561 - The Best Case for Not Fearing AI, Help with Email and Creative Diet with Cal Newport

Creative Pep Talk - Andy J. Pizza

Andy J. Pizza hosts Cal Newport on a deep dive into AI realism, human-centered productivity, and mindful creative consumption. The episode offers practical tools to reclaim humanity in a digital age.

Key takeaways

• AI fears are often exaggerated by hype

Transcript preview

This is not an ad, it's a gift. I'm going to be at the ICON Illustration Conference this year in July doing a handful of different things and I asked them if they could give me a discount for the listeners of the show because I would love to see you there and hang out at the afterparties and whatnot and they let me have a hundred dollar discount to share with you which is just so generous and so awesome. If you're an illustrator I highly recommend going to I can it's been a magical experience the times that I've gone even the first time in 2014 in 2014 in 2014 in 2014 in 2014 that I went But so worth it go to icon. creative pept talk.com to learn more the discount is automatically applied to that link icon dot creative pept talk dot com hope to see you there. Are you feeling like a robot are you feeling like everything is not quite real like it's a simulation like you're there's a distance between you and you know reality the grass the trees the sky well there is a distance unless your face is right up in it but besides that for me things I just don't feel as human as I used to feel it's easy for me to feel like I've lost my sense of humanity because of the onslaught of what we are just being consumed with as we're consuming it through our phones and devices how to be more human that's what this episode is about with someone who is whole job is about being human. Cal Newport is back on the show. If you know me, if you listen to the show, you know I'm a mega Cal Newport fan, so I was thrilled that he agreed to come back and have a long chat with me. We talk about three things that he talks about on his podcast and his books that have had a huge impact on me reconnecting with my own humanity. We talk about AI. He has the most hopeful anti-A-I apocalypse perspective and this guy. is a computer scientist this isn't just wishful thinking it's not predicting the future with optimism it is the reality of why things are not what they seem to be based on what the AI companies and tech companies are selling you and that's really good news and we get into that we also talk about productivity the only productivity I've ever put into practice and in stayed in practice with have come from this guy and so we're going to talk about productivity that and how you can have a more human productivity slant and the third thing we talk about is consuming creative work in a more human way and and that is just been a huge deal to me recently as well so I think you're gonna love this episode I'll be back at the end for our creative call to adventure something you can do with this episode not just feel good but do something that has an impact on your creative journey today CTA is called one two three z means but you have to wait till the end to figure that out it's going to be something that you can do to get some more of that humanness back in your life and in your creative practice today but for now let's go to Cal Newport let's talk a little bit about AI without going doomsday but quite the opposite. 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You deserve mental health care that works with you not against your budget. This episode is sponsored by Square Space. I freaking love having Square Space as a sponsor because it's easy to sell it when you love something this much. I'm a big fan. Square Space is an all in one website platform designed to help you succeed online. Here's what I love about Square Space. They're intuitive and super versatile drag and drop tools. 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Honestly probably the number one thing that I say when I recommend your books is how much of a clear writer you are that in clear thinker I think that that is pretty unique. like so much so many books in this world are the title and then just an exploration of that in ten different directions whereas I feel like your stuff is always just super super clear like sometimes even the stuff that's really great but denser I can think of some authors that I won't name just because it's not a flattering thing but dense stuff but you walk away thinking I have no idea how to implement that like I would have to study this book for years for it to like I would have to study this book for years for it to like take an effect and I feel like with your work it I can point to and I'm going to do this later very specific areas that I know like this came from Cal's work and it stuck and I think that the clarity is a big piece there yeah I mean I appreciate that my secret sauce in that is the fact that I'm a theoretical computer scientist so it's like my brain was trained to do proofs and mathematics which is all about all the pieces have to fit and when they do you have the choir of angels and when they don't it's incredibly uncomfortable and irritating right so when you're doing mathematics oh man I need all these pieces to fit together and if they do you have a proof and if you don't you don't it turns out those same circuits apply when you're writing and so like I will I will be this really uncomfortable if I know I introduced an idea over here that didn't pay off or this is not symmetric with the other case here exactly or there's little bit of ambiguity between does this mean this or this and I'm just incredibly uncomfortable with my writing until the pieces click together like a math proof and because of that it does it creates that effect where it I think the human mind when it reads we underestimate this if there's pieces that don't quite fit you get a discomfort even if you don't immediately flag like oh I'm so mad because that doesn't match this thing three paragraphs later you come away instead with just a sort of something doesn't quite feel right and when all the ideas in writing click because our brain is using other parts you know of our neural circuitry that were evolved well before writing when all the parts click in the place I think we get a sort of satisfaction that we then interpret as something about this writing really resonates with me so I'm like a mathematician trying to write non-fiction journalism and I actually think if you can also learn how to control language is like a really good combination that we don't see enough of. That makes tons of sense. Have you ever thought I know you're a big consumer of fiction. That all kind of filters into fiction writing as well. Like I think about we've been watching like classics with my kids, classics, classic 90s, 80s stuff I guess. And things like back to the future in Jurassic Park. These are two where just feel like every single thing, they do the story circle where everything that shows up in Act 1 pays off in Act 3 and you can draw a line to it and it feels like okay complete and you're satisfied, like, I know you consume a lot of fiction. Do you ever toy with the idea of moving that energy that way? It's funny when I was last in New York and had dinner with my agent and my editor and my publicist. Yeah. My agent said outright, my worst fear is that one day you were going to come to me and say you have a fiction project. Or should actually, Andy, I should say our agent. Yeah, our agent. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're right though like this has always been my thing about screen writing what tricks people into thinking that screen writing is easy is that when they look at a particular scene like oh I know how to I talk like I can I could write people talking like this isn't so hard it doesn't have all like the dense musicality and description you would need in a novel and I can come up with good ideas for like I go back in time and a time machine so what they don't realize like a lot of people think it's the premise yeah and what they don't realize and what they don't if every piece in a screenplay doesn't click together exactly it makes people uncomfortable it creates a sense of of literary ick they're like this is not good and that's incredibly hard to do like the back to the future script you know this that's a mecca's and Robert Gail right that wrote that and that went to a lot of variations the earliest versions was it wasn't a delirian it was a refrigerator and the mechanism of time travel it needed to harness a nuclear blast so he had to a nuclear test and the nuclear blast and the refrigerator and if you read about it I've read a couple books about it they sort of refined over time they found the like the heart of it was like no no the heart of it is what if you could go back in time and hang out with your parents would they think you're cool would they be cool and they're like we got to bring it back to that heart and then just have the the mouse trap all clicked together exactly right I think that's exactly right Jurassic it was like David Kept for someone like that I don't know but it just has this thing and it's also gets at maybe a little bit why they were shorter it feels like that they were shorter and sweeter and everything kind of had a place and then I'm a big believer in sort of the opposite of a profound truth might be another profound truth especially in creative world where it's I love the tightness and then maybe we go through an era where everything's like Judd Apetow going hard on improv and exploring things and blowing up comedies to three hour movies and stuff. I like, I think that there's good things that happen there, but I, yeah, I missed that tightness of a plot. Did you know the original version of the Jurassic Park novel, so not the screenplay, but Creighton's original versions. Like Creighton, like I'm a bit of a Creighton obsessive, so I know too much about this. Yeah. You know this. Yeah. You know this. a depression at the time, right? Because he had gotten divorced and things were sort of slowing down in his career. People forget he had this, his career started so early, like he wrote the Adronomist Drain before we landed on the moon. And this is the same person who did Jurassic Park in the 90s, right? So if you read the Adronomist Drain, they're speculating about what's going to happen when humans get into space for an extended amount of time. We hadn't done it yet. And so he got really got really heavily involved in Hollywood, he really all this stuff and it kind of was not going as well as he thought and then Jurassic Park is what got him back to it so he got excited about this idea pulled him out of his depression but his first draft of that book was from the kids point of view and it was terrible so it was like Ovets his agent at the time was like yes this is the idea like obviously this is the best idea let's go and he wrote the whole thing from the perspective of the boy and it was you know just not working they're like this is the best idea in a decade you got to rewrite this thing from scratch and so he came back as like all right I can do shifting perspective from the results and really the star of this is the is the premise and the technology and then obviously the book cook I always thought that was funny that like his first his first swing was just the worst possible the joke the joke is it reminds me of the joke there was a Simpsons joke at some point in the first in the golden age where Principal Skinner is like fired he's like telling a poo I have this idea for a book about using like back to life in an amusement park. And he's like, and I call it Billy and the Clonosaurus. And it just cuts to hours of a poo just berating him of like this Jurassic Park is like such a well-known whatever. But anyways, it reminded me of that. Like you got this great idea that it's Billy and the Clonosaurus. That's literally what happened basically. I think it's a good, there's something good about that. I think also just once you get into, like when I was in the client world with illustration like exclusively, I did that for a long, I did that for a long time, I did that for a long time, doing advertising illustration and that kind of thing, you get really kind of comfortable with this is what the agent agreed on in terms of rounds of revisions. Like this is I'm going to give you a sketch, you're going to approve it. And if it goes past these four rounds, that budget increases, all that kind of thing. And I think that makes sense in that space. But once I started making picture books and got more in the publishing world and realizing like, oh, when it comes to like a more, a more, a more, a more, a more, a more, you have to have a lot less preciousness about it. You have to realize like you might create the whole book and then have to recreate it. It might just all be the process to getting to where you need to go. I think that's totally true. Okay, I have three topics that I want to talk to you about. All right. Let's see if we can get through these. I'm going to give you the bullet points and then we'll jump in. The first one's going to be about AI-Mania. I'm excited to talk to talk to you about that. I'm excited to talk to you about that. you have been a voice of sanity in these times for me in your podcast. And the second one is productivity, but with a neurod divergent lens. I'm ADHD and I'm excited to kind of talk through a couple, a few different things that have made a huge difference to me in my productivity. And then the third one is a balanced creative diet. So I want to get into, I think this is a huge talk. that I don't see a ton of people talking about it but I feel like it's bubbling up and it's about discipline around what you're consuming. You know? So I want to talk about those three things. All right, the first one is the AI mania. I want to see if you can help us get a reality check. I know that's your new like segment on AI and it's been I find myself kind of pointing people to your podcast often because the world is just lost it with AI. The first question is maybe we could just start by you talking about what is vibe reporting. Yeah well and I'll just premise this whole like why am I talking about a premise the whole conversation is that there's there's two things happening at the same time which makes us a very confusing moment right there's this actual real technological story there's breakthroughs in a particular type of AI called Generative AI that were like very impressive and are continuing to unfold at various types of trajectories. that are important, have had some impacts and will continue to have impacts. It's an important technology story, it's important consumer story, it's also an important business economic story because these are actual companies that are taken on massive debt and are having, they have an actual real impact on the stock market, right? So this is like something worth covering here. On top of it are these preposterous layers of hype. It reminds me of the COVID years, except for like back then there was something driving that hype. it's like unprecedented change the world there's a similar tone to it it's it swings on a dime if you're following this from a journalistic perspective you will see every three month period has an obsession that like all of the media will go after all YouTube will go after all the text CEOs will lean into and then like three months later it's completely shifted to something else now this is the biggest story so there's these like preposterous levels of like hyped up over inflated unsupported unsupported types of commentary critique and predictions on top of this real text story and every time story does something interesting because it's a real tech story. This is a real interesting technology. People say, well, this now justifies all of the preposterous hype that's been on top of it. And so I'm really trying to pull those two things apart and say, this is, it's a important technology, but it is a normal technology and we can cover it like other normal technologies. We do not need all of the sort of preposterous hype on top of it because it's stressing people the hell out. Yeah. And it's leading to like actual real consequences. economic sphere and the way that like bosses are behaving we don't need it so like I'm trying to reality check it I'm not the only one doing this it's basically an intercede war within computer science I call it like the East Coast versus West Coast war so like the East Coast computer scientists do not have a foot in the door of Silicon Valley and don't drink Silicon Valley cool aid and so you know we're all looking at this like well we understand the underlying technology this is cool that's not and what the hell you're talking about that like our jobs are this and then the West Coast is a whole different world where I don't know for whatever reason everyone thinks that they're gonna be a VC someday I they drink their own Kool-Aid out there so okay that makes sense the vibe reporting back to your question so one of the things that's happening on the hype layer on top of the real technology layer is this idea of there'll be a general vibe that feels correct like directionally it feels correct that this AI technology is gonna have an impact on jobs it might not be happening now but I'm gonna report a that makes it seem like it happening now, even if I kind of know this isn't true, because it's directionally correct with my feelings about what we should care about, I'll still do the reporting. And so you'll get an article, for example, that will, it'll say something like people in the video game development industry are really stressed out about AI, and there's all these prognostications of AI replacing jobs. Next paragraph, you know, Microsoft's gaming division just laid off 3,000 people. put these next to each other