Matt Webb created an AI-powered poem clock as an exploration in both materials and Chat-GPT. It’s now a product you can back on Kickstarter.

We speak with Matt about embodied sketching, product lessons from Little Printer, our to use Pathfinding to make decisions, and lessons on how to think about AI.

This clock on your shelf, with e-paper display / Spins poems profound, in a whimsical way

• LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE:

• About Matt Webb, who can be found on Interconnected and Acts Not Facts

Sponsored by:

Expedition Works

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“Because of this AI thing, we don’t understand what it is. We don’t understand what the possibilities are, and the only way you can figure that out is to roll your sleeves up. There’s something about making things real, which means that you put them in a different place in your head, and you start treating them as tools to make more real things. When they exist just as sketches, you don’t do that. So making things real, like incrementally carries your imagination further.

“And there’s nothing wrong with gags, right? I’m making this gag clock, right. Which talks in, ridiculous poems, that sounds like a LinkedIn influencer, like a tiny, tiny Sam Altman telling me to like, go for it. And I’m using planetary compute to do it. And I love the absurdity, right. It really. It really tickles me.”

“The point is that. We’re all sitting there writing strategy, setting policy, asking for code, talking through projects with ChatGPT, and it’s being upbeat and positive, and that is, that is going to be having an effect on us. And we should be having a conversation about how much we care about that, especially outside California. Because these aren’t necessarily the same values of every state and every country and what happens then is people will start feeling distanced from the technology we’re using every day. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing I’m just saying it would be good to be having this conversation out loud and you know it’s weird, right?”

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