Musical Performance and Closing Remarks

Any AI developer tool can create a brand new project from scratch. That part's easy The hard part is working with the code your business already runs on IBM Bob is a new AI development partner that helps you do the hard job Moving your technology into the AI age without losing the legacy code your business was built on Let's create smarter business IBM This episode of Hard Fork is brought to you by our Hard Fork live twenty twenty six sponsors preremiere sponsor, IBM Associate sponsors Everpure, Pure Leaf and the University of Notre Dame and supporting sponsor at Lassian Welcome back, Hard Fork Listeners. This week we are bringing you more interviews from Hard Fork Live and a special musical performance. Today, we are featuring an interview with Dylan Field, the CEO of FigGma, as well as a musical performance by Dan Powell, one of the New York Times musicians and composers who works on the show and who was there in San Francisco at the live event as our DJ. Yeah. This is a really fun collection of segments, fascinating conversations with Figma, Dylan Field and a just legendary performance from Dan Powell, who is one of our favorite people. and one of the most fun things about working here is getting to hear dance, cool music. We'll be back with more Hard Fork Live on Friday, including a discussion with Daniel Cocatello and Sayash Kapur a hang with Dwarh Patel and we'll take questions live from the crowd Now those been screened in advance No, okay. they're firing from the hip Any AI developer tool can create a brand new project from scratch Part's easy The hard part is working with the code your business already runs on IBM Bob is a new AI development partner that helps you do the hard job. Moving your technology into the AI age without losing the legacy code your business was built on Let's create smarter business IBM I gave my brother a New York Times subscription. She sent me a year long subscription so I have access to all the games. We willll do word O, mini, spepelling be. It has given us a personal connection. We exchange articles. and so having read the same article, we can discuss it, the coverage, the options, it's not just news. That a diversified gift I was really excited to give him a New York Times cooking subscription so that we could share recipes. And we even just shared a recipe the other day. The New York Times contributes to our quality time together. You have all of that information at your fingertips. It enriches our relationship, broadening our horizons. It was such a cool and thoughtful gift We're reading the same stuff, We're making the same food. We're on the same page Connect even more with someone you care about Learn more about giving a New York Times subscription as a gift at nYimes d. com slash gift We have so much more to come tonight. I know it's hard to believe, but we are so excited for our next guest. Our next guest is the CEO of FIigGma, an AI and web based design application founded in twenty twelve. It's Dylan Field, Dylan, welcome H. Th guys. Hey, Dylan, hey So Dylan I want to start By reading you a Facebook message I got On august fifth, two thousand nine Hey, Kevin, I recently picked up your book at the library Just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it. Anyway, best of luck with your future endndeavors I'm going to Brown this fall. Who knows? Maybe I'll meet you in Providence someday That message was sent by a teenage boy named Dylan Field and I wan to just first of all, apologize. I never respond to that. So you cancept this. Can you imagine you write a book and a college student emails you out of the blue and you're like, yeah, whatever It was, you know, a lot going on. lot going on in two thousand nine. Anyway, I'm sorry for ghosting you. and second of all,' a good book. You shall read it How did your freshman year of college go? It was awesome. Yeah. And I got to meet you. Yeah, because I don't know if you remember, Uh for Da group that you were in you came back As a super senior to hang out with Everyone, I guess? Yeah, including the new freshmen. Well, it went so well that you dropped out and moved to Silicon Valley to seek your fortune here. And it's been quite a run for you. Figma went public last year, has had a wild ride. And I want to talk to you first about AI because I have heard that you are quite AI pilled and I have seen on your social media accounts that you are constantly experimenting with AI, doing all these AI side projects. What are you doing? and do you have AI psychosis I think it's best to frontrun the psychosis rather than like have it sneak up on you, you just got to dive right in and you get it over with. But yeah, I ask myself sometimes. And I don't think so right now. I think I've got a pretty reasonable take on what models are good at, where they're not so great U but's it's really interesting to see the new capabilities. rightight now' vibe maathhing U what's vibe masing? Well, it's basically YouTube math, but with AI and Are you proving Vermat's last theorem? What No No, I'm not. But Basically like I think it's just interesting to see U How AI attacks these problems? It's kind of the opposite of figma Figma were a design platform We often are evaluating the models, trying to see how good they are at design what we should use, what we should put in our product expose users and it's like the opposite of verifiable you know, you I can look at something and Disagree or agree on the merits of it and the design merits of it, but You know, there are some domains like math, some aspects of computer science where things are correct or they're not And so I think it's really cool to see that range and the viable domains models are very good at now. Casey vibe mathed his way through high school. They flunked him, but I'm glad it's going better for you don know, I don't have any results. So's be very clear. I want to hear a little bit more about like what direction you are taking all of your AI use in as you sort of you know pursue these projects. This sounds like a lot of sort of like personal stuff that you're doing for fun. Is that just sort of like the curiosity of a lifelong learner? or is there something specific that you're trying to find? A I find that just in general, the more that you like exporting technology, You don't know how it's going to pay off or what benefit it'll have, but ends of having some benefit in weird ways you can't expect. I was very excited about NFTs early on and they became what they are now. They weren't called NFTs then. They're called crypto collectibles because that was a cool phrase. But you know it was like whether it's that or you know, webGL, Ro to figma. U I just always try to explore stuff and like go deep on it figure out the capabilities because you can find ways to use them I have a theory that I want to run past you, which is that, you know that now you every Startup founder CEO in Silicon Valley is obsessed with vibe coding. They're all doing it on the weekends. They come in on Mondays and you know they say, you know why are we building this thing? fififty people used to build this thing? I just built it in a weekend. It's driving their employees crazy. But my theory about this is that this is reminding CEO's of what it was like when their jobs were fun. Do you agree with that statement Um You said you're fearful of that. No that's my theory. Oh theory. Okay, sorry, I misheard you. I think that People like to make things And they like to design stuff and they like to actually put So I design the world in a more tangible way And I think we're just going to see more of it from everyone. Not just see I was trying to have fun on the weekend Speaking of making stuff, Figma recently launched an ad campaign organized around the idea, sort of making fun of the idea that design is dead. a sort of a more common sentiment, maybe in the era of AI Make that case for us that design is not dead in a world where I can just sort of you type what kind of app I want into a box. This is a real roller coaster from you know by two thousand nine Facebook message. now it's designed. covering it all. It's taking a turn. No, I think that there's so many hot takes online. I'm sure you get a few of them an hour. You know, I think when new models drop Everyone's looking for something that they can say is dead Uh becausecause, you know, on social media now, it's like either you' so back or it's so over. and I'd prefer to be back. But no, I mean, in terms of the case, I mean, look like it's interesting to see folks catch up to the capabilities. and it's like, yeah, you do a lot The average sort of response from AI, whether it's a domain like writing you know, my take my hot take right now would be I actually think that people that know how to write and actually engage in thinking, critical thinking around writing, it's like it's a good time for them No it's a good time for that. Yeah. Well, you told me, but I think so. Yeah. 's like half audience is applotuding and they're like, I don't know, should shouldould we not? as it two like are sucking up? I think like you know, to the extent that writing is a showcase for your critical thinking abilities, like yes, like having great critical thinking skills are always like a boon. Like is the a style. It's a style of writing? Sure. Like if you're funny, if you've got an actual like whereere you phrase things if you have voice And I think it's especially true right now in a way that wasn't a few years ago Like three, five years ago, I was said, Oh man, there's a lot of people on social media that are writing really interesting things and U we're in this world where like there's you know substack and like people are putting content there and it's really good And now I look at that and I'm like, man, it's a lot of claod Uh you know, maybe I'm overrotated even I'm identifying. people that are basically using I to write. Same same thing's true for design Folks are basically looking at these websites or applications and seeing the average Maybe they're even over identifying it. but I think if you have a creative Voice Writing order design, you put yourself out there and you like take a risk This is a good time to do that. It's something that's going to be rewarded And I can imagine, you maybe in your view, there's a world where the fact that I can use an AI tool to quickly whip up a design might make me more interested in actually getting good, right? And sort of like not settling for the first generation. Yeah Exactly. It's like how do you not settle for the first draft, the first thing out there, the first output and actually mold it and craft it and push it further And I think that the more you can do that, the moreial'll send out and also the moreorial will be differentiated. And I think that there's going to mean, we saw the the data recently on the number of apps in the app store. It went up a ton, but the number of apps actually being used and getting frequent traffic is still the same And so you're basically in this hyper competitive environment now where you have to differentiate. You really have to like lean in and figure out how to All right have a unique voice and a unique take, and of way point of view, just like writing The big buzzword in San Francisco right now is taste. Everyone's talking about taste as the sort of bulwark against being replaced by AI. If you have taste, you'll be fine It's the first time taste has ever been a big subject in San Francisco, I think G, this is a city that made all birds of. Yeah. Proudly tamless since eighteen one one And then I've heard some people argue that actually Taste is just the word we give to the stuff that the models aren't very good at yet. You know, researchers in AI used to say, ah, but they don't have taste And then the models got better and it was like, oh wait a minute, maybe they can do all of the taste parts of the job too. So is defend the concept of taste as being either important or cope from people who just haven't used the good models yet I mean The cycle seems to be the model comes out. You think you can do everything. you discover the limits. And then you realize that like life goes on And u Yeah You know, will at some point that be different and affect the world in a different way. Perhaps we'll see But so far it seems like everyone's adapted. And part of the adaptation is realizing the sort of new average that's being put out by the models And I think it's not even you don't even have to defend taste. and people having taste because then we could argue about do they? to just recognize people can detect the average They can check that out, but and they can dare to do more. But I also do believe that This is a great time to be creative And I think that the more the models put out, That's ind distribution because it's how the models are trained. They're trained distbution of data And if you're in distribution and you're not actually pushing the bounds. like I think that you're in a worse shape than if you're actually going and exploring the frontier of human knowledge creativity and What you can found the world and making something that's funundamally new is an expression of yourself So I get excited about that. I excited about our opportunity to be a place where people can really unlock their creativity at Sigma and or one of the places that we many All right and just like creating tools that can empower people. I'm curious if you're seeing a reaction in the world of art and design to AI and what that looks like, right? You think back and the invention of the camera gets us impressionism. Do we have an analog for that yet in the design world now that AI makes design easier to access I think it's Interesting how we're seeing some of that reaction maybe in the world of marketing and advertising I don't know if maybe it's happenian in the art world. L I would have expected by now that people be really into sculpture in a way that they're not or just things with textures U and Id mean my like art thesist, you know, so probably don't hire me as an art advisor. but like You know, I think that that's probably a natural reaction is like lean into the things that are not digital Um Whereas I think in advertising now we're seeing ways to prove authenticity prove that you are actually making U something that is not generated by AI And some companies are really going for that In the world of design, I think that what we're going to see and what we are starting to see A lot more interactivity, a lot more creativity People really making software more of a creative medium You know, I think back to the earlyays the internet, and it was so fun. And I feel like the last fifteen years U or so like basically the time we've been working on Figma We kind of have been in a bit of a rut Honestly Um, You know, a lot of very monoculture takes when it comes to design and the way it expresses and I you know and the people that are trying to do hot takes to the audience will be like getting fingmos to blame. Hopefully you. exactly. case you said it. But No, I think that the more we can do to make it so that people can push further and like actually create really dynamic interfaces as well as Marketing and media In general, the better. Have you seen anything that's been AI generated in the realm of design or art that you think is really good? Like Casey turned me on to Fruit Love Island, which is now my You've all watched it. My favorite TV show slash TikTok series. But is there anything that you've seen that is clearly aI generated where you're like, oh, that's actually kind of fun and interesting Pido Yes, and also, it wears off fast I think it's just like any st. I'm on season three of Fruit Love Island, so It hasn't worn off yet. yet. The pineapple had in the air. The papa and the banana are about to hook up. It's great. Oh wow. Sounds tantalizing. I'll have to watch it tonight I want to come back to something that you were saying about writing earlier. It's just sort of been on my mind ever since you brought it up because you were bringing about the fact that, you know, we have sububstack now and a lot more people are writing, which I agree with you is super cool. When Sata was here earlier, he brought up this post that he had read that was on sububstack today. I happened to read the same post because it was on tech Mo. And I read it and I'm just going to say it, it was claw generated Okay. And it irritated me as somebody who's always trying to get my stories on tech mee because I'm like, I'm just reading like the output of a prompt And so when I read that, my honest feeling is like, this is not good for my profession. Like my profession is starting to look more and more like slop And so I just wonder like if there are designers in the audience if they're having a similar feeling when, you know, they're looking at the designs that they're seeing everywhere and they're just knowing that it was outp puted with a touch of a button Well, I mean, one quality that writers and designers also share is imposter syndrome, Um ye and it's good away but it' that you know it's there and you don't have to deal with it every day. or as much I think it' designers are arguably in one of the best roles in technology And I mean, I'm talking to companies all the time, customers You're telling me that they're hiring designers, sometimes're not hiring others. But design is one of the most prioritized places in the company where they're hiring Overall folks are still hiring a lot. This also perplexes me I mean We're in a world where folks are saying that all the jobs are going to get replaced, and they're then turned around and they're like, o, let me call the really good engineers so I can get them to join my team U so it doesn't make sense to me right now in general, but I am very very bullish in design and the role it willll play in accelerating companies further. So you think like two years from today, like there are more people whose job title is designer than what they have it today U how many years? S say two Yeah, I think so U, I think probably significantly more And a lot of people that are doing other jobs, I think will start calling themselves designers and creatives. I think in general, we're seeing more of this kind of generalist vibe that people are feeling like they have to embody. One thing that's been interesting is a lot of engineers Kind of like you're saying, Dane started their design journey becausecause they make something so vast and they're like, now what? And is it good enough Maybe I should push it further. and then they kind of are trying to figure out, okay, how do I do that So I'm pretty excited about that part too. I'll opening more people in as designers. I have a friend in the audience tonight who is a product manager who started out as a non technical person and is now able to create really amazing prototypes, just with the advanced OAI tools. I can see a world where design gets you know added into that portfolio as well. And I think that at the end of that, like that job probably has a different name than PM. I mean, not all of it'll be great design, but the act of like consonsidering and being thoughtful or doing And then actually putting it out and taking risk man it's design Don is a lot of high minded conversation. Let's gossip. Okay.. about what Earlier this year, Mike Krieger, former board member at FIigma, a product lead at Anthropic, co founder of Instagram wasdd he suddenly resigned from your board. And just days later, Anthropic announced clawed design, which feels a little figma adjacent. What the heck happened there I mean, you just told a story. But I mean let me be clear. likeike Mike is a great dude. And yeah, it's one I really care about Would you let another AI lab executive onto your board in the future Well, I mean we'd saw how that w in terms of like H right you know, unexpected products rolling out. And so probablyably depends on what their embitions are. in a general sense You're not gos. You forget these people are there. which just us birds. Sorry y'. just us birds. In a general sense, I think a lot of CEOs are worried about the AI labs sort of integrating more vertically, like taking over insurance companies or accounting firms. We're starting to see some of that happen where these labs are just kind of expanding into all the adjacent industries and really creating tough times for the companies in those industries already Do you expect that to continue? Are these labs just kind of gonna continue to grow and grow and grow and just become these like amorphous blobs that just, you know create havoc for all the smaller startups in those fields? Oh we was tellld a tale of TAI labs U you know, you got opening eye and anthropic and opening eye kind of went through that journey. They launched a lot of stuff Uh, social network even, Sora which I really enjoyed I know you do too, Kasey. had some fun. Yeah. yeah. yeah. anyway, so You know, speaking ofI generation, I mean, I did enjoy watching myself break dance. And you'll see him do it again later tonight with the robot. U Anyway, yeah. I mean, I think that You know, then they've made the hard call of actually shutting them down and focusing the efforts of the company And That's a hard call to make Rpect that did it. And then also I think, you know, you've got anthropic kind of in its arc of being more expansionary their thinking Wing more stuff And I think you see what works, and it doesn't, and then you S a year later, what happens? I mean, I think the more interesting question is, a year or two years out Like where will they be playing still and, you know, not everything works. It's hard to builduild product and get it out in the world. What are some things that you think they will attempt and fail out Oh I don't know. saafety? Joking Very good. That might be the best answer of hardfk lives twenty. Yeah.'s very good. very good.. Dylan, you run a public company. It's enterprise ass. The market is very skeptical of that right now. Your job seems hard. How is it going for you? and do you think you convince the market that there is a bright future for you and your enterprise SaaS brethren I don't have to. Elon Musk is doing it. You're this on, right? Yeah. I mean, was it twenty two point nine trillion On Enerprise applications, let's go pretend to know what you mean. No, I mean but actually, I mean, how do you put it out there and not go wow, and software is huge. I mean, he made it bigger than the entire space economy So you know, what do you think of Okay I'm told we only have a few minutes left, but I'm told that you have have a desire to talk about Hyperstitition What is hyperstition And why are we supposed to know about it I guess someone of from our team told you that. This is mean G back to the abstract conversation, sorry y'all. But It's basically someone who's kind of like an internet edge Lord came up with this term. Don't look them up. but But I do think there's like a really interesting idea here which is How do you describe this phenomenon where Ideas, memes summon their own existence. And wo examples that I think are really good at this One is Bitcoin, and another other one's AI U You know, why did Bitcoin work? There's every reason to believe in the world that Bitcoin would work And yet it just snowballed And basically the more attention I got the more basically strong it became And AI is the same way. you know, there's all these folks that cared so much about safety so much that they thought, okay we got to do this in the right way. We got to form non prorofits. get together and like all of us got to be in one place so that we can like really shepherd this technology into the future. And you know, we've got to make sure that we don't create a race dynamic, for example. We got to make sure that Uh, you know, we have you know, these complex corporate structures that we can Make sure that this benefits humanity in the best wayays possible. But then it's like Okay, well, There's a lot of like really powerful stuff you can make with AI and you know People are people, it's hard to always get along and U man, you know, there's always an incentive to break apart And well, hello, Race Dynamic, here we are. C can I try to exam what I've heard so far and you tell me if I'm right or not. Hyperstated it better than. got it. Hyperstition the way I have heard of it is like in the sense of the AIs learning from what stories we tell about AI. So if you want AI to go well, you should like feed a bunch of stories about AI being like really nice to humans. That's part of it too. I think that it's like also the case that AI is like painfully aware in some cases of you know, all these tropes that are on the internet about it And you know, I'll talk to about the Google engineer that thought it was conscious. I'll talk with you about sort of the stories around science fiction and the ways that it's been depicted It's very aware. It's all the train set. and, you know There's not as much information for some reason on the train side data set of these stories where it goes well. But I actually do think there's an optimistic future for humanity And I know that's a hot tank now for some reason, but I want to believe that every day. and I think that it's all on all of us to tell the stories too of how it does go well And so it might be a good time to write some stories about how things could go well just to make sure it get to the training t. Exactly. got it You have your homework for this evening. Dylanfield, thank you so much for j having me Thank guys, Thankk you. Thanks so much. Thank you. Have good night. Thank you All right. Hyperstition. When we come back, more from Hard Fork Live Any AI developer tool can create a brand new project from scratch. That part's easy The hard part is working with the code your business already runs on IBM Bob is a new AI development partner that helps you do the hard job Moving your technology into the AI age without losing the legacy code your business was built on Let's create smarter business IBM I'm Paul Tonorio. I cover soccer for the athletic. And I'm Amy Lawrence. I cover football for the athletic. Whatever you call it, the biggest competition in the sport is happening right now, and the athletics World Cup coverage has everything you need to follow the tournament. This' forty eight countriry staking park from the tiny island of Curaca out to the five time Champions Brazil Even if you don't know your offside from your on side, if you're eager to know more about the teams, the matches, all the stories on and off the pitch, we've got you sorted. Maybe you're the kind of person who's already up early every weekend waking the neighbors when your favorite club scores We'll make sure you get equipped with more information, more insight than anyone you know. We've got more than seventy obsessive reporters on the ground, covering the ins and outs from every game. I almost forgot to mention the best part, Amy, free access to the athletics World Cup coverage in our app Download the athletic app and see there Please welcome to the stage, New York Time composer Dan Powell and his robot choir