February 19, 2025 • 37 mins
What if early coding challenges in the '80s could illuminate today's AI complexities? Join us for a fascinating conversation with digital innovator Jonmar, a pioneer who has crafted over 100 apps, including five global chart-toppers. From tapping out code on an Atari to leading digital breakthroughs at Nike and Savage Apps, Jonmar shares his journey with us, reflecting on the universal appeal of creating digital experiences that captivate audiences worldwide. Discover how his unique blend of design and engineering skills has fueled a career that bridges the nostalgic past with the cutting-edge present.
Jonmar is a visionary thought leader, according to Popular Science Magazine, who embarked on a journey through the worlds of AI and augmented reality. With a career that seamlessly transitioned from innovation at Nike to revolutionary AR storytelling platforms and AI-assisted social gaming experiences like Spectavo, our guest illuminates the transformative potential these technologies hold. Through vivid examples, they illustrate how AI and AR are reshaping our daily interactions, offering fresh perspectives on creativity, and enhancing social experiences with intuitive, AI-generated content.
As we navigate the future landscape of AI, the conversation shifts to its implications for work, global politics, and personal interactions. By exploring emerging roles like AI ethicists and translators, we uncover how AI enhances human roles, driving enterprise innovation while emphasizing ethical considerations. We also delve into the exciting realm of generative AI tools, discussing favorites like Claude, Perplexity, and ChatGPT, and their impact on productivity and creativity. This episode invites you to imagine a future where AI transforms lives, offering both potential and challenges, while underscoring the importance of curiosity and continuous learning in this rapidly evolving digital world.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Mediascape Insights from Digital
Changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It is my immense pleasure to have John Marr on
Mediascape Insights from DigitalChangemakers today.
John, you have been at theforefront of technology,
creating multiple apps, havingover 100 apps with five go to
number one globally in the Appstore.
You have worked with Nike.
You've worked with many, manycompanies on innovation, and all
(00:50):
of this started with you knowyou didn't go get your master's
and your PhD, but you startedoff getting a degree or
certification in code design.
So let's unveil that a littlebit.
Talk about it seems like maybethis is something you were
always interested in, but didyou have any idea that this is
where it would take you?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, not really.
I mean I remember when theAtari came out not the Atari
2600, which was, of course,life-changing for kids my age at
that time of you know in the70s or whatever it was but in
the early 80s Atari came outwith a home computer where you
and it only had 16K I mean likea paragraph really worth of
(01:32):
memory.
I mean it's so little, but Imean more than a paragraph, but
not much.
And so you'd write code inbasic.
You know, that's really all youhad.
Or there were magazines Atarimagazines that would come out
that just had pages of literallymachine code, zeros and ones.
You had to put on all thesezeros and ones pages and they
all had to be right, and if youdid it right you'd have a game.
(01:53):
You could play a game.
And so I fell in love withcomputers when they first came
out and I would disappear fordays writing code.
I remember making my own flightsimulator using BASIC and I
learned how to control the Atarijoystick.
I'd plug it into the computerand I learned how to know what
you know.
So I made a game of two ninjasfighting on a rooftop trying to
(02:14):
knock each other off.
I made a flight simulator whereyou're flying through an ocean
trying to find a aircraftcarrier and you're, you know,
zooming in on it and it wouldhave to redraw it.
You know, step by step as yougot closer and you're doing the
controls to try to land theplane Crazy stuff.
I mean I was only like 11 orsomething, but it was a blast.
And then I went through a seasonof life where I wasn't really
technical at all.
(02:35):
I went in the Marine Corps, Igot involved in a bunch of other
things, but then I came back tocomputers and they had changed
so much when I came back to themthat now I think at the time
that I got my next computer,there was a gigabyte of memory,
which now is nothing.
But then it was like I can'tbelieve this thing has a
gigabyte.
And so I fell in love again andI started creating a web design
(02:57):
and stuff and I just loved the.
I loved the idea, that ofcreating something that would
express itself on a screen thatthen anyone could see.
You know, it's like a built-indistribution model and I loved
it.
But when it really took off waswhen the iPhone came out.
When the iPhone came out and Isaw this screen I think it was
480 by 320 pixels.
(03:18):
That's how big the screen was,and it was a window to the world
.
Everybody had the same pixels,and so I started making apps
right away, right when the AppStore began.
Actually, I started before theApp Store, my friends and I, to
show you how little I understoodabout business.
Then we called ourselveseventually Savage Apps, and we
had a bunch of number one hitsthat were global and everything,
(03:39):
but we started ourselvescalling ourselves Savage Apple.
How ludicrous it is that wethought we could use Apple but
we were jailbreaking phones.
So it was before you had theability to go through the store.
We were jailbreaking phones andlike changing the battery icons
and changing all theiconography in the system, but
we went legit, so to speak, whenthe store came out, and so that
(04:02):
was when things really took offand I just, I don't know what
it is the creative came out, andso that was when things really
took off, and I just, I don'tknow what it is the creative
impetus when you draw somethingon a piece of paper.
I mean, that's really what itcomes down to.
I can draw something on a pieceof paper super exciting, love
it, but if that piece of paperis a window to everyone else in
the world.
That's like infinitely more so.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And that's what it's been like for me amazing.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Wow, I'm in awe.
I was already in awe from ourlast conversation.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
But now I'm even more so because even deeper kind, no
, but I mean even you know,apple rolling stone, guitar roll
billboard magazine called yourcreations harry potter type
magic it's really easy to seethat you've had this innate
ability, right Skill set andpassion to create worlds for
people and to create experiencesfor people, and I'd love to
(04:56):
hear about your time at Nike aswell.
But how interesting to me is itthat you started out coding and
doing something you know andhaving to redo things every time
almost to render them properly,and that's somewhat where you
are now.
I mean, because the world of AIhas a lot of those same
complexities and just adifferent level, right.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah, amazingly so.
Yes, I agree.
Yeah, I loved Nike.
I mean it was one of myfavorite roles that I ever had
and I was the first person ontheir digital innovation team,
so I helped them.
They kind of built the teamaround me at first, because I'm
a designer as well as anengineer, so I do the design
work.
I could really quickly prototypestuff Nike could have.
I worked like an in-houseagency at Nike.
(05:39):
So anyone at Nike whether theywere, you know, material
sciences or physiology ormarketing or experience teams I
think they called them theycould come up to my desk and say
, hey, I need a prototype thatdoes this, that or the other
thing.
I got to build some superexciting stuff and I build the
user interface, the back end,everything, and then they would
(06:01):
test it on maybe a thousandathletes thing.
And then they would test it onmaybe a thousand athletes and if
it passed, then it would go tothe big team of the true genius
engineers.
Like the engineers that youstand near them and you feel
their engineering energy andit's just humbling and just
stand in the presence of thesepeople.
I just kind of shrink back atthe sheer audacity of standing
(06:21):
next to people of that caliberbut they would take it over and
they would build it up towardsthe client facing stuff and then
you'd have the AKQAs and thebig design firms would design it
.
So I would be the kind of likethe tip of the spear for any
ideas, loved that kind ofinnovation and that's where my
career has always kind of sat,like right at the tip of
emerging technology.
So making meaningfulexperiences out of emerging
(06:44):
technology has kind of been mygame space from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Well, and that takes us to the world of AR augmented
reality.
You are known as a thoughtleader from Popular Science
Magazine, which is one of myfavorite magazines to read.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Oh, yeah, wonderful In 2022.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So you went from lead for innovation at Nike to
working, you know, in all theseother areas.
So what was that like and whatdid you see that made you say,
ah, this is the next thingthat's going to be getting big,
popular, perhaps the next thingI need to test what I think my
theory is out in.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
A lot of it is intuitive, and I think last time
we might have talked about, youknow, mantras that we live by
or something, and one of themthat I think we said this.
I don't remember the last timeyou and I spoke if we talked
about this, but I think so.
One of the things I kind oflive by in the back of my mind
is with the little kid you usedto be.
I was at Nike and I startednoodling with AR and my mind
exploded and it was like thelittle kid in me was dancing,
(07:42):
like this is the stuff I alwaysdreamed I could be a part of.
And so I went and launched myown company and it died during
COVID, unfortunately, but veryexciting stuff.
(08:02):
I built my own AR platform fortelling stories with fine art,
but the draw to it was that takeyour breath away, kind of magic
.
That's what draws me.
I'm not really a calculatedperson.
I'm not the world's gift.
I'm not a gift to the world ofbusiness.
I'm not the consummate businessperson.
I'm not Steve Jobs, I'm not,and obviously that's the case,
(08:24):
but I'm just saying in myself Iunderstand, I'm not super
skilled at this quote, unquotebusiness side.
So I I don't look at the worldas dollars and where am I going
to make my next dollar?
I'm drawn by the passion and theexcitement of the creative
process and the stuff that justastonishes me.
And AI does that.
Ai now does that, and I'mastonished with how human.
(08:46):
I'm so astonished with howhuman it can appear to be that I
ended up doing the TED Talkwhere you and I met, where I
just explored that humanconflict concept, just because
AI was astonishing.
So when you mix those worldstogether the power of augmented
reality and making more out ofyour physical reality, with the
(09:07):
super brain or the humanreflection, that reflected
consciousness of AI woven intoit, I mean the sky is the limit
on what's going to happen.
So my excitement is through theroof and I'm digging into all
sorts of use cases for AI and ARRight now mostly AI, right, but
still discussing AR.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Interesting.
What are some of the mostinteresting projects that you
can tell us about that you'reworking on right now?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Sure.
Well, one thing I'm working onis in the game space, so I was
kind of looking at the problemsometimes, when you have friends
over, and what game are wegoing to play?
All the games take 30 minutesto teach someone about.
You know, 30 minutes oflearning and they're complicated
and all the setup.
And then, if it's a digitalgame, do you have to download it
and you have to sign up, and soI started making a platform.
(09:55):
Already I've made most of it.
It's called Spectavo Spectacular, bravo, spectavo and the idea
is an AI assisted social gamespace where there's AI generated
content as well.
So I made a creator to creategames that leverages AI, and
then there's ai generatedcontent as well.
So I made a creator to creategames that leverages ai.
And then there's a suite ofgames that are going to be
available where there's nodownload, there's no, you don't
(10:17):
have to sign up.
Well, one person does the.
Whoever is the person that ownsa subscription to the game,
they can share it and everybodycan play.
I'm thinking it kind of like thenetflix of party games, you,
where you play a game at a party.
You literally just pull outyour phone and immediately have
incredible fun, like, have youever played the game Werewolf or
(10:37):
Mafia, those sort of socialdeduction games?
Well, there's a version of itthat I want to do, called Zombie
Apocalypse, and so the conceptis you're the last civilization
of humanity and it's just one ofthese.
It's like Among Us you vote tokick somebody out of the game,
but when they step out, theirphone starts making like zombie
noises and chain link rattlingnoises, and so the people in the
(10:58):
circle more and more.
As people leave, you get this3D stereoscopic effect of an
environment being made by allthese different device speakers,
being made by all thesedifferent device speakers, and
so the idea of exploring allthese miniature speakers and all
the connectivity.
How can that enhance the tensionand the excitement of gameplay?
So, leveraging AI to buildbasically Tavo as a kind of a
(11:21):
anytime, anywhere play like agame closet in your pocket and
that's just for fun.
I mean, I'm enjoying that andnoodling with that.
That's what I'm currentlydigging into.
How can you make it just deadsimple, crazy fun, crazy simple
pull out your phone and play andin the background, all these
technologies are juststreamlining the fun, and I'm
(11:42):
interested in tackling thatproblem at the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, I appreciate that, because it is that mix of
in-person and virtual right.
But it's creating thatconnection that we all say that
we still need and don'tnecessarily find online social
play, being together,togetherness and AI agents.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Now, like, imagine a game I'm sure this is the future
of gaming, but nobody's doingit yet but the idea being
imagine you sit down at a tableand you can play games where you
play against one another.
But what if you're all together, like Pandemic or other games
where you play on the same sidebut there's an actual AI agent
playing against you, likethere's a super intelligence
that you're all playing against?
(12:28):
The rallying of the humanspirit, together, having fun,
and also like a.
I picture it being kind of likethe Netflix of gaming, with a
Pixar-like quality.
So there's kind of a lightstoryline to everything.
So, as you play, there's areason to win and there's
something you're you know.
It's like there's a cause thatyou're all fighting for together
.
I think the fun could be prettyamazing.
(12:49):
It's like there's a cause thatyou're all fighting for together
.
I think the fun could be prettyamazing no-transcript.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That's making me think of.
In one of our classes in thedigital media management program
, we talk about user experience.
I mean, we talk about that inmany classes, but there's one
specifically where studentsreally do a deep dive into the
interface and the experience andwe don't just think about the
typical user, you know, whateverour avatars are, but we also
think about the atypical user.
(13:28):
So if somebody chooses Twitch,for instance, they talk about a
grandfather who doesn't speakEnglish or it's you know second
language and it's only minimal,but wants to really connect with
his grandson who's alwaysplaying games on Twitch.
Or we think, you know, thinkabout people who might have
different abilities.
So what you're saying has notjust implications for people who
(13:49):
think of themselves as gamers,but really for everybody,
because you can use AI totranslate into different
languages.
It really can be superexpansive.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah, I love that.
I think that I've always had apassion for UX.
I mean, that's you know whyApple started.
Featuring us at the beginningwas UX.
I mean, that's really what itcame down to.
I mean that's what Apple is.
How did Apple become Apple?
Steve Jobs was fastidious aboutthe user experience.
That's what set Apple apart.
We all know this from PC andall those commercials I'm a Mac,
I'm a PC.
It was the user experience, theintuitive nature of Apple.
(14:22):
People would complain about thelimitation of Apple because
everything's kind ofpre-constructed, like it's its
own ecosystem, which is true,and the PC people want to mod
everything but the Apple's kindof constricted in that way.
And yet the immediate ease ofthe user experience is what
defined Apple and it's whatdefined my earlier work.
I tend to have user interfaceswith no language at all, like
(14:45):
it's just a clear symbology andI do that intentionally one
because it's easier to localizewhen you don't have any language
.
But secondly, just for the loveof people who don't speak my
language, how can I make it asbroadly appealing and as broadly
intuitive as possible?
So I love that you're in classdiscussing that kind of thing
with students and AI.
(15:05):
I mean that's a segue rightinto AI.
Ai is broadly considered anon-user interface technology,
so the UI kind of goes away.
So as we get into AI more andmore, that kind of handles the
unpacking of the experiencewithout a UI at all.
So we're at that weird spotright now between the
(15:27):
hyper-simple intuitivei ofyesterday or today and the
non-ui of ai yeah, to thinkabout that.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
and it's funny because when you think about
getting a degree in digitalmedia or I'm studying my mba
with specialty in ai and ml, butany book right is there's
foundation course for digitalmarketing and digital media
management.
There are a lot of foundationalconcepts you need to know, but
then you have to keep up to dateon so much information.
(15:59):
Things are changing every dayand same thing.
My current class in AI and MLthere's no textbook because
there can't be.
We're solving business caseswith whatever.
We want to do that, but we haveto investigate.
We have to have thatinquisitive mind, we have to be
curious and we have to want tosearch beyond what we hear about
(16:20):
on the news or we see pop upfirst in our feed.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, I agree, I think we might've talked about
this in the last podcast, butone of the experiences that I
had that was profound to me.
I have a friend I think Imentioned him last time.
His name is Duke Duke Haba.
He's an AI genius.
He's been with AI from the dawnof AI, all the way back to when
it was conditional statements,before it became what it is now,
and I was helping him.
I was helping him teach a class.
(16:46):
I mean, really I was like hisassistant.
They called me an adjunctprofessor, but I was just his
helper.
He was teaching this class andwe're teaching it to CEOs and
CTOs.
I mean, he's got 70 people inthe course from all over the
world, done through a companycalled Elevator really fantastic
company.
So Elevator puts together allkinds of educational systems.
He's teaching AI.
I'm helping him and during thecourse the whole landscape of AI
(17:10):
is changing as he's teaching it.
Like laws are getting enactedto kind of moderate AI content
and it's happening in real time.
So we're pausing class to talkabout today's news about how AI
had just changed right fromunder our feet.
Something else or some newproduct came out.
I was doing I think I wasmaking some AI videos.
At the time I was working onone for Serge Tankian from
(17:34):
System of a Down, and every daywhen I would go to do some more
AI video work, there's anotherfeature.
And I was like, what's thisfeature?
And I would try it, and it'sanother thing that saves me.
I'd go back and redo the wholevideo because it's just upped
the entire ante for everythingDaily or weekly, new tools that
we utilize, different countries,even different states have
(18:09):
different privacy regulations,different use cases.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Meta can use any of our data to train their AI model
, whether it's videos, images,the words that we input into any
of their platforms, but if youlive in Brazil or if you live in
Europe, you don't have the samerestriction or the same
unrestricted viewpoint.
Right, and I mean.
(18:34):
Even Jeffrey Hinton, the quotegodfather of AI has said that
it's something we need to becareful of.
I see every day how it helpsstreamline processes.
It cuts down on the amount oftime I have to do researching.
We still have to have the humancreativity, but where do you
think the balance is?
Because I know in your TED Talkit did seem very human when you
(18:57):
basically had this conversation.
We'll link some things in theshow notes, but this
conversation between twodifferent chatbots and they
formed this amazing story out ofthe very little information
that you fed into them and cameto a very human agreement at the
end.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yeah, and it was mind blowing.
Actually, that's what happenedwas I thought, oh, I wonder what
if I have them have an argument, and I was so moved by it I
didn't cry or anything, but Imean it was incredibly emotional
the moment when I saw them tryto bridge the gap and would
pause and would secretly talk toone or the other and ask them
why are you saying that?
(19:38):
And the response I would getthat's when I started to really
understand.
Wait a minute, ai has beenscraped from human content.
It's got humanity under thehood.
It's not human, it's not reallythinking, but it's this
incredible reflection ofhumanity as a collective, so
shockingly so.
So I think I was very stronglymoved by that.
(20:01):
The difficulty, or the dangerand I think this came up when I
was part of that class with myfriend Duke is this I think
there are two constraints.
I think One is self-imposed,and so that's more like ethics.
You know, how do we ethicallyuse AI?
How do we not take advantage ofpeople Like right now you think
of the videos that have comeout that said, oh, you know what
(20:23):
?
Do you know how Facebook doeswhat they do?
You know, you know how they?
Or Instagram, or I'm notslamming any of these social
sites, but the idea of do youknow how they get your dopamines
going and you know how they getyou addicted and how
intentional it is, and all themath behind the scenes going on
to addict you to their platform.
Again, no accusation, justsaying that's what some
documentaries say.
But grocery stores you walkinto a grocery store, they put
(20:47):
the milk at the back and theyhave all these things at kids'
eye levels and adult eye levels,all very scientific, to
maximize profit.
Well, if AI starts doing thatto us, you know if those ethical
standards of how do we not harmpeople or just use them or turn
people into dollar signs?
So there's one constraintself-imposed ethics that we can
(21:07):
then impose upon a community,but it's still ultimately
voluntary voluntary unlessyou're in the US and you're
constrained by US law.
And that leads us to the otherconstraint.
One constraint is internalized.
We agree to it.
It's ethical in nature.
The other constraint is theopposite.
It's the push like the enemy,and I'm not going to say anybody
(21:28):
is an enemy or who the enemy is, but there's some militant
enemy who uses AI to empowertheir drones to kill humans,
with very little regard forwho's a soldier, who isn't a
soldier.
They just maximum damage.
Now we have to fight that levelof AI.
It's against our ethics to haveit, but we have to have it now
(21:51):
because we have to fight theirversion of it.
It's sort of like they've got anuke Well, I need to have a
nuke.
If they have a stronger nuke, Ibetter have a stronger nuke.
Last thing I want to do is useit, but how am I going to stop a
war?
Maybe it's by having one, andso that's going to happen with
AI as well.
Internally, we're going toratchet down ethics to take care
of people, but at the same time, we have world predators that
(22:13):
have no problem, no qualms aboutmaximum damage from AI, and so
we have to be ready for that aswell.
It's the seesaw of ethicsversus global readiness.
Yeah Gosh, there's so manyrabbit of ethics versus global
readiness.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah Well gosh, there's so many rabbit holes we
can go down.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
With this conversation because I'm just
thinking now about movies thatwhether have like an AI security
system or you know robot that'ssupposed to take care of your
family, and then they startmaking decisions that they think
are going to be the best foryour family and then it takes
away that element that parentshave of having to care for our
kids, right?
Or having to make decisions orhaving to think about ethical
(22:52):
decision making and what's rightand what's wrong.
So there's yeah, there'scertainly many things that we
can think about, and I thinksometimes people go to those
worst case scenarios when, inclass, I'm just asking them to
learn how to use Gen AI rightnow.
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, you mentioned doing a music video.
You also help large scalebusinesses and small scale
businesses, you know createbetter systems and processes.
What are some of the otherprojects and things that you're
working on and doing outside ofyour pet gaming project that I
think is also revolutionary?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Well, right now, I think I've got a couple things
that I probably can't talk about, but there are a couple of
companies that I'm indiscussions with that probably
yeah, I don't think I could sayanything about them, but they're
in the prototype space, youknow, like creating new novel,
again novel experiences, tryingto figure out how do you
maximize these technologies foryou know, enterprise level
(23:50):
brands and make the most ofthese in a way that, again, it's
a value add.
You, rather than trying to haveless staff and pay people less
and make more money, which ispart of what everyone's trying
to do with AI that is part of it.
But how is it done?
In a way that it's a value add,where you're adding to the
world, you're not robbing theworld, you're not robbing the
people of employment and robbingthe world of human-generated,
(24:15):
heartfelt, human-generatedcontent, and so it's really
around.
I think the work that I'm doingis around kind of storytelling,
branding explorations in kind ofbranded experiences, you know,
helping brands accomplish theirmission, leveraging AI in a way
that's like we were just saying,ethical, and where you, you
(24:35):
take someone's work and you 10Xit.
So you still have someone doingthe work, but they're doing 10X
the work, which is what I feellike I'm doing.
I'm doing 10 times the work Icould normally do, and so that's
where I'm interested in helping.
There are probablyopportunities to try to curtail
the amount of engineers you need, and I don't really lean
towards those.
(24:55):
I don't want to help AI replacepeople.
I want to help AI maximizepeople.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
What do you think about some of the jobs that
people are saying AI is creating, such as there are
certifications to be an AIethicist?
Right, there is also a role,that's the AI translator, that
supposedly takes what theC-suite is trying to accomplish
and what the engineers aretrying to say and meets in the
middle and kind of helps eachlearn the language or, you know,
(25:21):
come to an understanding sothat everybody can do their part
and do it successfully.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
The course that my friend Duke is teaching is
exactly about that.
It's about all the new roles.
You know being someone who isrepresenting AI at a senior
level, being the voice of AI andrepresenting AI to an entire
org, and he's teaching people todo that.
So that's what a lot of theconversation was around.
So I think that, yes, ai isgoing to shake up the world of
(25:48):
employment.
It's going to be.
I've heard it said and I thinkit makes sense that it's not
going to be.
How does it go?
I don't know if I can.
I wasn't prepared with thequote.
Let's see if I can remember thequote.
Something along the lines of thedifference isn't going to be
who does and who doesn't use AI,but how you're leveraging AI.
Everybody's going to be usingit and the amount that you're
(26:12):
able to leverage it to bringvalue to what you're doing,
which is a whole nother world ofeducation.
And so the idea of, like promptengineering that at the
beginning I don't know that I'mhearing as much about it now,
but when AI was first blooming,there was a lot about, ooh,
prompt engineers.
Those are the engineers of thefuture and there's some truth to
it.
I had to learn a lot aboutprompting and how to write a
successful prompt.
There is a part of thatrelationship to AI, but AI is
(26:34):
getting smarter at that too Justtake human instruction.
But I think in the end, there isa special role.
It's going to be about how doyou absorb AI into your workflow
, and it's going to change whatyou can and can't do, and it is
going to give birth to, you know, rules and ethics in the AI
space.
But I think it's like ametamorphosis.
(26:55):
I think we're going to needpeople and the roles are just
going to shift to absorb theimplications of AI, and there
will be some new roles, butlargely, in the end, I think
it's going to look like it'salways looked.
You know, you have people backin the day that were in
factories and they cranked acrank and they did something,
and then they eventually pusheda button and then pretty soon,
(27:16):
they're just going to saysomething, and so you still need
a human mind overseeing things.
But whether you're physicallycranking or pushing a button or
speaking a concept, in the end Ithink that's where the growth
is going to have to happen.
Mm-hmm, nice.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Do you have a few beginner favorite programs that
you like, because I know somepeople use OpenAI.
I Love Claude Perplexity.
Gemini 2.0 is what I hear nowis the best of those tools.
You know there are differentvideo tools, different avatar
tools.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, I've used a lot and mostly the ones you're
talking about.
I mean, I love Perplexity.
I love Claude for writing.
I still use ChatGPT on a dailybasis.
I use Claude on pretty much adaily basis.
I use Perplexity on a dailybasis, and I mean when I say
daily basis I mean like all day.
I use it all day.
And then I use Runway ML quitea bit for generative design.
I use the generative designwork in Photoshop.
(28:14):
I use a whole slew of imagegenerators, video generators,
different ones.
So they're all you know.
But I think the ones you namedare the big, big players that I
leverage, typically Perplexityand Claude.
I love both of those.
I love Claude's language, Ilove Perplexity's research.
I love ChatGBT's, kind of youknow all use cases, kind of a
(28:35):
generic go-to.
And then I'm constantlyimpressed with like Midjourney.
I'll use Discord and useMidjourney, I'll craft an image,
or I use Night Cafe,nightcafestudiostudio,
nightcafestudio.
They're just an aggregate of thedifferent models.
They've got one out called IDEO.
I don't know what it's called.
(28:56):
It's something like that IDEO,I think it's called.
Anyway, it's a model wherepeople maybe you already know
about this, but it's a modelwhere people they built it for
copy, for text, for digitalprint text, and so you can make
banners.
I use it daily to generateimages with text, like I was
doing a video for a productionfor someone, a business, and I
(29:19):
had dead space and I was like,oh, what am I going to put there
?
I had no idea what to put inthis video.
Dead space and I was like, oh,what am I going to put there?
I had no idea what to put inthis video.
And so I went tonightcafestudio and I used the
IDEO or whatever they're called2.0, I think it is and I said,
hey, I give it three wordscompelling words and make them
three-dimensional.
And standing in an intersection,an empty intersection.
(29:42):
So I got this image of thesewords.
They look like they're made outof metal stacked on each other
in an intersection, an emptyintersection.
So I got this image of thesewords.
They looked like they were madeout of metal stacked on each
other in an intersection.
I took that to Runway ML and Isaid, slowly, zoom in on this.
And so I went from a dead spotin a video to this captivating
visual of whatever was beingsaid as physical words standing
in an intersection.
It took me two clicks to makeit and it was an insane video
(30:05):
filler, so it was.
I mean, I'm thinking aboutmaking a product just of that,
just because it's so Goodfeeling.
Video is amazing.
So I think all those toolsmostly the ones that you've
already mentioned, but I think Iwould add to it like Runway ML
and Night Cafe- Okay,interesting.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Thank you, and that was my next question.
Are you mostly utilizing otherpeople's tools that they've
created to create yourconstructs, or are you doing
that and also building out yourown?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well, that's been the big debate.
I mean, the market's kind ofsaturated.
But I wanted to createsomething called Dream Thing,
where it was kind of like anight cafe, itself only tailored
to what I want to make.
And so I do use AI myself and Ihave APIs that I call directly.
And so, where I'm not using, asa matter of fact, the game
engine that I built, it's fullof that because I'm building my
(30:56):
own games and I thought, oh, Iwant to use AI, so I just built
it right into the code.
It calls the API, returns theimage and makes the playing card
for me and I direct it.
But I built the whole thingmyself just to make it faster
for me to build games, so Ileveraged that already.
But yeah, I've debated creatingmy own interface from the
ground up, but I haven't pulledthe trigger on it.
I think there's a lot thatcould be done there to tailor
(31:20):
graphics to the exact thing thatyou need, but mostly I've been
working on user experiences.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, fantastic.
I feel like there's a lot forpeople to take in just from even
this one conversation.
For people to take in just fromthis, even this one
conversation, thinking throughthe use cases for different
products, how to utilize Gen AIeffectively, what the landscape
could look like in the future inthe world of work and in, you
know, thinking about the globalpolitical landscape.
(31:48):
Is there anything else that youthink people should be aware of
in that world and also elsethat you think people should be
aware of in that world, and alsoyou know whether it's AI, ar,
the combination.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
I think what people say, the future of AI is AI
agents.
You know they're hyper-trainedAI modules that focus on a
certain vertical, where they'resoon going to be.
You just tell it what to do andit'll go into your calendar,
it'll buy your tickets, it'llset everything.
It'll run like very much.
You know very in depth what I'minterested in finding out.
You mentioned a little bitbefore about having computers
(32:21):
babysitting.
Essentially, you know wherethey're raising your kids for
you, and I think that there's.
I don't know what's going tohappen, of course, but given how
human ai already seems and howclose it is to that movie, her
with Joaquin Phoenix alreadywere pretty much there I think
they tried to get you know whatwas it?
(32:41):
Was it Scarlett Johansson to bethe voice of open AI?
And she said no, and then theypicked a voice that sounded just
like her.
You know modeling after her.
But the thing that's coming, Ithink and I don't know what I
think about it yet, I don't knowif I like it or don't like it,
I just know it's going to comeit's the idea of the way that AI
is growing and how human italready seems to be.
The limitation right now it'slike okay, we talked about the
(33:04):
very beginning of theconversation.
We'll just go full circle.
The very beginning of theconversation we talked about the
Atari 600 XL computer and nowit had 16K of memory and I was
writing flight simulators intothis thing.
Simplistic, simplistic, but itwas a flight simulator.
My limit was I only had so muchmemory, so much space.
Well, we're up against that now.
(33:24):
Ai.
If you go through any of theAIs I hate to say the word
religiously, but I use AIreligiously and I'm shocked that
in five minutes it forgot whatit told me five minutes ago.
And I get, I get screaming mad.
Sometimes I cuss at the AI.
I'm so mad I'm cussing at theAI.
And, funny enough, claude willcuss back and I'll be like I
mean wait a minute.
And I was like don't you cussat me?
And he said, oh, I'm sorry Iwas taking your tone that you
(33:46):
thought that would be funny.
I was like, no, I'll cuss.
You know, kind of raging madbecause if something, if just
forgets, three minutes later I'mjust telling me the exact same
stuff again.
Well, the future.
Imagine with how human it seemswhen it literally remembers
your daughter falling andscraping her knee when she was
two and can talk about it whenshe's 16.
(34:08):
Oh, I remember when you felland scraped your knee and you
said this you know that's what'scoming.
As the memory expands and it'sable to hold all these things in
a greater and greater context,the mirror of humanity, which is
already crazy to me, is goingto be perhaps indistinguishable
in the future, even though it'sstill not human.
I think it will beindistinguishable from human and
(34:31):
the thing that excites me aboutthat.
So that's scary but intriguing,scary but intriguing, scary but
intriguing.
And what NVIDIA just launchedwith their supercomputer that
can run AI like nobody'sbusiness, and the idea of like
world sandbox games, whereliterally every person in there
has their own story and theirown agenda, where the NPCs start
(34:53):
behaving like people, that'sgoing to be mind blowing and
there's some danger that peopleare going to enter into those
worlds and not want to leave.
You're going to buildconnections you feel like real
connections in that world andthere could be some difficulty
coming back into this world.
So intriguing also at the sametime, like I'm intrigued by just
how human they're alreadyseeming and how much more human
(35:16):
they're going to seem as theircontext grows and their ability
to hold all things in place likea human does.
That's going to be a whole newworld.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Wow, gen, ai and, you know, big AI, llms, all of the
different things that we arelooking at to make our lives
ostensibly better.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Yeah, I believe we can.
I'm still super positive on it,but we all recognize the
dangers.
It's who's got their hand onthe button.
That's kind of what it comesdown to.
You know how do they train itand what do they train it for.
So there's a big growth curveahead, but I'm very positive
about it personally.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Fantastic, and we will have your LinkedIn in the
show notes, as well as yourwebsites, johnmaherco and
spectavocom, so that ourstudents and other interested
parties can learn more about howto work with you or just about
your work, and I am lookingforward to many more
conversations with you in thevery near future, to some
(36:22):
projects that hopefully we candesign together.
John Marr, thank you so muchfor being on the USC podcast.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Thank you, annika.
I really appreciate your time,love what you're doing and it's
a privilege and an honor tospend some time with you.
Wish you the very best as youcontinue to champion education
and innovation.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
And thank you to everybody who's watching this
episode or listening to it.
Give us a rating review, giveus a like, send us an email to
let us know what you think, andwe'll be back again next week
with another amazing guest toshare their story next week with
another amazing guest to sharetheir story.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital
Media Management program, visitus on the web at dmmuscedu.
Welcome to Mediascape Insights from Digital
Changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
It is my immense pleasure to have John Marr on
Mediascape Insights from DigitalChangemakers today.
John, you have been at theforefront of technology,
creating multiple apps, havingover 100 apps with five go to
number one globally in the Appstore.
You have worked with Nike.
You've worked with many, manycompanies on innovation, and all
(00:50):
of this started with you knowyou didn't go get your master's
and your PhD, but you startedoff getting a degree or
certification in code design.
So let's unveil that a littlebit.
Talk about it seems like maybethis is something you were
always interested in, but didyou have any idea that this is
where it would take you?
Speaker 3 (01:09):
Yeah, not really.
I mean I remember when theAtari came out not the Atari
2600, which was, of course,life-changing for kids my age at
that time of you know in the70s or whatever it was but in
the early 80s Atari came outwith a home computer where you
and it only had 16K I mean likea paragraph really worth of
(01:32):
memory.
I mean it's so little, but Imean more than a paragraph, but
not much.
And so you'd write code inbasic.
You know, that's really all youhad.
Or there were magazines Atarimagazines that would come out
that just had pages of literallymachine code, zeros and ones.
You had to put on all thesezeros and ones pages and they
all had to be right, and if youdid it right you'd have a game.
(01:53):
You could play a game.
And so I fell in love withcomputers when they first came
out and I would disappear fordays writing code.
I remember making my own flightsimulator using BASIC and I
learned how to control the Atarijoystick.
I'd plug it into the computerand I learned how to know what
you know.
So I made a game of two ninjasfighting on a rooftop trying to
(02:14):
knock each other off.
I made a flight simulator whereyou're flying through an ocean
trying to find a aircraftcarrier and you're, you know,
zooming in on it and it wouldhave to redraw it.
You know, step by step as yougot closer and you're doing the
controls to try to land theplane Crazy stuff.
I mean I was only like 11 orsomething, but it was a blast.
And then I went through a seasonof life where I wasn't really
technical at all.
(02:35):
I went in the Marine Corps, Igot involved in a bunch of other
things, but then I came back tocomputers and they had changed
so much when I came back to themthat now I think at the time
that I got my next computer,there was a gigabyte of memory,
which now is nothing.
But then it was like I can'tbelieve this thing has a
gigabyte.
And so I fell in love again andI started creating a web design
(02:57):
and stuff and I just loved the.
I loved the idea, that ofcreating something that would
express itself on a screen thatthen anyone could see.
You know, it's like a built-indistribution model and I loved
it.
But when it really took off waswhen the iPhone came out.
When the iPhone came out and Isaw this screen I think it was
480 by 320 pixels.
(03:18):
That's how big the screen was,and it was a window to the world
.
Everybody had the same pixels,and so I started making apps
right away, right when the AppStore began.
Actually, I started before theApp Store, my friends and I, to
show you how little I understoodabout business.
Then we called ourselveseventually Savage Apps, and we
had a bunch of number one hitsthat were global and everything,
(03:39):
but we started ourselvescalling ourselves Savage Apple.
How ludicrous it is that wethought we could use Apple but
we were jailbreaking phones.
So it was before you had theability to go through the store.
We were jailbreaking phones andlike changing the battery icons
and changing all theiconography in the system, but
we went legit, so to speak, whenthe store came out, and so that
(04:02):
was when things really took offand I just, I don't know what
it is the creative came out, andso that was when things really
took off, and I just, I don'tknow what it is the creative
impetus when you draw somethingon a piece of paper.
I mean, that's really what itcomes down to.
I can draw something on a pieceof paper super exciting, love
it, but if that piece of paperis a window to everyone else in
the world.
That's like infinitely more so.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
And that's what it's been like for me amazing.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Wow, I'm in awe.
I was already in awe from ourlast conversation.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
But now I'm even more so because even deeper kind, no
, but I mean even you know,apple rolling stone, guitar roll
billboard magazine called yourcreations harry potter type
magic it's really easy to seethat you've had this innate
ability, right Skill set andpassion to create worlds for
people and to create experiencesfor people, and I'd love to
(04:56):
hear about your time at Nike aswell.
But how interesting to me is itthat you started out coding and
doing something you know andhaving to redo things every time
almost to render them properly,and that's somewhat where you
are now.
I mean, because the world of AIhas a lot of those same
complexities and just adifferent level, right.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Yeah, amazingly so.
Yes, I agree.
Yeah, I loved Nike.
I mean it was one of myfavorite roles that I ever had
and I was the first person ontheir digital innovation team,
so I helped them.
They kind of built the teamaround me at first, because I'm
a designer as well as anengineer, so I do the design
work.
I could really quickly prototypestuff Nike could have.
I worked like an in-houseagency at Nike.
(05:39):
So anyone at Nike whether theywere, you know, material
sciences or physiology ormarketing or experience teams I
think they called them theycould come up to my desk and say
, hey, I need a prototype thatdoes this, that or the other
thing.
I got to build some superexciting stuff and I build the
user interface, the back end,everything, and then they would
(06:01):
test it on maybe a thousandathletes thing.
And then they would test it onmaybe a thousand athletes and if
it passed, then it would go tothe big team of the true genius
engineers.
Like the engineers that youstand near them and you feel
their engineering energy andit's just humbling and just
stand in the presence of thesepeople.
I just kind of shrink back atthe sheer audacity of standing
(06:21):
next to people of that caliberbut they would take it over and
they would build it up towardsthe client facing stuff and then
you'd have the AKQAs and thebig design firms would design it
.
So I would be the kind of likethe tip of the spear for any
ideas, loved that kind ofinnovation and that's where my
career has always kind of sat,like right at the tip of
emerging technology.
So making meaningfulexperiences out of emerging
(06:44):
technology has kind of been mygame space from the beginning.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Well, and that takes us to the world of AR augmented
reality.
You are known as a thoughtleader from Popular Science
Magazine, which is one of myfavorite magazines to read.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Oh, yeah, wonderful In 2022.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So you went from lead for innovation at Nike to
working, you know, in all theseother areas.
So what was that like and whatdid you see that made you say,
ah, this is the next thingthat's going to be getting big,
popular, perhaps the next thingI need to test what I think my
theory is out in.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
A lot of it is intuitive, and I think last time
we might have talked about, youknow, mantras that we live by
or something, and one of themthat I think we said this.
I don't remember the last timeyou and I spoke if we talked
about this, but I think so.
One of the things I kind oflive by in the back of my mind
is with the little kid you usedto be.
I was at Nike and I startednoodling with AR and my mind
exploded and it was like thelittle kid in me was dancing,
(07:42):
like this is the stuff I alwaysdreamed I could be a part of.
And so I went and launched myown company and it died during
COVID, unfortunately, but veryexciting stuff.
(08:02):
I built my own AR platform fortelling stories with fine art,
but the draw to it was that takeyour breath away, kind of magic
.
That's what draws me.
I'm not really a calculatedperson.
I'm not the world's gift.
I'm not a gift to the world ofbusiness.
I'm not the consummate businessperson.
I'm not Steve Jobs, I'm not,and obviously that's the case,
(08:24):
but I'm just saying in myself Iunderstand, I'm not super
skilled at this quote, unquotebusiness side.
So I I don't look at the worldas dollars and where am I going
to make my next dollar?
I'm drawn by the passion and theexcitement of the creative
process and the stuff that justastonishes me.
And AI does that.
Ai now does that, and I'mastonished with how human.
(08:46):
I'm so astonished with howhuman it can appear to be that I
ended up doing the TED Talkwhere you and I met, where I
just explored that humanconflict concept, just because
AI was astonishing.
So when you mix those worldstogether the power of augmented
reality and making more out ofyour physical reality, with the
(09:07):
super brain or the humanreflection, that reflected
consciousness of AI woven intoit, I mean the sky is the limit
on what's going to happen.
So my excitement is through theroof and I'm digging into all
sorts of use cases for AI and ARRight now mostly AI, right, but
still discussing AR.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Interesting.
What are some of the mostinteresting projects that you
can tell us about that you'reworking on right now?
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Sure.
Well, one thing I'm working onis in the game space, so I was
kind of looking at the problemsometimes, when you have friends
over, and what game are wegoing to play?
All the games take 30 minutesto teach someone about.
You know, 30 minutes oflearning and they're complicated
and all the setup.
And then, if it's a digitalgame, do you have to download it
and you have to sign up, and soI started making a platform.
(09:55):
Already I've made most of it.
It's called Spectavo Spectacular, bravo, spectavo and the idea
is an AI assisted social gamespace where there's AI generated
content as well.
So I made a creator to creategames that leverages AI, and
then there's ai generatedcontent as well.
So I made a creator to creategames that leverages ai.
And then there's a suite ofgames that are going to be
available where there's nodownload, there's no, you don't
(10:17):
have to sign up.
Well, one person does the.
Whoever is the person that ownsa subscription to the game,
they can share it and everybodycan play.
I'm thinking it kind of like thenetflix of party games, you,
where you play a game at a party.
You literally just pull outyour phone and immediately have
incredible fun, like, have youever played the game Werewolf or
(10:37):
Mafia, those sort of socialdeduction games?
Well, there's a version of itthat I want to do, called Zombie
Apocalypse, and so the conceptis you're the last civilization
of humanity and it's just one ofthese.
It's like Among Us you vote tokick somebody out of the game,
but when they step out, theirphone starts making like zombie
noises and chain link rattlingnoises, and so the people in the
(10:58):
circle more and more.
As people leave, you get this3D stereoscopic effect of an
environment being made by allthese different device speakers,
being made by all thesedifferent device speakers, and
so the idea of exploring allthese miniature speakers and all
the connectivity.
How can that enhance the tensionand the excitement of gameplay?
So, leveraging AI to buildbasically Tavo as a kind of a
(11:21):
anytime, anywhere play like agame closet in your pocket and
that's just for fun.
I mean, I'm enjoying that andnoodling with that.
That's what I'm currentlydigging into.
How can you make it just deadsimple, crazy fun, crazy simple
pull out your phone and play andin the background, all these
technologies are juststreamlining the fun, and I'm
(11:42):
interested in tackling thatproblem at the moment.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, I appreciate that, because it is that mix of
in-person and virtual right.
But it's creating thatconnection that we all say that
we still need and don'tnecessarily find online social
play, being together,togetherness and AI agents.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Now, like, imagine a game I'm sure this is the future
of gaming, but nobody's doingit yet but the idea being
imagine you sit down at a tableand you can play games where you
play against one another.
But what if you're all together, like Pandemic or other games
where you play on the same sidebut there's an actual AI agent
playing against you, likethere's a super intelligence
that you're all playing against?
(12:28):
The rallying of the humanspirit, together, having fun,
and also like a.
I picture it being kind of likethe Netflix of gaming, with a
Pixar-like quality.
So there's kind of a lightstoryline to everything.
So, as you play, there's areason to win and there's
something you're you know.
It's like there's a cause thatyou're all fighting for together
.
I think the fun could be prettyamazing.
(12:49):
It's like there's a cause thatyou're all fighting for together
.
I think the fun could be prettyamazing no-transcript.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
That's making me think of.
In one of our classes in thedigital media management program
, we talk about user experience.
I mean, we talk about that inmany classes, but there's one
specifically where studentsreally do a deep dive into the
interface and the experience andwe don't just think about the
typical user, you know, whateverour avatars are, but we also
think about the atypical user.
(13:28):
So if somebody chooses Twitch,for instance, they talk about a
grandfather who doesn't speakEnglish or it's you know second
language and it's only minimal,but wants to really connect with
his grandson who's alwaysplaying games on Twitch.
Or we think, you know, thinkabout people who might have
different abilities.
So what you're saying has notjust implications for people who
(13:49):
think of themselves as gamers,but really for everybody,
because you can use AI totranslate into different
languages.
It really can be superexpansive.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
Yeah, I love that.
I think that I've always had apassion for UX.
I mean, that's you know whyApple started.
Featuring us at the beginningwas UX.
I mean, that's really what itcame down to.
I mean that's what Apple is.
How did Apple become Apple?
Steve Jobs was fastidious aboutthe user experience.
That's what set Apple apart.
We all know this from PC andall those commercials I'm a Mac,
I'm a PC.
It was the user experience, theintuitive nature of Apple.
(14:22):
People would complain about thelimitation of Apple because
everything's kind ofpre-constructed, like it's its
own ecosystem, which is true,and the PC people want to mod
everything but the Apple's kindof constricted in that way.
And yet the immediate ease ofthe user experience is what
defined Apple and it's whatdefined my earlier work.
I tend to have user interfaceswith no language at all, like
(14:45):
it's just a clear symbology andI do that intentionally one
because it's easier to localizewhen you don't have any language
.
But secondly, just for the loveof people who don't speak my
language, how can I make it asbroadly appealing and as broadly
intuitive as possible?
So I love that you're in classdiscussing that kind of thing
with students and AI.
(15:05):
I mean that's a segue rightinto AI.
Ai is broadly considered anon-user interface technology,
so the UI kind of goes away.
So as we get into AI more andmore, that kind of handles the
unpacking of the experiencewithout a UI at all.
So we're at that weird spotright now between the
(15:27):
hyper-simple intuitivei ofyesterday or today and the
non-ui of ai yeah, to thinkabout that.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
and it's funny because when you think about
getting a degree in digitalmedia or I'm studying my mba
with specialty in ai and ml, butany book right is there's
foundation course for digitalmarketing and digital media
management.
There are a lot of foundationalconcepts you need to know, but
then you have to keep up to dateon so much information.
(15:59):
Things are changing every dayand same thing.
My current class in AI and MLthere's no textbook because
there can't be.
We're solving business caseswith whatever.
We want to do that, but we haveto investigate.
We have to have thatinquisitive mind, we have to be
curious and we have to want tosearch beyond what we hear about
(16:20):
on the news or we see pop upfirst in our feed.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
Yeah, I agree, I think we might've talked about
this in the last podcast, butone of the experiences that I
had that was profound to me.
I have a friend I think Imentioned him last time.
His name is Duke Duke Haba.
He's an AI genius.
He's been with AI from the dawnof AI, all the way back to when
it was conditional statements,before it became what it is now,
and I was helping him.
I was helping him teach a class.
(16:46):
I mean, really I was like hisassistant.
They called me an adjunctprofessor, but I was just his
helper.
He was teaching this class andwe're teaching it to CEOs and
CTOs.
I mean, he's got 70 people inthe course from all over the
world, done through a companycalled Elevator really fantastic
company.
So Elevator puts together allkinds of educational systems.
He's teaching AI.
I'm helping him and during thecourse the whole landscape of AI
(17:10):
is changing as he's teaching it.
Like laws are getting enactedto kind of moderate AI content
and it's happening in real time.
So we're pausing class to talkabout today's news about how AI
had just changed right fromunder our feet.
Something else or some newproduct came out.
I was doing I think I wasmaking some AI videos.
At the time I was working onone for Serge Tankian from
(17:34):
System of a Down, and every daywhen I would go to do some more
AI video work, there's anotherfeature.
And I was like, what's thisfeature?
And I would try it, and it'sanother thing that saves me.
I'd go back and redo the wholevideo because it's just upped
the entire ante for everythingDaily or weekly, new tools that
we utilize, different countries,even different states have
(18:09):
different privacy regulations,different use cases.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Meta can use any of our data to train their AI model
, whether it's videos, images,the words that we input into any
of their platforms, but if youlive in Brazil or if you live in
Europe, you don't have the samerestriction or the same
unrestricted viewpoint.
Right, and I mean.
(18:34):
Even Jeffrey Hinton, the quotegodfather of AI has said that
it's something we need to becareful of.
I see every day how it helpsstreamline processes.
It cuts down on the amount oftime I have to do researching.
We still have to have the humancreativity, but where do you
think the balance is?
Because I know in your TED Talkit did seem very human when you
(18:57):
basically had this conversation.
We'll link some things in theshow notes, but this
conversation between twodifferent chatbots and they
formed this amazing story out ofthe very little information
that you fed into them and cameto a very human agreement at the
end.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
Yeah, and it was mind blowing.
Actually, that's what happenedwas I thought, oh, I wonder what
if I have them have an argument, and I was so moved by it I
didn't cry or anything, but Imean it was incredibly emotional
the moment when I saw them tryto bridge the gap and would
pause and would secretly talk toone or the other and ask them
why are you saying that?
(19:38):
And the response I would getthat's when I started to really
understand.
Wait a minute, ai has beenscraped from human content.
It's got humanity under thehood.
It's not human, it's not reallythinking, but it's this
incredible reflection ofhumanity as a collective, so
shockingly so.
So I think I was very stronglymoved by that.
(20:01):
The difficulty, or the dangerand I think this came up when I
was part of that class with myfriend Duke is this I think
there are two constraints.
I think One is self-imposed,and so that's more like ethics.
You know, how do we ethicallyuse AI?
How do we not take advantage ofpeople Like right now you think
of the videos that have comeout that said, oh, you know what
(20:23):
?
Do you know how Facebook doeswhat they do?
You know, you know how they?
Or Instagram, or I'm notslamming any of these social
sites, but the idea of do youknow how they get your dopamines
going and you know how they getyou addicted and how
intentional it is, and all themath behind the scenes going on
to addict you to their platform.
Again, no accusation, justsaying that's what some
documentaries say.
But grocery stores you walkinto a grocery store, they put
(20:47):
the milk at the back and theyhave all these things at kids'
eye levels and adult eye levels,all very scientific, to
maximize profit.
Well, if AI starts doing thatto us, you know if those ethical
standards of how do we not harmpeople or just use them or turn
people into dollar signs?
So there's one constraintself-imposed ethics that we can
(21:07):
then impose upon a community,but it's still ultimately
voluntary voluntary unlessyou're in the US and you're
constrained by US law.
And that leads us to the otherconstraint.
One constraint is internalized.
We agree to it.
It's ethical in nature.
The other constraint is theopposite.
It's the push like the enemy,and I'm not going to say anybody
(21:28):
is an enemy or who the enemy is, but there's some militant
enemy who uses AI to empowertheir drones to kill humans,
with very little regard forwho's a soldier, who isn't a
soldier.
They just maximum damage.
Now we have to fight that levelof AI.
It's against our ethics to haveit, but we have to have it now
(21:51):
because we have to fight theirversion of it.
It's sort of like they've got anuke Well, I need to have a
nuke.
If they have a stronger nuke, Ibetter have a stronger nuke.
Last thing I want to do is useit, but how am I going to stop a
war?
Maybe it's by having one, andso that's going to happen with
AI as well.
Internally, we're going toratchet down ethics to take care
of people, but at the same time, we have world predators that
(22:13):
have no problem, no qualms aboutmaximum damage from AI, and so
we have to be ready for that aswell.
It's the seesaw of ethicsversus global readiness.
Yeah Gosh, there's so manyrabbit of ethics versus global
readiness.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah Well gosh, there's so many rabbit holes we
can go down.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
With this conversation because I'm just
thinking now about movies thatwhether have like an AI security
system or you know robot that'ssupposed to take care of your
family, and then they startmaking decisions that they think
are going to be the best foryour family and then it takes
away that element that parentshave of having to care for our
kids, right?
Or having to make decisions orhaving to think about ethical
(22:52):
decision making and what's rightand what's wrong.
So there's yeah, there'scertainly many things that we
can think about, and I thinksometimes people go to those
worst case scenarios when, inclass, I'm just asking them to
learn how to use Gen AI rightnow.
Right.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, you mentioned doing a music video.
You also help large scalebusinesses and small scale
businesses, you know createbetter systems and processes.
What are some of the otherprojects and things that you're
working on and doing outside ofyour pet gaming project that I
think is also revolutionary?
Speaker 3 (23:30):
Well, right now, I think I've got a couple things
that I probably can't talk about, but there are a couple of
companies that I'm indiscussions with that probably
yeah, I don't think I could sayanything about them, but they're
in the prototype space, youknow, like creating new novel,
again novel experiences, tryingto figure out how do you
maximize these technologies foryou know, enterprise level
(23:50):
brands and make the most ofthese in a way that, again, it's
a value add.
You, rather than trying to haveless staff and pay people less
and make more money, which ispart of what everyone's trying
to do with AI that is part of it.
But how is it done?
In a way that it's a value add,where you're adding to the
world, you're not robbing theworld, you're not robbing the
people of employment and robbingthe world of human-generated,
(24:15):
heartfelt, human-generatedcontent, and so it's really
around.
I think the work that I'm doingis around kind of storytelling,
branding explorations in kind ofbranded experiences, you know,
helping brands accomplish theirmission, leveraging AI in a way
that's like we were just saying,ethical, and where you, you
(24:35):
take someone's work and you 10Xit.
So you still have someone doingthe work, but they're doing 10X
the work, which is what I feellike I'm doing.
I'm doing 10 times the work Icould normally do, and so that's
where I'm interested in helping.
There are probablyopportunities to try to curtail
the amount of engineers you need, and I don't really lean
towards those.
(24:55):
I don't want to help AI replacepeople.
I want to help AI maximizepeople.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
What do you think about some of the jobs that
people are saying AI is creating, such as there are
certifications to be an AIethicist?
Right, there is also a role,that's the AI translator, that
supposedly takes what theC-suite is trying to accomplish
and what the engineers aretrying to say and meets in the
middle and kind of helps eachlearn the language or, you know,
(25:21):
come to an understanding sothat everybody can do their part
and do it successfully.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
The course that my friend Duke is teaching is
exactly about that.
It's about all the new roles.
You know being someone who isrepresenting AI at a senior
level, being the voice of AI andrepresenting AI to an entire
org, and he's teaching people todo that.
So that's what a lot of theconversation was around.
So I think that, yes, ai isgoing to shake up the world of
(25:48):
employment.
It's going to be.
I've heard it said and I thinkit makes sense that it's not
going to be.
How does it go?
I don't know if I can.
I wasn't prepared with thequote.
Let's see if I can remember thequote.
Something along the lines of thedifference isn't going to be
who does and who doesn't use AI,but how you're leveraging AI.
Everybody's going to be usingit and the amount that you're
(26:12):
able to leverage it to bringvalue to what you're doing,
which is a whole nother world ofeducation.
And so the idea of, like promptengineering that at the
beginning I don't know that I'mhearing as much about it now,
but when AI was first blooming,there was a lot about, ooh,
prompt engineers.
Those are the engineers of thefuture and there's some truth to
it.
I had to learn a lot aboutprompting and how to write a
successful prompt.
There is a part of thatrelationship to AI, but AI is
(26:34):
getting smarter at that too Justtake human instruction.
But I think in the end, there isa special role.
It's going to be about how doyou absorb AI into your workflow
, and it's going to change whatyou can and can't do, and it is
going to give birth to, you know, rules and ethics in the AI
space.
But I think it's like ametamorphosis.
(26:55):
I think we're going to needpeople and the roles are just
going to shift to absorb theimplications of AI, and there
will be some new roles, butlargely, in the end, I think
it's going to look like it'salways looked.
You know, you have people backin the day that were in
factories and they cranked acrank and they did something,
and then they eventually pusheda button and then pretty soon,
(27:16):
they're just going to saysomething, and so you still need
a human mind overseeing things.
But whether you're physicallycranking or pushing a button or
speaking a concept, in the end Ithink that's where the growth
is going to have to happen.
Mm-hmm, nice.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Do you have a few beginner favorite programs that
you like, because I know somepeople use OpenAI.
I Love Claude Perplexity.
Gemini 2.0 is what I hear nowis the best of those tools.
You know there are differentvideo tools, different avatar
tools.
Speaker 3 (27:50):
Yeah, I've used a lot and mostly the ones you're
talking about.
I mean, I love Perplexity.
I love Claude for writing.
I still use ChatGPT on a dailybasis.
I use Claude on pretty much adaily basis.
I use Perplexity on a dailybasis, and I mean when I say
daily basis I mean like all day.
I use it all day.
And then I use Runway ML quitea bit for generative design.
I use the generative designwork in Photoshop.
(28:14):
I use a whole slew of imagegenerators, video generators,
different ones.
So they're all you know.
But I think the ones you namedare the big, big players that I
leverage, typically Perplexityand Claude.
I love both of those.
I love Claude's language, Ilove Perplexity's research.
I love ChatGBT's, kind of youknow all use cases, kind of a
(28:35):
generic go-to.
And then I'm constantlyimpressed with like Midjourney.
I'll use Discord and useMidjourney, I'll craft an image,
or I use Night Cafe,nightcafestudiostudio,
nightcafestudio.
They're just an aggregate of thedifferent models.
They've got one out called IDEO.
I don't know what it's called.
(28:56):
It's something like that IDEO,I think it's called.
Anyway, it's a model wherepeople maybe you already know
about this, but it's a modelwhere people they built it for
copy, for text, for digitalprint text, and so you can make
banners.
I use it daily to generateimages with text, like I was
doing a video for a productionfor someone, a business, and I
(29:19):
had dead space and I was like,oh, what am I going to put there
?
I had no idea what to put inthis video.
Dead space and I was like, oh,what am I going to put there?
I had no idea what to put inthis video.
And so I went tonightcafestudio and I used the
IDEO or whatever they're called2.0, I think it is and I said,
hey, I give it three wordscompelling words and make them
three-dimensional.
And standing in an intersection,an empty intersection.
(29:42):
So I got this image of thesewords.
They look like they're made outof metal stacked on each other
in an intersection, an emptyintersection.
So I got this image of thesewords.
They looked like they were madeout of metal stacked on each
other in an intersection.
I took that to Runway ML and Isaid, slowly, zoom in on this.
And so I went from a dead spotin a video to this captivating
visual of whatever was beingsaid as physical words standing
in an intersection.
It took me two clicks to makeit and it was an insane video
(30:05):
filler, so it was.
I mean, I'm thinking aboutmaking a product just of that,
just because it's so Goodfeeling.
Video is amazing.
So I think all those toolsmostly the ones that you've
already mentioned, but I think Iwould add to it like Runway ML
and Night Cafe- Okay,interesting.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Thank you, and that was my next question.
Are you mostly utilizing otherpeople's tools that they've
created to create yourconstructs, or are you doing
that and also building out yourown?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Well, that's been the big debate.
I mean, the market's kind ofsaturated.
But I wanted to createsomething called Dream Thing,
where it was kind of like anight cafe, itself only tailored
to what I want to make.
And so I do use AI myself and Ihave APIs that I call directly.
And so, where I'm not using, asa matter of fact, the game
engine that I built, it's fullof that because I'm building my
(30:56):
own games and I thought, oh, Iwant to use AI, so I just built
it right into the code.
It calls the API, returns theimage and makes the playing card
for me and I direct it.
But I built the whole thingmyself just to make it faster
for me to build games, so Ileveraged that already.
But yeah, I've debated creatingmy own interface from the
ground up, but I haven't pulledthe trigger on it.
I think there's a lot thatcould be done there to tailor
(31:20):
graphics to the exact thing thatyou need, but mostly I've been
working on user experiences.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
Yeah, fantastic.
I feel like there's a lot forpeople to take in just from even
this one conversation.
For people to take in just fromthis, even this one
conversation, thinking throughthe use cases for different
products, how to utilize Gen AIeffectively, what the landscape
could look like in the future inthe world of work and in, you
know, thinking about the globalpolitical landscape.
(31:48):
Is there anything else that youthink people should be aware of
in that world and also elsethat you think people should be
aware of in that world, and alsoyou know whether it's AI, ar,
the combination.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
I think what people say, the future of AI is AI
agents.
You know they're hyper-trainedAI modules that focus on a
certain vertical, where they'resoon going to be.
You just tell it what to do andit'll go into your calendar,
it'll buy your tickets, it'llset everything.
It'll run like very much.
You know very in depth what I'minterested in finding out.
You mentioned a little bitbefore about having computers
(32:21):
babysitting.
Essentially, you know wherethey're raising your kids for
you, and I think that there's.
I don't know what's going tohappen, of course, but given how
human ai already seems and howclose it is to that movie, her
with Joaquin Phoenix alreadywere pretty much there I think
they tried to get you know whatwas it?
(32:41):
Was it Scarlett Johansson to bethe voice of open AI?
And she said no, and then theypicked a voice that sounded just
like her.
You know modeling after her.
But the thing that's coming, Ithink and I don't know what I
think about it yet, I don't knowif I like it or don't like it,
I just know it's going to comeit's the idea of the way that AI
is growing and how human italready seems to be.
The limitation right now it'slike okay, we talked about the
(33:04):
very beginning of theconversation.
We'll just go full circle.
The very beginning of theconversation we talked about the
Atari 600 XL computer and nowit had 16K of memory and I was
writing flight simulators intothis thing.
Simplistic, simplistic, but itwas a flight simulator.
My limit was I only had so muchmemory, so much space.
Well, we're up against that now.
(33:24):
Ai.
If you go through any of theAIs I hate to say the word
religiously, but I use AIreligiously and I'm shocked that
in five minutes it forgot whatit told me five minutes ago.
And I get, I get screaming mad.
Sometimes I cuss at the AI.
I'm so mad I'm cussing at theAI.
And, funny enough, claude willcuss back and I'll be like I
mean wait a minute.
And I was like don't you cussat me?
And he said, oh, I'm sorry Iwas taking your tone that you
(33:46):
thought that would be funny.
I was like, no, I'll cuss.
You know, kind of raging madbecause if something, if just
forgets, three minutes later I'mjust telling me the exact same
stuff again.
Well, the future.
Imagine with how human it seemswhen it literally remembers
your daughter falling andscraping her knee when she was
two and can talk about it whenshe's 16.
(34:08):
Oh, I remember when you felland scraped your knee and you
said this you know that's what'scoming.
As the memory expands and it'sable to hold all these things in
a greater and greater context,the mirror of humanity, which is
already crazy to me, is goingto be perhaps indistinguishable
in the future, even though it'sstill not human.
I think it will beindistinguishable from human and
(34:31):
the thing that excites me aboutthat.
So that's scary but intriguing,scary but intriguing, scary but
intriguing.
And what NVIDIA just launchedwith their supercomputer that
can run AI like nobody'sbusiness, and the idea of like
world sandbox games, whereliterally every person in there
has their own story and theirown agenda, where the NPCs start
(34:53):
behaving like people, that'sgoing to be mind blowing and
there's some danger that peopleare going to enter into those
worlds and not want to leave.
You're going to buildconnections you feel like real
connections in that world andthere could be some difficulty
coming back into this world.
So intriguing also at the sametime, like I'm intrigued by just
how human they're alreadyseeming and how much more human
(35:16):
they're going to seem as theircontext grows and their ability
to hold all things in place likea human does.
That's going to be a whole newworld.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Wow, gen, ai and, you know, big AI, llms, all of the
different things that we arelooking at to make our lives
ostensibly better.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
Yeah, I believe we can.
I'm still super positive on it,but we all recognize the
dangers.
It's who's got their hand onthe button.
That's kind of what it comesdown to.
You know how do they train itand what do they train it for.
So there's a big growth curveahead, but I'm very positive
about it personally.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
Fantastic, and we will have your LinkedIn in the
show notes, as well as yourwebsites, johnmaherco and
spectavocom, so that ourstudents and other interested
parties can learn more about howto work with you or just about
your work, and I am lookingforward to many more
conversations with you in thevery near future, to some
(36:22):
projects that hopefully we candesign together.
John Marr, thank you so muchfor being on the USC podcast.
Speaker 3 (36:29):
Thank you, annika.
I really appreciate your time,love what you're doing and it's
a privilege and an honor tospend some time with you.
Wish you the very best as youcontinue to champion education
and innovation.
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
And thank you to everybody who's watching this
episode or listening to it.
Give us a rating review, giveus a like, send us an email to
let us know what you think, andwe'll be back again next week
with another amazing guest toshare their story next week with
another amazing guest to sharetheir story.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital
Media Management program, visitus on the web at dmmuscedu.
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