The Human Thread Podcast

I’ve been making videos of myself doing absurd things I’ve never done. Competing in a Japanese Game Show running away from chickens. Pitching a product on Shark Tank. Speaking in cadences that are mine but perfected. In some cases they are smoothed of the verbal tics that make me human. In other cases, it’s a case of gibberish in absurd levels.

I’m using Sora. The prompts are mine. The face is mine. The ideas are mine. But I didn’t animate a single frame.

Am I creating? Or am I commissioning?

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This isn’t an academic question anymore. It’s happening in real time, in our hands, reshaping what we mean when we say someone “made” something. And we need to talk about it before the answer gets decided for us by people who profit from our confusion.

The Architect Who Cannot Build

I’m also building (or “building”) an app using Lovable. I describe what I want. The AI generates the code. I refine my descriptions. It iterates. Eventually, something functional emerges that matches my vision.

I cannot code. Not really, anyway. I can read it enough to understand what’s happening, but I couldn’t write it from scratch. Does that disqualify me from calling myself the creator?

We’ve answered this question before, just not in this context. Architects have been considered creators for millennia despite not physically constructing buildings. The vision, the decisions about space and form and purpose: that’s the art. The construction workers executing blueprints, no matter how skilled, aren’t considered the authors of the building.

Film directors don’t operate cameras, edit footage, or compose scores. Kubrick didn’t paint each frame of 2001. Hitchcock famously said actors should be treated like cattle. He cared about his vision, not their method. We don’t question their authorship.

But there’s a difference, and here’s where it matters: those directors worked with other humans. Humans who brought their own interpretation, skill, and creative problem-solving to the collaboration. The cinematographer makes choices. The editor finds rhythms the director didn’t know were there. (and sometimes the director let’s someone else’s perspective influence the final product. The actor discovers something in a line reading that transforms the scene in a way the screenwriter may not have anticipated.

When I prompt Sora or Lovable, what’s the nature of that collaboration? The AI isn’t bringing creative interpretation. It’s predicting patterns based on training data. It’s sophisticated pattern matching, not artistic partnership.

Or is it? And does that distinction actually matter?

The Michelangelo Problem

Let’s do the thought experiment: If Michelangelo had conceived David in perfect detail: the contrapposto, the expression of concentrated determination, the anatomical precision..but lacked the physical ability to carve marble, would he be any less of an artist?

My first instinct is to say yes, of course, because part of David’s genius is in the execution. The way Michelangelo understood how marble catches light. The technical mastery that let him render veins beneath stone skin. The fact that the proportions are realistic even when enlarged to larger than life. The decades of practice that made his hands extensions of his imagination.

But then I think about Rubens, who ran what was essentially an art factory. Many paintings sold as “Rubens” were largely executed by apprentices and assistants. He would sketch the composition, maybe paint the faces, and his workshop would complete the rest. We still call them Rubens. His authorship isn’t questioned.

The difference is that we knew the arrangement. The market understood what it was buying. The value was in Rubens’s compositional genius and his supervision, not necessarily in every brushstroke being his. This is a part of the debate and subsequent controversy around Dale Chihuly’s work. If an apprentice is doing the glass blowing, who is the artist?

What bothers people about AI isn’t really about the tool. It’s about the opacity and the speed. When I generate a video with Sora, I’m collapsing what would have traditionally required a team of animators, modelers, and technical directors into a prompt. The craft that would have been visible in the credits, that would have taken months, happens in minutes behind an inscrutable black box.

We’re uncomfortable because we can’t see the work. And we’ve been taught that creation “is” work, that value comes from visible effort.

The Death of Craft, or Its Liberation?

If intention alone can produce output indistinguishable from skilled execution, what happens to craft?

Photography faced this question. Painters initially dismissed it as mechanical reproduction, not art. It didn’t require the years of training to mix pigments and render light. Point and click. Anyone could do it.

But photography didn’t kill painting. Instead, it freed painting from the obligation to represent reality. Without photography, we probably don’t get impressionism, cubism, or abstract expressionism. We might still be churning out realistic portraits and landscapes because that’s what the market demanded and what demonstrated mastery.

The technology liberated artists to ask different questions. Not “can I represent this accurately?” but “what can I express that a camera cannot?”

Synthesizers sparked similar panic in music. “Real” musicians said they weren’t instruments because they didn’t require the physical discipline of strings or breath control. Now they’re just… instruments. Tools that expanded what was musically possible.

But here’s where AI feels different: those tools still required significant skill to use well. A great photographer isn’t just someone who can press a button. They understand composition, light, timing, editing. Synthesizers require musical knowledge to create something compelling.

The skill didn’t disappear. Instead, it shifted. You needed different knowledge, but you still needed knowledge.

With AI, the skill floor has dropped dramatically. It didn’t drop to zero. Good prompting is genuinely harder than it looks. But it is low enough that the gap between novice and expert output is narrower than it’s ever been.

Is that democratization? Or is it the devaluation of expertise?

Both, probably. And we don’t know yet which effect will dominate.

The Authenticity Trap

When I create videos using my own face, doing things I’ve never done, there’s a strange question embedded in the output: Is that me?

It’s my likeness. My facial features, my proportions, my expressions translated into movement. But I never made those movements. The video is simultaneously completely me and not me at all.

This feels newer than it is. Actors have always embodied characters they aren’t. Special effects have long shown people doing impossible things. Stunt doubles have made actors look capable of physical feats they cannot perform.

The difference is disclosure and intention. We know movies are constructed realities. The question with AI-generated content is: when does the synthesis become deceptive?

If I post these videos on social media without disclaiming they’re AI-generated, am I lying? If I do disclaim it, does that diminish their value or increase it?

I think the answer depends on what I’m claiming. If I present them as documentation of things I did, that’s deception. If I present them as creative expression (visual ideas that happen to use my face as a canvas) that feels authentic.

The authenticity isn’t in the method. It’s in the transparency about what’s being claimed. For the record, all of my videos, created by AI, are disclosed as AI when I post them.

Who Owns the Vision?

Here’s where it gets legally and ethically thorny: ownership.

When I cre…

So I used to live by my Google calendar. You know what I’m talking about, right? Those color-coded blocks stretching across hours and days. Purple for travel = new adventures planned. Red for birthdays. Yellow for holidays.

And I thought THAT was my life. The trip to Boston. The California vacation next month. Time was just... the stuff between destinations. The boring parts you endure until the next Instagram-worthy moment.

But here’s the thing: I was completely wrong about where life actually happens.

Our theme music is "Light" by The Never Project.

I never met my father’s father.

My grandfather.

He passed away well before I was born, leaving behind only a few photographs and no videos or recordings of his voice. Yet he exists in me, his genetic legacy is coursing through my veins, passed down through my father and now extending to my children.

This is a paradox. Someone being simultaneously unknown yet intrinsically part of who I am. I have called this painting series "The Closest Unknown." He is the only grandparent I never met.

So far, I've completed eleven portraits of him, with plans for dozens more. Each time I approach the canvas, something different emerges. I begin with the same limited source material (one of just three precious photographs) but the results are never the same.

Some days, I find myself applying bold strokes in warm hues. Other times, blues and greens dominate the palette. For some I started from a blank white canvas. In others black. The painting i’m working on right now is primarily black and red.

These variations aren't mistakes.

They are revelations.

I was first called a “chink” when I was in 1st grade.

I didn’t know what it meant. I’m not sure the kid that called me that knew what it meant either. But he was taught the word, and taught what the physical attributes were to associate that word to a person. I felt confused.

That moment (brief as it was) became the first entry in what would become a lifelong catalog of moments when I was reminded that to some, I would always be seen as different.

“Be Like Water.” You may have seen these words attributed to Bruce Lee on a t-shirt or bumper sticker. Here is the full quote: "Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."

I keep going back to these words by Bruce Lee lately. They've become my lifeline during these hurricanes I've been weathering. I keep turning this paradox over in my mind: how can something so yielding be so powerful? And why did it take me so long to understand this?

I believe there are two types of people: those that always want to keep their phone charged close to 100% and those that are ok with draining it all the way down.

Recently when having breakfast with a friend the topic of health data and measurement came up. We talked about Oura rings, Whoop Bands, and Apple Watches. And then the topic of apps came up. It was recommended to me to try out this app called Athlytic.

I downloaded and immediately became incredibly interested in the metric for body battery. Like the battery on your phone it measures how much juice you have left in your current state.

I have recently become motivated to increase my body battery. And it's important to do so. Because while phone battery charging problems can be solved by buying a new one, our bodies only have one battery. And keeping it charged is not only a helpful habit it's a necessary one.

I just read about something pretty cool. Five people in a UC Berkeley lab experienced a color that's never been seen before by human eyes. They called it Olo—a super-saturated bluish-green that exists beyond what our eyes can naturally perceive. The only way to see it? Special laser technology that precisely targets specific photoreceptors in the eye.

This got me thinking: If something exists but most people can't naturally perceive it, does that make it any less real or meaningful?

I have a financial planner. A separate financial advisor. An estate attorney. A banker. And an accountant.

I don't have an attention advisor.

Neither do you.

We track every dollar. We ignore every thought. We guard our credit scores.

And…we give away our focus for free.

Something's deeply wrong with this picture.

Money is renewable. Time isn't. Attention is the bridge between them.

I run a company. Make decisions daily. Sign off on six-figure expenses. But my most valuable resource isn't capital. It's clarity.

Clear thinking creates everything else. And lately, it has become more and more difficult to think clearly in this noisy world around us.

What's In Your Attention Portfolio?

Last week at SFMOMA, I saw a piece of art called “Wall Drawing 1” by Sol LeWitt. It was a grid of carefully drawn lines. But it wasn’t on a canvas. It was drawn directly on the wall.

I thought to myself, “that’s one way to make sure the museum never moves your piece out of rotation!”

But then I read the placard explaining the piece and discovered that while Sol LeWitt was credited with the piece, he, in fact, did not actually draw it. It credits LeWitt as drawing the original piece but this particular one was drawn by another artist who followed the detailed instructions LeWitt left behind before he died.

This got me thinking about something big.

What makes art, art? The idea behind it? Or the actual making of it?

There’s a moment. A split second where you decide whether you’re going to do something or let it slide. Whether you’ll step up or stay put. Whether you’ll send the email, ask the question, make the move. These moments are everywhere. And most of the time, we don’t even notice them.

But they add up.

Change isn’t always a revolution. Sometimes it’s a whisper. A slight nudge. A quiet decision to take back control when everything feels like it’s spinning out of it.