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What is Creativity and Learning in the Age of AI?

ASU+GSV Summit Sessions · 2026-05-06 · 41 min

0:00--:--

Key moments - from our scoring

Substance score

57 / 100

Five dimensions, 20 points each

Insight Density12 / 20
Originality10 / 20
Guest Caliber13 / 20
Specificity & Evidence11 / 20
Conversational Craft11 / 20

At the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit, Dan Kwai from Learning Commons moderates a panel examining creativity in the age of AI with Will (HeyGen), Brian Johnger (Adobe), and Gabrielle Roizman (TikTok). The conversation moves beyond surface-level definitions to explore how AI functions as a tool within the creative process itself. Brian Johnger articulates three domains of creativity - traditional artistic outputs, innovation-driven problem solving, and the cognitive/emotional processes of ideation and flow - while panelists emphasize that effective AI integration emphasizes "productive struggle" rather than frictionless automation. In education specifically, they identify how AI removes barriers that traditionally prevent creative projects: time constraints, technical skill requirements, and lost confidence from failed attempts. Will describes how HeyGen's video generation platform enables personalized, multimodal learning at scale, particularly for underserved communities and English language learners. The panel argues that what remains distinctly human is judgment, curation of quality, curiosity from multiple sources, and the cultural premium society places on human-created work - drawing parallels to how illuminated manuscripts and hand-knit sweaters command higher value in the age of mechanical reproduction.

Key takeaways

  • →Effective AI in creative education requires 'productive struggle' and friction through iterative feedback loops rather than one-prompt-to-output workflows that generate low-quality 'AI slop'.
  • →AI removes structural barriers in classrooms - time, technical skill requirements, and confidence erosion - that historically prevented teachers from assigning ambitious creative projects.
  • →The human role in AI-enabled creativity shifts toward curation, judgment, and validation of quality across multiple sources rather than execution of technical skills.
  • →AI can deliver personalized, multimodal learning experiences to underserved populations (multilingual students, special education) at scale without displacing human educators.
  • →Society historically values human-created outputs (illuminated manuscripts, hand-knit sweaters, signed art) more highly than machine-made equivalents, suggesting enduring premium for human creativity.

In this episode

  1. 1Defining Creativity in the Age of AI
  2. 2AI's Role in the Creative Process
  3. 3AI Leveling the Creative Playing Field in Education
  4. 4Building Communities of Learners with AI
  5. 5Reaching Underserved Communities Through AI Tools
  6. 6What Remains Distinctly Human in Creativity

Mentioned

Learning CommonsHeyGenAdobeTikTokOpenAIChatGPTClaudeDan KwaiWillBrian JohngerGabrielle RoizmanSteve Jobs

Guests

Will (HeyGen, Head of Customer Success)Brian Johnger (Adobe, Director of Education)Gabrielle Roizman (TikTok, Head of Industry for Education)

Topics in this episode

Project-based learningHeyGen (AI video generation platform)Adobe Creative CloudTikTok education marketingMultimodal learningCreative confidenceProductive struggle in learningAI-assisted personalized learningIlluminated manuscripts economicsFeedback mechanisms in collaborative learning

Questions this episode answers

How should AI be used in the creative process in education?

Rather than using AI to generate outputs directly from a prompt, educators should use interfaces that walk students through the creative process - generating multiple iterations, selecting favorites, exploring different directions - mirroring the iterative, feedback-driven approach used by professional creatives for centuries.

What are the main barriers preventing teachers from assigning creative projects, and how does AI help?

Teachers cite lack of time, need to teach technical skills outside their expertise, and low student confidence from past failed attempts; AI assistants can compress 5-hour projects into 30 minutes, handle technical execution, and deliver polished outputs that rebuild creative confidence.

How does AI help reach underserved student communities?

Multimodal AI platforms can provide individualized lesson plans and conversational learning in students' home languages (Spanish, Chinese, Italian) at a fraction of the cost of human tutors, addressing gaps that were never adequately staffed in the first place.

What is the role of human judgment in AI-powered creativity?

Humans must serve as curators and judges of quality, exercising discretion about when AI outputs align with reality versus generating confident falsehoods, and validating outputs against multiple sources rather than accepting AI affirmation uncritically.

Will AI replace human creatives?

Historically, society places higher market value on human-created work than machine-made equivalents (hand-knit versus factory sweaters, illuminated manuscripts versus printed books), suggesting a durable cultural premium for human creativity that extends beyond financial incentives to intrinsic appreciation.

What our scoring noted

Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.

Insight Density

12 / 20

The panel covers familiar frameworks (AI as leveling field, humans as curators, judgment as uniquely human) without much novel depth or specific mechanisms. While individual points land well, there's significant throat-clearing and repetition across panelists without breakthrough insights that would meaningfully expand a B2B operator's thinking.

creativity is really the ability to express your thoughts in ah, a way that is authentic to yourself
creativity is the capacity to create something new or novel that has value

Originality

10 / 20

The core arguments - AI as a bicycle for the mind, humans as gatekeepers of judgment, the need for purpose-driven struggle - are well-worn in ed-tech discourse. The one genuine provocation (Will's acknowledgment that we *do* lose something significant and society should prepare for disruption) is underdeveloped and quickly abandoned rather than explored.

Steve Jobs early on described computers as a bicycle for the mind
the premium for illuminated manuscripts went up because they are more special as soon as printers became wide scaled

Guest Caliber

13 / 20

A mixed panel: Brian (Adobe, former K12 teacher and faculty) brings genuine classroom experience and thoughtful pedagogy; Will (Heygen customer success, not a founder or practitioner of the core technology) is a product guy without deep subject expertise; Gabrielle (TikTok industry head) is corporate-facing and speaks in marketing abstractions. None are founders, researchers, or operators who have built AI systems or scaled educational transformation.

I'm the head of customer success at a company called Heygen
Director of education at Adobe, ah, former K12 teacher and then college faculty member

Specificity & Evidence

11 / 20

The panel lacks concrete data, named examples, or measurable outcomes. There are anecdotal references (Will's hiring profile, Brian's teacher surveys, TikTok's ad-supported learning discovery) but no numbers, timelines, ROI figures, or specific case studies. Most claims are hedged with soft language ('we're seeing,' 'there's potential').

We're seeing AI really take that role where essentially in um, kind of the realm of creativity, we're actually using.
we're actually seeing now that this essentially levels the playing field

Conversational Craft

11 / 20

Dan asks reasonable opening questions but rarely follows up with push-back or clarification. Panelists are allowed to make broad claims (e.g., AI is good for underserved communities, or we should value individual creativity) without being pressed on implementation, tradeoffs, or evidence. The one moment of productive tension (Will's contrarian point about losses) is not pursued further.

Yeah, I love that. And it reminds me in a different field of, um, uh, one of the things that China is doing
Great. Ryan.

Conversation analysis

Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.

Share of words spoken

  • Speaker A36%
  • Speaker B29%
  • Speaker C24%
  • Speaker D12%

Most-used words

creative33creativity27education23learning16students13different12folks12help12human12purpose12process11value10love10interesting9part9classroom9

Episode notes

Recorded live at the 2026 ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego, this session featured Brian Johnsrud, Director of Education at Adobe; Will Ji, Head of Customer Success at HeyGen; Gabrielle Rosemond, Head of Industry, Education & Services at TikTok; and Dan Quine, Senior Director of AI and Engineering at Learning Commons. As AI gained the ability to draft marketing copy, design graphics, generate video avatars, remix audio, and simulate entire creative workflows, this session examined a defining question: when creation becomes frictionless, what changes? Speakers explored how AI is reshaping authorship and ownership, whether prompting is emerging as a new creative skill, and how direction, taste, and curation are becoming increasingly important core competencies. The conversation also examined what happens to mastery when output becomes abundant and how professional creators must evolve in a world of infinite generation. By addressing the intersection of creativity, learning, and AI, this session highlighted how education and creative industries are redefining the skills that matter most when human imagination is augmented by increasingly powerful generative tools.

Full transcript

41 min

Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.

Speaker A: This session was recorded live at the

Speaker B: 2026 ASU GSV summit in San Diego.

Speaker C: I am Dan Kwai and I'm from Learning Commons. Um, and we're going to have a really interesting panel I think on creativity in the Age of AI. Um, I'm going to start out with uh, a brief reflection. Uh, every time I come to asu, uh, it makes me think about my own personal journey through education. Um, and I now have uh, uh, daughters who are about to go into senior year of high school. So I think a lot about their education. Um, as you can tell, I'm originally from East Texas. Um, I grew up in the UK. Um, uh, I went to high school in the mid-80s. Um, please don't calculate my age from that. Um, but uh, I went to a very traditional sort of industrial era school where uh, you were discouraged from talking to each other as students. It was the stage, on the stage, uh, you listened to what they had to say and you tried to memorize it by rote. And you had these very high stakes uh, uh, summative assessments at the end of the year determined like where you were going to go and what happened to you next. Um, I don't think the idea of a formative assessment was even like a notion in the system at the time. And I compare that to the sort of education that my girls have, uh, at a public school, uh, Akalani's uh, public school in uh, Northern California. And they have a very different uh, approach there for uh, which I am m eternally grateful. Uh, it is much more about project based learning. It's much more about students taking part and having a voice in their education. Um, it's much more about uh, the whole classroom uh, being an engaged place of learning. And I think that's wonderful. It's not perfect, but it's so different from the education that I had and it's the education that I wish I would have been able to have. Um, and it took me many years, uh, after I had finished my high school to kind of unlearn uh, the very bad habits that I think it instilled for me. Uh, and in particular it was very sort of anti creative. It was very much an environment where creativity was not what was required and was actually kind of like pushed out of you. Uh, and my girls have an opportunity to be much more creative. One of them is a published poet. Ah, uh, and the other is now leading a model U.N. you know, they're just doing amazing things that I would not have been capable of doing at their age and I think that's good. And so we are collectively on a path towards a better form of education. And uh, we want more children to experience that and even better versions of that. Um, and it makes me think a lot about creativity, uh, and uh, how we build creativity in our young people. Uh, so I'm going to turn it over to the panel and uh, maybe we'll start with just simply what do you think of as creativity? Um, maybe you could introduce yourselves quickly as we uh, do this first question and Will, I'll start with you and we'll go down the line.

Speaker B: Fantastic. Thanks Dan. Hi everyone, my name's Will and I'm the head of customer success at a company called Heygen. We are a AI video generation platform. And um, I think creativity that I've seen is really the ability to express your thoughts in ah, a way that is authentic to yourself. Um, there's really a very, very broad definition of what uh, folks actually do produce to express that creativity. But ultimately if it is something that uh, is um, uh, kind of an expression of your own, uh, you know, whatever you're experiencing at the moment or a summation of your thoughts, that's basically creativity there.

Speaker A: Good morning everyone. I'm Brian Johnger, Director of education at Adobe, ah, former K12 teacher and then college faculty member before joining the edtech world. Um, I think of creativity in three arenas. The first is sort of the capacity to build uh, or create outputs that are traditionally creative. So something that's visually stunning or artistic, um, that's sort of the definition most people gravitate towards. Then I think there's the in between sort of innovation piece of creativity. Usually when it's defined in a sentence as creativity is the capacity to create something new or novel that has value. So a new approach, a new product, a new system, creative thinking, creative problem solving, uh, and the last is the sort of cognitive and effective pieces of creativity. So the creative process from brainstorming and ideation to divergent thinking, evaluation, iteration, feedback, refinement, all of those sort of cognitive processes. Uh, and then underneath that the sort of emotional and affect piece, the joy of creativity, the thrill of creating something new, getting into flow, creative confidence, um, that's probably for me the most valuable and understated side of creativity that actually just, it just feels good creating stuff. So those are kind of the three domains that um, I find when you say let's talk creativity, people tend to gravitate towards one of those three.

Speaker D: Good morning everyone. I am Gabrielle Roizman, head of industry for uh, education at TikTok. I love this question because creativity is really built into our mission. Uh, inspire creativity and bring joy. And so when I think about, from my seat, what creativity means, it's where curiosity, where expression and utility collide. Right. And so I think that's innately built into our platform where people come because they're curious, they want to learn something, they express themselves, and then they bring joy to themselves, and they also bring joy to others. So, um, that's my view on creativity.

Speaker C: That's great. Thank you. And Brian, you talked about the creative process, which I think is a very interesting part of this. Um, where do you see AI being successful as taking part in that creative process?

Speaker A: I think we're getting closer to moving beyond. Like, I want to see something brought to life. Here's a prompt. It was created for me. Great. Let's move on. Uh, we know that's not creative, and it's created the world of AI slop that we're all swearing through right now. Um, I think what we're seeing now is actually processes while using AI that walk you through that process. Um, and that's what I think is most exciting. Interfaces that say, all right, pause now before you run with this idea. Let's generate 20 of them. What do you like about this? Let's go in some different directions. Um, so I think that process that we've known for hundreds of years is a core part of the creative process is so underutilized and so under taught and frankly, frustrating. You talk to most creative writers and creatives, there's a lot of pain and frustration in the creative process. Like how many creative writers say, oh, I just love sitting down and writing. Like, they all describe it as horribly painful and a little bit like a game that frustrates you. There's that joy and that friction and creation that is so antithetical to how products are built today. Where we use the words frictionless, right? It should be an easy, smooth experience. And so this challenge of, well, let's create creative AI that has friction and frustrates you and challenges you, it just sort of breaks how we've been thinking about the product experience. Um, and you just step over into game design. And those are the folks that usually get it. They're like, yeah, we're creating this sort of productive struggle where at the end you feel like, really proud of what you've done.

Speaker C: Gabrielle, I want to hand this question to you as well. How do you see AI, uh, coming into the creative process?

Speaker D: So I think that AI comes into the Creative process in a hybrid way. Right. Where we are leaning on our experience, our perspective, our taste to influence what good looks like. And then really leaning into AI in terms of both scale and then speed to market. And so I think as a creator, as a creative person, your role becomes more of a curator and moderator and AI becomes more of the enablement piece to allow you to scale your stories, to scale your creative abilities. Um, and so that's kind of where I see it coming into play.

Speaker C: Great, Will.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's actually really an interesting era that we're in right now where I know uh, Steve Jobs early on described computers as a bicycle for the mind. We're seeing AI really take that role where essentially in um, kind of the realm of creativity, we're actually using. We're seeing a lot of uh, folks use AI to actually figure uh, out how to tell their story in a way that they were not naturally able to before. Whether they are not naturally charismatic or don't actually have the capacity to tell compelling stories or uh, they don't necessarily have the uh, technical uh, chops to do fancy editing or the production studio and nice uh, equipment. We're actually seeing now that this essentially levels the playing field where uh, folks that are uh, uh, very thoughtful, have really good ideas, are now able to use AI to help enhance the creation process and be on par with. With more professional, uh, polished publications in like larger institutions and producing content that is just as compelling. So it's a very exciting time for everyone.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's great. And that segues very nicely into my next question, which is let's start sort of centering on education a little. Right. Um, we know that what are traditionally seen as like creative skills of writing and drawing and coding even are not evenly distributed. Certainly, uh, some people are better than others do. We see AI, um, sort of helping to level that creative playing field. And what's the impact of that in the educational setting? And Will, why don't you pick that up?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So we actually see, uh, a lot of educators are exploring applications of our platform in order to really help them reach out to uh, their customers, which would be students in new, uh, and more dynamic ways. And one of the primary ways that we see this manifesting is uh, in the form of uh, personalized learning and also multimodal learning. Where before it would actually be quite prohibitive to figure out how to tailor an explanation of a course, uh, and actually effectively convey content to a student, uh, that is tailored to their needs and their progression. We're seeing Actually, a lot of applications nowadays where, uh, folks are actually using large, uh, language models and then supplementing it with our platform to be able to deliver individualized, tailored learning experiences that reflect the needs of a student at any given point in time. So, uh, we see this at the graduate student level. We see people also exploring this for, uh, K through 12 learning as well. Uh, I think it's actually again, quite a force multiplier for educators to be able to reach out in ways that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

Speaker C: Great. Gabrielle, how are you thinking about that?

Speaker D: So I think it's important to frame that at, uh, TikTok, we are really at the top of the student journey before they even get into the classroom. But I think the value there in terms of how it aids their learning outcomes and skills are the stories that we're able to help advertisers tell the right message. Not only from the perspective of there's a perception that it needs to be, uh, infotainment, um, but what are the technical, um, programmatic learning opportunities? What are they actually going to get when they are in the classroom and bringing those stories forward, um, to aid in the decision in terms of the student discovery to enrollment pipeline. Uh, and so I think that's where we really do a really good job of helping advertisers push that forward. And I think, um, that's where I see the benefit in terms of where I sit.

Speaker C: Great. Ryan.

Speaker A: When I think about creativity and AI, uh, in the classroom, back when I was a K12 teacher, and even today when I asked every teacher what's the really cool thing you've always wanted to do with your students? One cool assignment, one cool, uh, project, they all have an answer right away. Oh, I've always wanted to do. And it's almost always creative in some way. Oh, I just want to do. What if we did a project in math where they could actually design a city? There's always that thing that they wanted to do forever. And you said, well, why aren't you? And the answer has been the same every time. Well, all of the things that they would be doing aren't like, necessarily in our standards. It's a lot of stretch. It's not relevant to the test or our assessments. It's like an additional thing. We're already strapped for time. Teaching them how to do this is not really in my wheelhouse. And maybe I tried that once and no one really liked it. What they made, they weren't really proud of. And then I thought like, oh man, have I just Taught them to do something that now has crushed their creative confidence. If you think of that workflow and then throw AI into it, suddenly what I'm seeing is teachers being like, oh, actually, well, this thing that we wanted to do where I would have had to teach them how to do all these skills, they can now have AI assistants. In my mind, this was gonna take five hours. I think we could do it in 30 minutes. And at the end, students are like, oh, damn, this is actually really cool. This looks professional. Maybe I wanna do more stuff like this. So it's not really revolutionizing what I think most educators I talked to have always wanted to do. It's just a lot of those barriers, the structural ones, like time, but also just the confidence barriers, um, have sort of been removed.

Speaker C: Yeah, I love that. And it reminds me in a different field of, um, uh, one of the things that China is doing is that they are, um, promoting this idea of one person companies that they're trying to get like entrepreneurs to build companies with just one human being and everything else being done by automation. And it's that same idea that you can bring in skill sets that you don't have and you don't need to have a huge team. Now, um, I'm not suggesting we m do that in education because I think actually one of the. But it's an interesting idea, right? Uh, and it's that idea of AI can be a supplement and bring in uh, and enhance skills, uh, and allow you to do things that you wouldn't be able to do because of restraints in the everyday. Um, one thing that I'm particularly interested in is how does AI help communities of learners in education be more effective? Um, and that might be within the classroom or spanning across classrooms. Gabby, do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Speaker D: Yeah. So when it comes to communities leveraging AI in the classroom and out, I think that um, first understanding where the gaps are. Right. Um, and then from that understanding using AI to fill and iterate. Um, I actually love the point that you made about this idea of one person companies because I think that points to the necessity of understanding where the skills gaps are currently today. And what is it going to take in terms of being expected to leverage AI to support an economy that's built on potentially one person organizations. Right. Where you have more builders of AI rather than consumers of AI.

Speaker C: Brian?

Speaker A: I think probably the biggest potential for communities of learners is actually creating collaboration in the classroom. Um, because that's if we jump forward to the workforce, what every employer is asking for. Very cool that you have a one person building a company, but can they work with other people in RIF and give feedback? We have this dream. It's a little bit like the dream of project based learning of like collaborative learning, right? Where I'm going to tell five kids, you're all working on this project together, go and assign your roles and someone can be note taker. And it never works, like in part because are kids good at feedback? Well, adults certainly are not good at feedback. Like how many of us with our teams have had to coach at some point on like giving and receiving effective feedback? It's uncomfortable. Like, and then you say collaborate and we don't have rubrics for collaboration. It's an impossible and fundamentally important skill that we have to teach. I think the ways in which AI can help facilitate that and build confidence and let people not just take the role in their team that they think they're good at. Well, what are you going to do? Well, I can kind of draw, so I guess I'll do the visuals and that's what I'm good at. Well no, you all have an AI assist. Like you try this and I try this and I need to give you feedback. And I'm really uncomfortable giving feedback. So I'm actually going to use AI to be like, how can I give some productive feedback on this? What's my rosebud thorn? Um, I think that's probably pretty exciting because that's the actual community of learning where they walk away saying, yes, I could create this company entirely on my own and I know it's going to be better if I work with other people.

Speaker B: Uh, I'll take this from a slightly different angle too. I think actually, uh, one thing that is maybe a little bit underutilized right now where I see the greatest potential is AI being used to reach underserved communities and folks that are, uh, in a position where they're historically underserved or at a disadvantage where, um, if you look at uh, communities, we've actually talked to a lot of educators here where they've expressed that, uh, there's folks, uh, that they work with where their families do not primarily speak English, uh, at home, or uh, they do not actually have the resources in their district to actually devote towards individualized lesson plans for uh, students that are in special education. And uh, what we're seeing is that there's actually great potential here for, uh, AI that is able to provide multimodal learning experiences that are able to seamlessly transition between someone asking, uh, conversationally questions in Spanish or, uh, Chinese or Italian, uh, and being able to relate that back to the actual lesson plan and help reinforce the learning standards that they are expected to reach. Uh, those kind of situations can be delivered in a tailored way at a fraction of a cost. And it's not even displacing people because those people were not actually allocated to those communities in the first place. And I think it's a situation where I will say, I'm sure you folks have all seen the weird little bumper stickers that are like, oh, AI is taking your jobs or whatnot, um, all throughout this conference. Uh, but what I think is really, again, there's a great potential here for, uh, all of these new AI tools to really help, uh, bring folks like that into, uh, opportunities and kind of help them develop to get closer to the mean in ways that, uh, really we're not currently set up to deliver in any other way.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's good. I agree.

Speaker B: Uh, thank you.

Speaker C: No, look, I think, uh, personally, I'm very much an AI optimist, uh, recognizing that it's not all rosy, but there is great opportunity here if we get it right. And I think that feels like the work ahead of us is us collectively, is to try and make AI a force for good rather than something that has a less good outcome. Um, and that sort of brings me to the next question, which is, um, as AI, inevitably, I think we can agree at this point, is going to become more and more part of our world and more and more part of, uh, uh, education for sure. What remains distinctly human in the sort of the creative and the intellectual space as AI systems become more prevalent. Um, Will, do you want to start us off?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Um, I think first and foremost, above all judgment, uh, I'm sure everyone in the room has at least tried to use OpenAI, like ChatGPT or Claude. And I think you've all seen the symptom, uh, of it. Just whatever you ask it, it says, yes, absolutely. You're absolutely right. And, uh, whatever, like, crazy crackpot situation you're in, you are the smartest person in the room. And I think that is something that is going to be, uh. You know, it's actually a very serious risk. Right? Uh, where, you know, you think about educators using this, uh, children using this, uh, there's this, you, uh, know, we call it like psychopathy, right, or psychopathy, uh, where essentially, um, this kind of takes you down, this spiral of, uh, ultimately just thinking that you're absolutely correct all the time. And I think that's something where Again, these AI models, everything that we develop is really trained to optimize for giving you good feelings. Uh, but uh, as a human being, you need to really be the person uh, that understands when what you're seeing is actually uh, reflective of reality or when you actually need to really push the brakes and then redirect so that the outcome that you're looking for is actually what you're seeing is actually aligned to the outcome that you need to deliver. So, uh, that is not going away anytime soon. And um, I think the folks in the room that are going to be standing out amongst their peers for folks uh, that are using AI are the people that understand that they need to be the ones that continuously exercise good judgment and leverage these tools to help achieve the goals that are best for you and best for society.

Speaker C: Gabrielle, what do you think?

Speaker D: Yeah, so I think what remains human, ah, are a couple of things. Number one, the ability to remain curious, um, to have multiple sources in terms of validating and to Will's point, understanding what's good. I think that goes back to my earlier point about the human role becoming more of a curator. Um, I think at the heart of it we're all just people sitting around the fire telling good stories. And the ability to determine what's good or not is what's going to make Those who leverage A.I. well, uh, stand apart from those who possibly don't embrace it or don't build that filter mechanism to determine um, quality over scaled output.

Speaker A: What gives me hope about uh, keeping the human and creativity is I think creative outputs are the only thing that as a society we've agreed for hundreds of years we do value more from humans than from machines. We don't place a premium on handmade brake pads versus automated brake pads. We don't say, ah, but this handwritten finance report is just intrinsically more valuable to me than a printed one. But ever since the rise of the printing press, the premium for illuminated manuscripts went up because they are more special as soon as printers became wide scaled. We still pay someone to handwrite calligraphy on our wedding invitations to because they're beautiful like within the artistic space. They actually have very sophisticated economies for this. Right? We value at a certain level, uh, an artist hand painted oil, um, painting and at a separate level they're lithographs. But if they're signed lithographs and limited edition, now there's a separate level there. Like we've become very sophisticated in what we value or don't even down to these mass produced artists where they do some of the painting, but then someone from their team comes in with a separate hand. There's a different value structure there. Yes, I really love the sweater, but the hand knit sweater, uh, I'm going to pay a little bit more for that. Even further if I know the story of the person that made it and what inspired them and their background and the conditions. Not only like economically do we put more of a premium on that. It just, it feels good. We want that. So what gives me hope is, yes, AI can generate creative slop. And we have a pretty solid cross cultural multi hundred year history of saying, but these creative things, when a human is involved, that's different than a brake pad.

Speaker C: Yeah. And that's interesting because I want to talk about how education can help as we transition into, I think, what will look quite like quite a different world. A world where we really value that sort of innate human creative spark. All the things you were just talking about, Brian. Um, but that's not really how our education. That's not what our education system is setting people up for. Right. You know, I talked at the beginning about my children have a better system than I did, and I'm very grateful for that. But it's also not a system which is centered around creativity. It's one that I think we do better than we used to about that. But it's still not like the center. The center is still make your grades, get into a good school, uh, get into a good trade. It's still very work oriented in general. How do we see what does education need to do? How does it need to evolve to set children up for a world where, uh, a lot of what we've traditionally seen as work is being partly or wholly done by machines. And maybe we spend more of our individual time on creative endeavors, which could be great. But how does education need to change to enable that? Gabriel?

Speaker D: I think first, um, it can't be a top down approach. I think one of the things that's very important, um, in terms of setting students up for success is bringing along educators, parents, this community that aids in the learning process to actually prop up and prioritize what's important as we think about using these tools. And so that communal aspect of learning, I think is invaluable and that has to be built into what good looks like for the future.

Speaker C: Uh, Will?

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, I think really, actually fundamentally expectations need to change and frankly they need to change pretty quickly. Uh, I remember growing up, of course, you learn printing, you learn calligraphy, you learn how to do all the Calculations on math by hand. Uh, and I think while those are very valuable skills, I think it's very easy as all adults now we have phones and keyboards and everything to do all of that for us. I think a lot of what we need to start thinking about is what is a world of uh, functioning adults that are currently children, uh, look like where AI is an embedded part of their everyday life. And I think it's an interesting thing where we'll see this being uh, probably a situation where it will still be chaotic for a couple of years. But what we try to do uh, at Heygen is we're already uh, intentionally hiring for the profile of people that we imagine be good stewards of leveraging AI, uh, in the workplace where we actually have a hiring profile, where we prefer to hire interns out of college that aren't necessarily expert product marketers or salespeople because they actually know how to use AI to actually supplement, uh, where they don't have that experience. And I think in the education community, one of the things that uh, I would personally really, uh, think is needed is to really help uh, children understand how to work in that paradigm where you're not necessarily expected to be the subject matter expert of uh, a particular uh, set of skills. You are actually meant to be again, the subject matter expert of having good judgment, understanding how do you really, uh, discern what is uh, the correct course of action or uh, understand what the, all of the variables are and what you're trying to achieve and then be able to use an assistant to help you uh, actually tactically get from where you are to where you're trying to go. Uh, having those kind of skills are for, uh, the foreseeable future going to be what sets students apart from those that are not able to uh, adapt to that kind of a paradigm.

Speaker A: I think modern education, from the scaled Prussian system to the standardized assessment era that we're still in, the ethos has been convergence, standardization, similarity. That's just the ethos in which we've been operating structurally now. And the individual in that equation is interesting but not important. In fact, individuality within that ethos sometimes gets in the way. And we don't know what to do, uh, when it comes to AI. When the question is, well, you created something incredible, you put in this prompt, could someone else have put in the same prompt? If the answer is the same, then this notion of similarity, value, individualization really becomes pretty fraught. So I think our opportunity now is to radically rethink that and say the classroom space with AI is about diversions, radical individuality. What do you bring to the table that's uniquely you? When I see teachers playing around with creativity, not even just artistic creativity, something where students are doing creative thinking in their classroom, uh, they'll usually say, how does this look? How did it go? Did I do okay? The first question I ask is, how different are the things that your students made? The projects, Are they radically different from each other, or did you do all right? We're going to build a snowman, and everyone's snowman looks exactly like the template. That is not creativity. That's craft. It's a wonderful craft project you did. If they all look radically different, you're halfway there. Like, you get what we're trying to do. The next step is without knowing who created them, can you tell every student that made that, can you say, that is Will's, that is Shana's. Not because I've learned their style, because I know them. That is so uniquely them. That is theirs. That's when you've crushed it. And that's where not just you're doing great teaching. Those students say, I can do things only I can do. When I make something, people can say, that's mine. It's me. They've cultivated that creative confidence that is so different than the ethos and the era of convergence. But with AI, we have to go there. Otherwise, we are just all spitting in prompts and something cool comes out. But it's not us. I'm just the one who wrote a really great specific descriptive language prompt.

Speaker C: So we've talked about a lot of sort of related ideas around curation, around taste and discernment. Um, and it's clear that that sort of human judgment about what, how the machines are supporting us and helping us is an important part of what comes next. Um, but I was listening at a very interesting panel about productive, um, struggle yesterday. Um, and that's something that's come up as well. And, uh, at some point, do we lose something by. If we pass off a lot of the deep, hard work of a subject to the machines, do we? If you don't have to learn addition and all the way up through math, you can just rely on an AI system to do that perfectly every time. Have we lost something as people? It's not just about freeing us up to be creative, but maybe there's value in some of that deeper work that we're now thinking machines m might take on. I'm just interested in how do we still capture some of the value that might be there. Uh, Brian, what do you think?

Speaker A: I mean, I think out of the gate, we love struggle as humans. It's a love hate relationship. Just struggle is what lights us up. It feels good, it feels terrible. Uh, underline the word feel, like it's such a human thing to struggle. Um, and knowing your relationship with struggle is very important. I think underneath that is we are very, very happy to struggle. In fact, love doing it. If there's a sense of purpose behind it. Um, if any of you have ever rabbit holed on the research of purpose, it is fascinating the fact that purpose affects everything. It affects our sense of well being, it affects our physical health. There's metrics on how high a sense of purpose you have. And it's been shown in public health studies, people that have a higher sense of purpose, lower heart, uh, risk disease, they sleep better, longer lives, they're happier in everything. And yet how many people can say succinctly, this is my sense of purpose? Why have we never even had a one day lesson plan or a one hour lesson plan on we're going to talk about what sense of purpose is and what it is once you know that struggling tied to your sense of purpose lights you up. If my sense of purpose is altruism or creativity, then when I'm struggling with something that feels purpose driven, it is the most human, incredible experience we can have. Um, that's what I would love to see re injected into the education system. Not least in higher ed, where I love talking about careers and jobs because I think it's so important. And all of my former colleagues are like, brian, enough. That's not the purpose of higher education. It's theory of the mind. It's cultivating civic citizens. Yes, I agree. And as a, uh, first generation college student whose parents didn't even graduate high school, who was a literature major, I have to tell you, it's a hard sell today saying, and that was me a hard sell saying, no, no, there is roi to this thing. So I struggle when I ask faculty, don't you want your students to get good jobs? And so I just changed the words. I'm an academic, right, we just change our words. And I say, do you care about your students living purpose driven lives that's tied to a sense of economic stability? Everyone raises their hands. I say, well, that's, I'm getting a good job. That's what I mean by a good job. Um, so that's my hope.

Speaker C: That's great.

Speaker D: Uh, Gabrielle, Um, Dan, Sorry, could you ask the question again?

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, just asking about are we losing something if we move into a world where we're about curation and taste rather than the deep work that sits underneath it?

Speaker D: Um, I think something that's missing from the conversation is just human, uh, agency. Right? It's like we have these tools, but we also get to make choices about how we use them. Right? And so I think it's on us. And as we, as we learn, as the technology evolves, how we use it becomes just as important as the why, um, having a solid context and perspective that informs the use of the tool. So I don't think that we lose anything. It's a choice. And we can either use it to propel us forward or we can use it to create barriers. But I think we're figuring that out in real time and time will tell.

Speaker C: That's right, Will.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, I think I'm going to say the contentious position uh, here that I do think we lose quite, uh, a bit. And I think it's interesting because uh, to um, Brian's earlier point around brake pads, I mean we're really entering this era where uh, you would argue the bulk, majority of creative outputs that like humans produce, whether it's uh, something as mundane as an email or something as complicated as a movie, uh, all of these things are possible to create with AI using a fraction of the time, the cost, the people, most especially that uh, it would traditionally really require. And I think this is an era that no one is really prepared to fully tackle where, you know, uh, again, you know, you look back though, maybe 2,000 years, 3,000 years, and a lot of us would have been farmers, uh, and you know, it's like now you'd think, you know, is a calorie of uh, food that you consume that is like hand grown by someone, uh, is that intrinsically more valued than something that is factory farmed, uh, or produced using crazy pesticides, et cetera. Um, I would say to some people that it matters, but to the vast majority of people, they would rather buy the cheaper product that allows them to be able to reallocate their resources towards something else. I mean we're all very privileged here being folks with all white collar jobs and with uh, a situation where we've never had to deal with that kind of disruption in our lives. And ultimately we're looking at a situation where yes, there's a lot of threat to our way of life, to what we do. Um, I do think that it's again a situation where you do have these illuminated manuscripts that are incredibly valuable. But we don't need the monks to write them anymore. Uh, at least the vast majority of them. So, yeah, I don't have the right answer or a magic bullet here. Uh, I'm not going to flog our software and say it'll solve the world. Uh, but at the same time, I think as a society, we need to figure out how we tackle this shift, uh, in perspective, and also kind of the ultimate impacts, economic and societal, that that entails.

Speaker C: Well, thank you. That's the end of our time. Um, and a good note to end on. Look, there's lots to think about here. I hope that this has been a thought provoking panel. It certainly has been for me. I appreciate all of you, uh, and, uh, enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you.

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