part, that's that's what I assume for people. They wanna win. They wanna do good. And I think that organizations scaling really fast, Anthropic, like, are there any examples of organizations scaling that fast ever? Jason Calacanis (00:13:49): Never. Dylan Field (00:13:50): It can get very confused and mixed up internally. And due to that, weird stuff can happen. And I think that it's just the case that, yeah, we're on the other side of kind of like a weird bout of communication there. Jason Calacanis (00:14:07): And Did it affect your business? Dylan Field (00:14:09): Oh, no. Like, not that... Not any degree that was, like, you know, significant. Jason Calacanis (00:14:16): Because I read your quarterly report after that announcement. You guys grew 48% year over year, and the business basically accelerated its growth. Yeah. So I'm looking at that, and I'm... You know, this was when everyone had the SaaSpocalypse Mhmm. Thesis in general, and I was a big subscriber to SaaSpocalypse. But I do think that there's a bunch of ways to distinguish SaaS companies, one of which I think is founder led. And I think that there's user experience that matters a lot, embedded user experience, and the ability to kinda build from there, especially if you know how to use AI to accelerate and reinvent your business as a founder, particularly. But your business accelerated. Dylan Field (00:14:54): Yep. No. It's been... Continue to do well. And I think that, look, the hard part about model companies and product is, like, what is the product? Is it the model? Is it the UI on top? Is it some hybrid of both? If it's a hybrid, how is it weighted? And in any case Jason Calacanis (00:15:18): You're talking about like an Anthropic and OpenAI Dylan Field (00:15:21): Yeah. I mean Jason Calacanis (00:15:21): Gemini. Dylan Field (00:15:22): Like, whether it's a harness for coding or it's a product like Cloud Design, which you just mentioned. I think it's easy to mistake model progress for product progress. Jason Calacanis (00:15:32): Right. Dylan Field (00:15:32): The reality is a tool like Figma, you know, has taken a very long time to build and a very long time to make sure that we get the workflows right for our users. And we still have work to do. Our users will tell you that. And I... And we're always trying to make it better. So I think that, like, it's it's sort of, not surprising that it wasn't an instant hit or something when there's actually quite a lot of work on the just core user journey workflow side that you have to do to meet the needs of professionals. Now, they're... They've made a cloud design into a product that is is broad. So it's trying to do a lot of things like you'll see like posters and stuff as well, like graphic design scenarios, I believe, when you go to their homepage and and like maybe they'll do well in some areas and not in other areas. Like Mhmm. I'm not bullish or bearish on the product. I think it's just like hard to make good design tools professionals. Jason Calacanis (00:16:25): Yeah. There's a lot of things to design. And Oh, yeah. And also lot of categories of design. Dylan Field (00:16:30): The feel of it is like an instrument. You have to get the feel right. You have get the mechanics right. Yeah. And we've stressed every detail of that and have had a lot of feedback over the years about what people like and don't like. It depends on where they're coming from. It depends on, their task and sort of, like, what they're trying to overall do. And there's so many scenarios. But overall, you know, I think that there are more modes for software than are implied by the SaaS apocalypse. And it's not like software as a category is binary, good or bad. There are plenty of other ways that you can make sure that you're able to sustain yourself long term and you have a growing business long term as a software company or app player company. And part of it is, yes, if you're as specialized as possible on a target audience and you know your audience and you're building for them, that is something that matters. Jason Calacanis (00:17:29): Right. Dylan Field (00:17:30): And I think a great example is this Cursor. Cursor, like, by all means, should not have grown the way they did. You've got all these frontier labs that are chasing them with their own models before Cursor had a model of any kind. But yet, Cursor really obsessed over the user. They saw our own corners. They strategized. They made sure they're doing the right thing for the customer. And they've had an incredible success. Jason Calacanis (00:17:57): Yeah. Dylan Field (00:17:58): And I I think it's amazing. And I think it's an example that will be repeated across many different types of companies. Jason Calacanis (00:18:05): SaaS is not dead. Dylan Field (00:18:07): Well, I I think that it's not true that all SaaS companies are fine. Yeah. And it's also not true that all SaaS companies are dead. Fair enough. Jason Calacanis (00:18:20): Protecting nature is often labeled anti growth. The conservation fund disagrees. They believe protecting land, wildlife, and outdoor access goes hand in hand with economic opportunity. For forty years, they've moved with market speed to protect at risk land while supporting local communities. With 9,000,000 acres protected across all 50 states, the conservation fund is proving that they deliver lasting outcomes that benefit communities and nature. Learn more at conservationfund.org. In a world of AI, agentic AI, I have this capacity to prompt as a human and say, I wanna make something that looks like, feels like, and does x. And this magical technology takes off and does it, and I end up with a product. Sometimes the product is great. Sometimes the product sucks, but it's improving the ability for these tools to do that. Historically, I would have needed a product manager, a designer, a bunch of engineers to do the actual building of the product, whether it's a software product or a hardware product. Increasingly, though, it seems like AI is doing more and more of those tools. Can you just give me your view on the future of human creativity in this era, this future era that we're waltzing into, the singularity we're falling into? Where does human creativity play a role, and where do the gaps still need to be filled for taking human creativity to the realization moment? Dylan Field (00:20:02): It's the case, I think, that we're lowering the floor with AI, making it so that all of the production, whether it's code or it's, motion, video, design, whatever, you name it. If it's digital, you're lowering the floor to make it happen. Everyone can be part of that, and it's more democratized. Ironically... And I I used to believe, even a few years ago I said it, our annual user conference config, I said, the ceiling will be raised by AI. You'll be able to do greater things than before. That was wrong. The ceiling has stayed the same. AI is not raising the ceiling. Humans are raising the ceiling, though. The creatives, the designers out there, when they choose to focus, invest their time, and to be bold, and try to do something that no one else has ever done before, that's when we see the ceiling raised. And at that point, it's a question of, do you care about being in the center of distribution? Do you care about, like, a mean or average result? Is that sufficient for your task? Or do you need something that shows that you care, that you took the time to actually, like, go make this thing? Do you need to go and be beyond what is the minimum bar? And in the world of software design and product, I mean, we're seeing exponentially more software than ever before. It's exactly what you'd predict. The exponential continues. You'll get App Store numbers. The App Store numbers are exactly that same exponential, and we're seeing that the usage and utilization of apps flat. So people are using just the amount... Same amount of apps, but the amount of apps that you can get, it's, like, bigger than ever and growing. And I think it just speaks to, okay, there's a need to differentiate yourself if you're building any kind of software. Well, how do you do that? It's not code because anyone can create code now. That's not the hard part anymore. So my view is design is the new code. It's the layer above. You have to make it so that your design is differentiated, and you have to have a point of view and a good brand in marketing. Dylan Field (00:22:28): And the point of view, I think, is the part that is probably missed the most. That's the Jason Calacanis (00:22:31): human part. Dylan Field (00:22:32): It's not just the human part. It's also the part that humans are uncomfortable having. I think that folks are scared to say something that's not consensus. Jason Calacanis (00:22:43): It's so true. I mean, this is what the greatest artists, the greatest business leaders, the greatest politicians have always demonstrated is the willingness to to be brave, to say and do the things that no one else would say or do, and that's what changes the world. Dylan Field (00:22:59): And I would also add comedians to the mix too. Jason Calacanis (00:23:01): Comedians. Dylan Field (00:23:02): Comedians are underappreciated. Jason Calacanis (00:23:03): I had Tony Hinchcliffe at our thing last year because he's, like, one of the few guys that is willing to say and do things nowadays in cancel culture era. Dylan Field (00:23:09): But comedians often, like, speak truth in a way that people That's right. Otherwise couldn't hear. Jason Calacanis (00:23:13): Willing to say things. Dylan Field (00:23:13): And it's not about political correctness. It's about do you have a message that can rise above the noise and do so in a sustained way? Because look at social media right now. Like, every unique point of view, everything interesting, it gets diffused into, like, the ether of social media instantly. And so unless you've got, something that allows you to kinda keep generating content and a message that is really evergreen because it's so outside of the Overton window, you're not going to be able to actually break through and have any attention. And the attention economy is ruthless. Is this also what human creativity is? If you're not doing something that's never been done before, you're not creating something. You're mimicking something. You're copying something. You're Xeroxing something. But to do something new is to create, and newness requires doing things that have never been done before. Definition. Jason Calacanis (00:24:15): By definition. Dylan Field (00:24:15): And, therefore, you are operating outside of this distribution of training. It's not even about operating outside the mean of the distribution, which is where you start if you're just prompting without any, like, any kind of advanced scaffolding around it. But you're actually doing something that is breaking through, and it's unique. And I do think that will be rewarded by the market. Everyone's gonna see it. I think it's even rewarded by the tension market of organizations. I'm already hearing from so many, like, ugh, I got another deck made by AI today. Jason Calacanis (00:24:51): Totally. Dylan Field (00:24:52): And I don't even know if the person who made it... I, like, don't know if they read it. Do they even know it's in their deck? And at Figma, we actually made it so that, it was just a simple thing, but we said, hey. You are, using AI in your writing of any kind, just put at the top, written with AI. Very simple. Very easy to follow. And, you know, people made jokes about it internally, but people do it. And it makes it so that we can all trust that when we see something, we know that it's been cared for enough that it's, like, worth your time to process. And I, I think that we're gonna see some bifurcation here around trust. And one way to get trust is to do something with your hands. The other point that's important is if you have a vision or if you have a point of view in your head of how something should be designed or look aesthetically or from experiential standpoint, you're... I I think it's great to start with building with AI. It gives you something to get past, like, the blank page, blank canvas problem. You can then react to it and say, here are all the things I don't like. I'm gonna I'm gonna go fix these things. I'm gonna change them up because it's really helpful to have a back and forth. But if you don't... If you have your own vision and you're trusting AI to implement it, you're doing it through the lens of AI. And, like, AI has kind of, like, its own distribution. Jason Calacanis (00:26:21): It's a model fit by it. Yeah. Dylan Field (00:26:22): Yeah. And so you're not gonna get exactly what you want. Now if you're able to do both, and that's what we're trying to enable in Figma, make code a material on the canvas, make it so that you can go start by building. You can build to think if you like. But, also, when you wanna think and work with your hands, you can do that too. Jason Calacanis (00:26:41): Right. Dylan Field (00:26:41): And you can go back and forth rapidly. Jason Calacanis (00:26:42): Right. Dylan Field (00:26:43): I remember the early days of Photoshop just having been a user, avid user from the early days. People freaked out when layers happened, and then they freaked out when all the filters came out and when Kai's power tools came out. And everyone was like, what's the role of the photographer anymore? It's like you're destroying the art of photography, the creativity of photography. But it unleashed a new era of creativity because now these new artists emerged that could use these filters and use these layering tools and capabilities to reimagine what's possible on a canvas. And it was basically a new toolkit. It doesn't mean that the old creatives mapped perfectly to the new creative system and tools, but there was an explosion in creativity and human potential that arose from this, and we pushed boundaries in all sorts of ways. Feels like we might be entering that era again. I'm a big believer in that, and I think that part of it is what I described about market dynamics. In order to get attention, in order to get engagement, in order to get people to care, you have to do something new. You have to actually be daring and try things that are bold. The resistance to change is real, and there's a great thing you can Google, actually, per your point. Look up the mailing list for when layers was introduced. And it's like people going, this is the worst thing ever. And you can find it. If you Google, it's like on a mailing list that's publicly available and you can see all the reactions. Totally. But obviously, it became the future. And I think that there's also still photographers in the world who are doing incredible work, but the bigger disruption, if we're gonna be real, it was the camera phone. That was what made it so that people stopped buying cameras that were dedicated to the task of photography because the best camera is the one that's on you and started treating photography in a different way with Instagram and their camera phone. Dylan Field (00:28:42): So it transformed for a lot of people. And I can't tell you if it's better or worse as a result, but there was change. Jason Calacanis (00:28:50): There's one view on human creativity that human creativity is basically connecting dots in the unconscious, that you've had seen or experienced all of these things in your life or in your set of inputs, sensory inputs. And from those inputs, you connect dots, and then you extrapolate a forward view of things that hasn't perhaps been seen in the world before. Do you agree with that view on creativity, and is it distinct from actually what AI does? And, again, I wanna go back to the uniqueness of the human in an AI era. Dylan Field (00:29:25): Well, I I think that one thing that happens with humans is they're always seeking novelty. Like, our reward function is different than, like, an AI. It's also our loss function. Right. Like, if I were to open this bottle of water and splash all over you and you got mad at me, like, bet I'm not gonna do that again. But in AI, you know, with RL, you gotta, like, really tell it a bunch of times that, no, you don't do that. Robots, stop Jason Calacanis (00:29:57): kicking me. Dylan Field (00:29:57): Yeah. Well, and maybe that'll change with architectures over time. But like, overall, the brain is different than the current systems that we've made with AI. And I I think that it's unknown. We don't know much about neuroscience overall. I'd love to get to the point where, like, we all know more about neuroscience, but something is fundamentally different there when it comes to creativity. And I also think design is different than creativity. It's not just creativity. It's also problem solving, like I mentioned earlier. And the combination of the two is I I just find it fascinating because you have a user. You're trying to solve their needs. You're trying to do so in a way that stands out as creative and it connects with them. And also, like, you have to connect to wider systems, the marketing brands, the culture, the business problems, and so on. And and, like, holding all that in your head at different levels of abstraction while trying to, like, deliver a screen or a flow, that, like, from a search based standpoint, can be a combinatorial explosion is just pretty cool. It's pretty fascinating. Jason Calacanis (00:31:08): I'm actually personally really excited about the idea of reinventing existing art form and media where AI can enable more dynamic generation, where the creator steps up a level, sets a bunch of parameters, but doesn't actually necessarily render the final product. But the final product, sort of like in a video game Dylan Field (00:31:27): Mhmm. Jason Calacanis (00:31:27): Is rendered on the fly with the user in front of it. But the creator, the creative team behind a video game, for example, is building all of the object. They're building the storyline. They're building the narrative flow, and the realization of that is much more dynamic, but I feel like it's gonna find its way. It's gonna leach its way into many more Totally. Different media. Dylan Field (00:31:47): And we we have products around that too. Like, in Fitment Design, you can have now generative tools and shaders where you can do very much that, or we have a product called Weave. And Weave is basically a node based system. You can connect model outputs into, other inputs and such. And the whole idea is, like, it's not bad to generate with AI, but you need a way to craft that clay. You need a way to mold it. And with we, people do, like, the most amazing video and photo work. And overall, just like the the outcomes that are achievable with it are incredible. So, yeah, I think that if you've got the intention, if you actually care to do the work, you can always get to a better result. And people... You know, new model drops. There's like this AI psychosis moment that people are in for a few days. And it's like, I think also aided by algo feeds. Jason Calacanis (00:32:46): Totally. Dylan Field (00:32:46): The best results rise to the top. Everyone's like, this model is everything. Yep. And then a few days later, it's it's okay. Okay. I know the kinda, like, main tropes of the model, and you adapt fast. Like, the novelty's gone. It no longer is a thing that's that's kind of, like, rewarding you or firing off your dopamine system or whatever. And instead, you're like, okay. Well, yeah, it always does that thing. How do I move past it? And that seems to be the continued loop we're in, which is sort of fascinating because models keep getting so good when it comes to these formal domains, math, cybersecurity. Like, IQ points just stack and stack and stack. And then for creativity and for design, it's very incremental progress overall. Maybe that will change at some point, but I think the fact that these are nonverifiable domains has something to do with it. Jason Calacanis (00:33:42): And it's probably the fact that maybe that is the human role in the AI toolkit, which is conceive, create, design, and let the AI do more of the work, but it gives you the ability to do much more work. Any art or media that you're particularly excited about or interested in that's kind of emerging right now? Dylan Field (00:34:03): You know, I I find it fascinating when people do sort of, like, new AI experiments. For example, put this in the media category. There was a designer artist type that made a web page the other day, and it was, like, a letter to Figma, actually. So it caught my attention because I was, you know, getting the Figma hit on the algo feed. And every time he moved away from it, and came back, it got slightly more degraded, and it was basically a comment on attention. I thought that was really cool. Jason Calacanis (00:34:45): Oh, cool. That was a piece of art. Dylan Field (00:34:47): I thought so. It was web page. Yeah. But, like, I thought that the technique and the way that they went about it was really neat and, like, not something that many others have done. I've seen a few other things like that, but overall, I thought it was a very cool way to do it. It is also just a very well written letter. I like the letter too. But I... Yeah. I see stuff like this. And, you know, back in the day, remember seeing people do, like, NFT art with AI when NFTs were a thing. You know? So Yeah. It was, like, 2019 or something like that. But the way they did it sometimes was really remarkable. I mean, Holly Herndon's work around taking her voice and making it so that her voice was something that people could use in an almost open source way. That was quite incredible and ahead of its time. And I think this, like, sort of play between what is me, what is the collective, and what is it that is unique and ownable versus what is not is is quite fascinating. I've always been fascinated by that intersection. Jason Calacanis (00:36:00): Yeah. That's cool. Just as we wrap up, a lot of the commentary on AI that's negative is that it takes away human agency, human potential gets capped out. Can you just talk a little bit about your view on the the potential of every human to be a creative, to be a designer, and how AI might perhaps magnify every every person, not just the, quote, creatives, whether in some elite class of artists in some special building, but the ability for every human to create and the ability for every human to design and produce things in the world and where you sit with that right now. I I Dylan Field (00:36:36): think it's even broader. I think it's it's... As a human in general, pre AI, post AI, you have a choice. Do you wanna consumer create? Do you wanna take the easy path, or do you wanna, like, climb the mountain? And what I'm seeing happening right now a lot is people are letting AI think for them, less at Figma, but, like, more just, like, in my interactions with the world. I just see a lot of this at the moment. And that's one path you can take, but the other one is actually use AI to further your understanding of the world, to learn, to do things you never would have dared to do before because they were... Would have taken so much time to learn or it's so hard, and to really expand, like, the potential ways that you can, like, live as a human. That to me, the latter is the interesting part. Yeah. The former, like, why would I want something else to think for me? Like, my entire life has been about, like, figuring out how to think. And I don't know. I just hope that people use AI to create good and to, like, go be a force for it, rather than just kind of, like, joining the hive mind. Jason Calacanis (00:37:52): Everyone can be a maker. Everyone can Dylan Field (00:37:54): be a maker. Everyone can go do bold things. It's about willpower, and it's about curiosity. And if you're curious and you're willing to do the work, I believe and speak your truth. Yeah. Exactly. And then I think that you can go do incredible things. We will probably see a vastly different setup in the future where things that we can't imagine are possible and things we take for granted are no longer in sort of the realm of what humans do every day. How exactly that will look, I don't think either of us can tell. But it is the case that both were under the precipice of great change, and nothing hit home for me more than the math drop last night from OpenAI of 700 plus papers on all sorts of very famous problems. That that was a show of something. I had a lot of emotions. I don't I don't know how to I process thought it was Jason Calacanis (00:38:55): the greatest day of discovery in human history. Dylan Field (00:38:58): Oh, I mean, factually, yes. Jason Calacanis (00:39:00): Yes. Dylan Field (00:39:00): And also, like, something about it was, like, brilliant and exciting, and something about it was kinda sad. Jason Calacanis (00:39:07): Yeah. Dylan Field (00:39:07): And I I don't know how to articulate the sadness, but it felt like we lost something and gained something at the same time. Jason Calacanis (00:39:14): I don't know. I lift my head up and I look at the next frontier, and I think that the frontiers are brighter and wider and more accessible than they've ever been. So I'm pretty excited. Dylan Field (00:39:22): Oh, I'm excited too. Yeah. And I think that the world will look amazing, and I'm an optimist. Yeah. I think there's gonna be a lot of challenges, and we'll figure them out. Jason Calacanis (00:39:31): Yeah. Dylan Field (00:39:32): How exactly and what the challenges will be in their full form, we have yet to see. But, yeah, I do think that, like, math is something that somehow has a quality of mystery to it, like an unsolved problem. Is it... You know, is this conjecture true or false? How? Why? Grappling with that mystery is something that is special. And I... I'm both excited for the progress and, like, all the things we'll make possible. And also like, I don't think it's wrong to like mourn the loss of a little mystery. Jason Calacanis (00:40:06): Right. Fair enough. Dylan, this has been a great chat. Should we go have another drink? Dylan Field (00:40:10): Sounds good. Jason Calacanis (00:40:10): Let's do it. Dylan Field (00:40:11): Okay. Thanks, man. Jason Calacanis (00:40:12): Thanks.