AI “Art”

I’ve been trying to understand various perspectives on AI “art” generation, and a few things have finally made me understand why it’s so problematic. It’s not just like a normal dataset, like say, weather. But it’s ingesting peoples’ creative works whole. And since it’s not “generative” in the same way that that word’s usually used, it’s using people’s not-public-domain work and hacking it into pieces and regurgitating those pieces to create composite stuff that uses their *actual work* to then also rip off their style.
I’d been thinking about it like other machine learning stuff, where data’s a little more abstract, and not directly someone’s creative output. Like “Oh, the algorithm analyzed this art and learned the distinctive style” would be a much harder argument. But as it is, it’s not like a sewing machine (which is how I’d been thinking about it) – it’s like you broke into an artist’s house, stole all their work, chopped off an arm and attached it to a machine that then used that artist’s knowledge and their work and their arm to create something that would then work directly against them that then took a bunch of money and investment and handed all that “value” to techbros.
I think the AI problem is inevitable, and there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. The inflection point has already passed. But I hadn’t realized the depths to how fucked over artists have been by this, and I’m assuming that most people who’ve tried out Lensa have something a lot more like my previous understanding than my current one.
Thanks to all the folks speaking up and helping laypeople understand the issues at hand.
I will always value artists, and the time I’ve spent working with many artists have been the best, most pleasurable periods of my career. I *hope* that there’s a way forward that uses AI tools and machine learning to actually empower artists using ethically-sourced datasets. I think that’ll be a massive challenge – but that at some point there’ll be an iTunes to the current landscape’s Napster. And that there’s a better, more sustainable, more equitable destination than the AI art equivalent of Spotify.

Envy

Gonna throw something out there I’m quite ashamed of, because I’m curious if it’s just me. If it is, hoo-boy, I’m screwed.

You know when people you know get something you want? Often, when I feel like my first reaction should be, “Congratulations to them! I’m so happy for their success!” instead it’s, “Why not me?” I’ve done stuff like that. Why do they get public recognition and plaudits? Bah! This world is unfair. This is bullshit.

It’s not a huge, loud part of my brain that does this. But for many. many, MANY years, it was always there. A friend got a promotion? Why not me? A friend got a raise? Why not me? A friend won some award? Why not me?

And usually, it’s “Why not me?” with the attitude of “I’m just as qualified for it why not me!” instead of “What is it that they’ve done that I haven’t, that enabled them to get this thing that I want?”

Yeah, I don’t feel good about that. Most of the time I’d do the socially acceptable thing and feign happiness, but there was always that edge of jealousy there.

It’s only been in the last decade-ish that that’s changed. Where I could feel genuine happiness for my friends, and for people I know, who achieved this sort of thing and that jealous goblin in my mind was gone.

It’s taken a lot to realize that 1.) Their success does not diminish me. 2.) Whatever it is they achieved they achieved and I didn’t *for a reason*, and if it’s something that I wanted, being bitter about it doesn’t do anything, I need to turn the lens inward and examine why I haven’t done what was necessary to get what I wanted. 3.) I can be genuinely, wholly happy for other people *even if* they have beaten me to an exclusive goal.

The jealousy did two bad things: First, it made me feel bad. But second, and much, much worse, it was a way to believe that I didn’t need to *do* anything differently. That the world was unjust, and I deserved to be bitter. The thing that changed was a realization that I was jealous because they got something I wanted because they *did something I didn’t*.

And that then leads to two paths: Either I need to understand that I need to change to get the thing I want – growth – or I need to realize that I *won’t do* what they did to get this thing, and therefore, I don’t need to be jealous about it. Some people will work 80 hour weeks and never see their kids. They’ll have a lovely vacation house. I won’t make that trade, and so I can’t be jealous about it.

Now, when I see friends who are successful by any definition, I don’t feel that twang of jealousy. I can be genuinely, wholly happy for them. They can post their awesome vacation photos and I don’t wish I was there instead of them – I wish I was there *with* them. 😀 Or I can think, “What is it that I need to do to achieve what they have?” and not have it be about tearing them down, but about re-examining what I need to build myself up.

Like I said – I’m not proud of that part of me. But it existed. Maybe it exists in you, too.

AI

I know artists are feeling the pain of AI intruding on their jobs. And it’s easy for non-artists to say, “Welp, too late, you’ll have to do something else.” There is some part of that that is true – the genie is out of the bottle, and there’s no putting it back in again. To some degree, it’s a tool, and artists who learn to wield the tool will have a future, and the ones who don’t will have to do something else.

But if you’re looking at AI art and thinking, “Well, *my* job is secure, no AI is going to have the judgment I do”… think back to this moment and whether you extended empathy to the folks who see their jobs at risk or not, because that is where you’ll be at some point.

Engineers, game designers, producers, CEOs, COOs, CPOs, whatever. AI’s coming for all of our jobs. There will be huge portions of our work that can be outsourced to data-hungry pattern-matching tools, because much of the work of *every* job is pattern-matching. There’s a good case to be made that for most judgment calls, AI will be *better* at it than any individual human.

And honestly, for those things, I’d rather have the robots take it over IF AND ONLY IF what it means is that we decouple “living” from “work”.

I’m fine with robots taking over the tasks of most jobs, but what we need to do then is not mandate that every human has to carve out a *job* while competing with AI to “earn a living”. At this point, if AI can do it faster (maybe even better), then that’s awesome. But then we can’t expect people to compete. We can’t expect people to have to “earn a living” as though they need to justify their lives and existence through commercial enterprise.

If we understand that for a lot of jobs – maybe even the majority of jobs – and lots of shitty, repetitive, bullshit jobs – are going AI’s way, then it behooves us to think about our lives not in the context of our work and how it “earns us a living”. We can think of our work as how we help others, how we interact with society, and how we make the world a better place for each other.

Yeah, it’s idealistic bullshit. But the alternative is a nightmare dystopia. Our professional lives are so enmeshed in this weird Protestant work-ethic capitalism that it’s sometimes hard to even think in a different mindset where work isn’t the driving force of your worth or morals or life. But take a sec and give it a shot. What do *you* see?

Ask For What You Need

Just ask.

I got an e-mail from a friend today, and he’d mentioned someone we both know. Happens to be my old co-founder, who I … don’t have the fondest memories of.

Hearing his name is a pretty severe trigger. Particularly when mentioned casually, more particularly affably. It brings back nearly five years of abject misery – without question, the worst period in my life.

I have friends in common with him, still, and so his name periodically comes up. When it doesn’t, I’m fine. Good, even! Generally moved on with my life, blah blah blah. When it does? It’s still sort of a red mist experience.

But because most of these folks don’t know that this makes me incredibly, deeply, fundamentally angry, I try to keep those feelings tamped down, and just get on with things.

But I’d been talking to my therapist about this, and his advice seemed sensible. Just ask them to not mention him around you.

It’s not like it’s a huge ask. But it always felt like, “I don’t want to bring people in to my trauma, or make them feel like they need to walk on eggshells around me.” Or even, “I don’t want people to realize that I’m still deeply traumatized by something that happened a *decade* ago.” It feels like I’m being petty, or broken in some way.

Which may be true! But it’s advice I’m trying to take to heart. Because it’s not a big deal to ask. If someone thinks I’m weak or silly or whatever, that’s fine. They’re telling me something important about them. Everyone else? They’ll understand and be kind.

So yeah. Just ask. It won’t be easy. It might feel dumb. But if you get what you want, it’ll make your life better. Give it a shot.

Community

Welp. Another one of those, “How did this realization take this long to come to?” moments.

Five years or so ago (pandemic warped time, but I think that’s still right), my neighbor passed away. Or rather, I think of the woman that passed as “my neighbors’ mother,” but it was her house. I just knew her kids (who are all significantly older than me) better than I knew her. They invited me to her funeral.

I appreciated the invite, but wasn’t sure I should go. I didn’t know her particularly well. And I felt like … maybe it wasn’t going to be a place I should be. They were black. The mom had been part of the diaspora from the south, and was a pillar of the black community in Oakland for decades. This was going to be a celebration of her life, and I wasn’t sure I’d fit in or necessarily be welcome, even though the family had invited me.

I went. It was amazing. I learned so much about this neighbor I barely knew. And about her family, which I thought I did. I was indeed welcomed, and was so glad to be able to have been a part of it, and show up for the family.

But that hesitance.

I knew most of the folks there wouldn’t look like me. Most folks didn’t share my mannerisms or history. The way I carried myself would be different. The way I talked would be different. The way I’d shake peoples’ hands, or greet them would be different. I wouldn’t know the customs. For the vast majority of folks there, I wouldn’t know how to approach them, and 100% vice versa. I didn’t know anyone else there (except a few other neighbors, who were also not black).

The thing that just hit me, and *holy cow* I feel dumb that it’s taken this long… I bet this is what every black person going to work at a company totally dominated by white people and Asians. Which is every single place I worked at in my career.

And more, while I was welcomed by the community at her funeral, and I left feeling like my fears were unfounded, that’s absolutely *not* how it turns out for a lot of black folks I know at work.

I try to be conscious of these things. I try to read and learn, and where possible, put those things into action. But making a really, really obvious connection like this took what, five years to finally realize?

So yeah. Probably a lot for me to unpack in my own mind. But I think the thing that stood out to me was that at the absolute bare minimum, you can be welcoming and excited to bring someone unlike you into your community. That went a long way for me, and I’m sure it’d go a long way for anyone in that situation. It’s not all of what you need to do, but it’s a good start.

Random Update

What’s been going on? Built a kit guitar recently – a Les Paul-style kit from stewmac.com. It was a fun, slow, exercise in patience. That is, to where I am now, which is a finished-but-not-yet-polished body. It needs between a week and a month for the clearcoat to cure before I can final sand it.

Other than that, been mentoring some folks and a few companies, which has been fun & rewarding. I feel like this is something I could make a career out of, though it’d take a while to build. No worries, though, we’re still doing just fine.

Kids are good – J&K are 12 and 9, respectively, and chugging along re: school. They seem to be happy & well-adjusted. They’re both super creative but in slightly different ways. K’s got a huge aptitude and passion for making art. J’s starting into his school’s Animation Club this week, so hopefully that’ll be a nice creative outlet for him (and get him spending a bit more time with some of his classmates). I couldn’t be prouder of the pair of ’em.

Done Writing About Work???

I post infrequently about my thoughts on work, right? But it’s now been about 2.5 years since my last job. And I’ve always hated when people muse about work culture when they’re not *doing the work*. The cadre of TEDx speakers who talk about culture culture culture without actually doing the work of managing a team and creating a culture and striving to maintain it.

So I find that I have less and less to say. Which is fine.

But maybe to cap things off – one of the things I’m most proud of in my career is that turnover on my teams was incredibly low. And I like to think (though it’s not my place to say, because I didn’t *experience* what I tried to put into action) that it’s because the work was meaningful, people had opportunities to learn and grow, that they felt listened to (even if holy crap, I was far, far, far from perfect), and that even if something wasn’t right, that it was clear we were constantly striving to improve the team culture.

And the thing that’s baffling to me is that in both jobs I got ousted from, the teams immediately started to churn. And it wasn’t that *I* was suddenly gone. (I’m not *that* egotistical!) It’s that the culture changed. People didn’t feel listened to. They didn’t feel like they had opportunies to grow. I’ve talked to dozens of people who’ve left teams I previously led, and it’s always some variation of the same theme.

And it’s always because the folks who took over the team had the same goal – I heard it directly from them in some form or another, that it was time for the “people with big boy pants” to come in and take over and do things “right”. That my approach was too chaotic or unpredictable. But the thing is, when you’re working in a world where you’re trying to get to product-market fit, things are chaotic and unpredictable. You can’t form long-term schedules. You can’t predict growth or revenue. You can’t be deterministic. And if you’re trying to make things predictable, you’re lying. To you, to your team.

The “big boy pants” folks always wanted things to be deterministic. To be understandable. To tell their bosses that they had plans, and that those plans would work. And they’d be just as wrong as I would have been if I’d actually *tried* to make predictions, and they were much worse off because they’d try to stick with their plans long after it was clear they weren’t working.

The right way to work when building something new is to minimize inertia. To change whenever change needs to happen. As Bruce Lee says, to “be like water”. It’s a whole skill that you have to learn that has nothing to do with planning and predictability, and the best way to do it is by empowering as many people as possible to understand the thing you’ve trying to build, and to give them authority to make decisions and pull the team in different directions.

I feel like that was my career superpower – that I could recruit everyone on a team to *think* like a product leader, and to have a team where everyone could yank the team in a new direction – but with enough structure that it wasn’t total chaos – it was a managed kind of swirl of chaotic energy, directed toward a unified goal.

I could get a team of people together, we could not know where we were going, but we could share a vision of where we wanted to go. Each individual would have a machete, and we’d all be hacking through the jungle, and it was ordered enough that we were all moving in the same direction, but flexible enough that every single person could make progress toward that goal and *own* something in the process.

My job as the team lead wasn’t to be 1st in line with the machete and have everyone fall in behind me. It was to keep everyone’s knives sharp, and to make sure that even when someone saw something interesting, to remember where we were trying to go so that we all kept pointed in the right direction. To give credit to those who hacked through the jungle and made progress. To celebrate everyone’s achievements and elevate them. To try to evolve how the team worked as it grew (this was often the hardest and most difficult part of my job) without destroying that sense of ownership and exploration.

I feel like I learned a lot of tools. Creative sprints where we’d change up the teams and focus on a single task for a short time. Highly iterative “continuous deployment” development. Summarizing your goals in a single sentence. They’re things that sound easy but are incredibly difficult to do well, and in some cases, are almost completely counterintuitive to what people think of as “good” development.

But I think my track record speaks to that – over 20 years, the teams I worked with forged a lot of new territory, both in mobile games (where we were 1st (or very, very early) in cross-platform development on iOS, HTML5 development, continuous deployment, location-aware stuff, performance marketing and more), VR, healthcare, and even developing some really effective prototyping practices for traditional console development.

Some of those became massively successful. Some of those things were really interesting very early explorations into things that didn’t work out, but later because hugely successful for others. Some of them were total duds. 😀

But I can look back on my career with a lot of pride, knowing that we built a lot of new stuff. And again – it’s not because *I* was smart. It’s because I developed ways to make the teams effective. To wield everyone’s full potential to exploring something new.

I think that’s why there was relatively little turnover. Because we were all in it together. We all had a role to play. We were all part of the creative firepower of the team.

I think that’s the thing I’m most proud of.

…and no, there’s not really a point to this. It’s just a bit of reflection. As much as “team culture” can sometimes feel organic, it’s not. It’s something that is crafted from the top. It has to be, because culture is how a team spends time and money, and that’s something that unfortunately doesn’t happen bottom-up.

It took years to figure out what I was doing in the working world. What unique perspective I brought to things. I hope that over the course of your career (whoever you are) you find that thing that you do better than anyone else you know. The thing that makes *you* special (at work).

For me, as a generalist, I often struggled with that. I was never going to be as great at anything as any of my specialized friends. So it turned out that my superpower was essentially process management. I thought of it as “game design” for a long time, but it was more about knowing enough about enough stuff that I could see how the pieces all fit together and wield *all* of it more effectively then a specialist could.

It’s funny, because in the end, it feels ephemeral. It feels like nothing, because there’s almost nothing to point to other than “this works”. And maybe that’s why I take some pride in low churn – and that that changed when I left – because it’s a practical outcome of that ephemeral process.

What do I bring to a team? Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing tangible. But being able to look back on things and realize that no, the teams I led were really, really good at building new things. Forging new territory into unknown spaces, and we did it while keeping the team happy and engaged – and were effective at it *because* the team was happy and engaged.

I feel good about that. (Of course I would – I’m looking back on my own thoughts about work and constructing a narrative I feel good about!) But more, if that’s the narrative I have about looking back on my career, I’m happy. And content.

I hope over the next handful of years, I can pass on some of that mentoring others, so that other people can build teams and processes like that, and embrace their own version of the chaos of discovering new things.

MAKE NOISE

You know how in school, you’re often told to be quiet, to raise your hand, to wait your turn, that the teacher will notice you?

That doesn’t work at work.

Even when you have excellent managers, there will almost always be times when your accomplishments are invisible, your desires and goals are overlooked, and you feel like you’re getting screwed or left behind because the teacher didn’t notice you, sitting in the back with your hand up. You’re doing everything right, and getting passed over.

There are a lot of reasons for this. Sometimes, it’s because some kinds of work are totally invisible. Make a systemic change that improves everyone’s efficiency by 5%, but adds no new features? Likely to get overlooked. Sometimes being really great at your job means that your manager feels no “pain” coming from you or your area of responsibility, and so they start ignoring you because other things are painful and on fire, and those things need attention. And they begin to take your accomplishments and efficiency for granted.

That sounds like a “bad boss”, but honestly, it’s just “most bosses”.

Sometimes, you need to be more proactive and vocal about telling people what you want. I wanted a game design position, and busted my ass working toward it. Then got passed over. Why? Because when I talked to my boss, they *didn’t know I wanted the job*. I thought it was obvious – I was doing the work. But I didn’t *tell* them, and it took me years to realize that was my failing and not theirs. Once I told them, I got the next opening that came up.

Squeak, sometimes.

We’re told the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Then we see unqualified self-promoting hucksters squeak all the time and get rewarded, and feel resentful and bitter about it. That sucks. But sometimes, you need to make some noise.

It’s not that you need to inflate your accomplishments, or steal other peoples’ credit. That’ll all get back to you in a bad way in the end. But you need to be upfront and often more aggressive about letting people know about the work you’ve done, and what your goals are. It feels bad if you’re an introvert or used to “being recognized for your accomplishments”.

But think of it from the manager’s perspective. They need to try to understand what their employees are doing, and what kind of impact they’re having. A great manager does the work and takes the time to understand these things, and they’ll still overlook a bunch of stuff. All you want to do is help them form that understanding easily, and make sure that you can’t get overlooked. Done well, that makes their lives easier, not harder.

So yeah – make some noise.

One Word

There’s one toxic word that I find more than any other derails collaboration – particularly cross-disciplinary collaboration. This word is dismissive, demeaning, inconsiderate, and when you use it, the other people in the meeting will immediately turn off, and it will be incredibly hard to get them back on board, because this word makes it clear that you don’t understand what they’re doing, you don’t understand why they’re doing it, you believe their expertise is trivial, and you think you know better than they do.

Any guesses?

Stop here. If you have an idea what that word is, write it in the comments below. I’m super curious what people think.

For me, whenever I find myself using this word, I have to stop. I’ve made it a habit, and it took *years* to start being able to catch myself before using it (most of the time these days) or even after using it (still happens). But whenever it does happen, it’s worth stopping the conversation immediately, rewinding, and taking the time to clarify that I didn’t mean to use the word, and let’s dive deeper into the discussion because there’s clearly something I’m not understanding.

That word is “just”.

Why didn’t you just do it this way? What if we just did X? Just do Y.

It seems so simple. It’s something people say *all the time*, and I guarantee you that every time you say it, the people listening to you hear, “Why aren’t you seeing the obvious thing?” because that’s what “just” means in this case. Shortcut all the possible considerations for anything else, “just” do it the simple way which is obvious to me because I’m smart and you’re not.

Whenever you have an urge to say “just”, the better approach is, “Would it be possible to do X?” “I was thinking we could do X, but is there something I’m missing?”

There’s a chance that sometimes people have missed something simple. Maybe they were worried about things that aren’t as important as they seem. Maybe they wanted to write “good” code instead of something quick & dirty. But *the vast majority of the time*, if you’re a decent manager/leader, the reason people haven’t “just” done something isn’t because they missed a trick. It’s because *you* did.

Assume that your employees know what they’re doing. I know it doesn’t necessarily feel like it, but when people hear, “Why don’t we just…” the implication is almost always, “Why don’t you know what you’re doing?”

Excise the word from your work vocabulary entirely, and I promise you, your conversations will get more interesting and go over better instantly.

Fit

I assume a relatively small number of people reading this follow f1, but hey, whatever.

Daniel Ricciardo and Mclaren parted ways officially today. It’s been a long time coming, as Ricciardo’s results for the team have paled in comparison to his teammate Lando Norris. I’m a big fan of both drivers, and it’s been heartbreaking to see Ricciardo struggle over the last two years. Why does this matter to you?

F1’s an interesting sport. It’s half technical hardcore team engineering challenge, and half individual driver challenge. Maybe not half-half, maybe more like 70-30. Put a great driver in a bad car these days, and they cannot make up the deficit. Put a bad driver in a great car and they’ll likely end up somewhere in the top half of the grid.

But even still, defining “great driver” and “great car” is still the 101 way of thinking about the problem. Ricciardo is a great driver. He’s won 9 races, and makes the kinds of ambitious overtakes that are necessary to win. His racecraft has historically been great. Mclaren has a good car. Norris has landed it in the top end of the grid regularly *and consistently* this year.

What’s the problem, then? The problem is that different drivers like different qualities in a car. Some need stable front end grip. Some need traction on corner exit. Some drivers are adaptable, and can squeeze performance out of a lot of types of cars, while some may have higher peak performance but need a very specific style of car to get there.

If you look at Ricciardo’s performance recently, it’s hard to not say he’s a “bad” driver by his results. But if you look at his career, it’s also impossible to say he’s a bad driver by almost any metric. The problem is compatibility.

I hope it’s already obvious, but if you’re looking at someone on your team as a “bad” employee, one thing you need to look at first is the context they’re operating in, and if you’ve given them what they need to be successful.

Sometimes your endeavor together is a bad fit, and the only way forward is to part ways. But I’ve had employees who were performing *terribly* turn it around completely with what seemed like small changes. Sometimes it’s incompatibility between people. Sometimes it’s confidence. Sometimes it’s creating the safe space for them to open up.

But before you judge someone as “bad”, take a look at the car you’re providing for them, and make sure you’re giving them the things they, specifically, need to succeed. A great manager treats their charges as individuals, and gives each individual the car they need to succeed. A one-size fits all approach is easier, and sometimes *feels* more fair, but that’s a lazy and largely ineffective way to manage people.

You won’t always find that fit where the performance finally clicks. But you’d be surprised how often a small change can make a huge difference.