Humans in the Loop #1

Welcome to the inaugural episode of Humans in the Loop!

First things first, please go ahead and listen, subscribe and review the podcast on Spotify, Apple, Castbox, Youtube, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

In this episode, I speak to William Morgan and Sylvan Rackham, the Co-Founders of ⁠Restless Egg⁠, an incubator for Artist Founders, about the intersection of art, technology, and innovation.

They discuss the concept of the 'artist founder', the challenges faced by creative technologists, and the need for a supportive infrastructure to foster their ideas. The conversation explores the role of institutions, funding sources, and the future of technology, particularly in relation to AI. They emphasize the importance of agency in technology and the potential for artist founders to create meaningful experiences that go beyond mere productivity enhancements.

Some more background waffle about the podcast below.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Restless Egg

01:21 Artist founders

04:18 Discovering the Community of Creators

10:10 Key Players in the Artist Founder Ecosystem

14:37 The Role of Philosophy and Technology

20:31 Bridging Art and Technology

25:32 Defining the Artist Founder

28:24 The Future of AI and Experience

29:20 The Role of Artist Founders in E-commerce

32:41 Funding the Creative Frontier

36:58 The Shift in Investment Perspectives

41:03 The Future of Technology and Agency

44:29 AI: Tool or Evolutionary Break?

51:45 The Playful Nature of Innovation

58:59 Empowering Agency Through Technology

Where you can hear more from William and Sylvan

• www.restlessegg.com⁠

• ⁠William's substack⁠

Some of the organisations mentioned:

• ⁠Antikythera⁠

• ⁠Restless Egg⁠

• ⁠Strelka⁠

• ⁠Medialab⁠

Some of the people mentioned:

• ⁠Benjamin Bratton⁠

• ⁠Refik Anadol⁠

• ⁠Daisy Ginsberg⁠

• ⁠Ian Cheng⁠

Other resources referenced:

• ⁠Sam Altman blog post about ideas people⁠

• ⁠My post about Creative Outsiders⁠

• ⁠A piece written by friend and collaborator, Danya Shults⁠

• ⁠An artificial history of natural intelligence

Background

I’ve long thought about starting a podcast for a few reasons:

1. I’m an avid podcast listener - The Rest is Politics, Ezra Klein, If Books Could Kill, The Football Ramble, The Adam Buxton podcast, The Rest is Entertainment, How I Write, Kill List, Elis James & John Robins - those are all part of the rotation right now.

2. I get to meet and speak to a lot of interesting people for a living.

3. I got bored of most tech related podcasts out there today and had a sense that there was something missing.

On point 3, it’s taken me a long time to pin down a definition of what I think is missing, and the truth is it’s still evolving, but let me try to articulate it as best I can.

A lot of people in the world hate technology. Like truly fucking hate it.

On one level this is weird. Technology is synonymous with human progress - from the discovery of fire amongst our ancient forebears, to facetiming your family on the far side of the world today - advances in technology have made life way better for us in lots of ways (unless you don’t like your family and now have no excuse not to be in touch).

But on another level it’s not weird at all: the increasing concentration of wealth and power amongst a bizarre cast of main characters; the misuse of data to influence elections; the automation of jobs; the doom-mongering around AI; the proliferation of tech we didn’t need, in place of that we really did - there are plenty of good reasons to not be too jazzed about technology and the people building it.

I believe there’s a growing sense (not without reason) that at some point, the development of technology became less about enhancing our experience as humans and more about exploiting it.

There’s an optimistic part of me that believes that can change. That there’s a future in which we build technology with Humans in the Loop i.e. with a deep appreciation for the human experience and how technology can enhance it.

But in order to get there, there are some big, gnarly questions to wrestle with, and that’s what I want this podcast to be - a space to wrestle with those questions and to speak to others wrestling with them day-to-day.

I’ve set myself a few guiding principles:

👉 At the frontier - this is not a playbook for building a vc-backed SaaS company. There are plenty of those already out there. It’s more focused on what's to come than what's already happened.

👉 Diverse perspectives - founders, investors, thought leaders, policymakers - those with different insights and points of view.

👉 Two thirds optimism - nobody wants a hundred episodes telling them that AI will take their job. But more importantly, two thirds optimism is about talking to the potential solutions, not just the problems; and acknowledging the opportunity we have to shape the future for the better.

So if you’d like to come on the show, or know of someone who’d be a great guest then please reach out to me: [email protected]