Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:41:31 · Cristóbal Valenzuela
[00:41:31] S0: Well, I I do think jobs are gonna change, and some will go away. I mean, that's... That would be... Like, I'm responsible to say that that won't be the case. Like, of course. Like, technology is automating a lot of jobs that we thought will never get automated. But again, I'm an optimist and I think we might have happened and go through some similar experiences before where this is not a serious endgame. Technology is never going to be about everything or all of it. And we figure out new things. We figure out new jobs. We just, hardest thing for me to, to understand or like sometimes realize is we collectively lack imagination to project and understand a world and things we have never experienced before. And try to do this exercise. If you think about, again, we're talking about painting and the history of photography. If you put yourself in the beginning of the nineteen hundreds and you think about the world back then and what was the technology state of the world and where things were. And if I tell you there's in a hundred and fifty years, they're gonna be a class of people that are gonna be making a lot of money by recording videos of themselves in like dancing in this like vertical, like brick like device. You'll be like, you'll be like, what are you? What are you like? It's just, you're, you're crazy. Right? It's insane. And then here we are, and that's like a form of, and that works. And actually like, we've got to do like, that's a job and like people, people make a lot of money out of it. And, but like, couldn't have not predicted that back then. It's impossible. Like it, I'm, I'm pretty sure no one a hundred years ago thought we would ever reach that point. And, and of course you can play that same game in every point in time. And so right now we're standing in the Benavir 1900s, trying to think about the jobs we'll have in one hundred and fifty years. And my answer is like, that's just, it's a kind of like a meaningless like exercise because like, we just don't know. We'll effectively figure out what those jobs are as we see them. And the only thing is that it's going to take us way less than one hundred and fifty years to get to that point. But sometimes we just need to experiment more, try things more, and be more open minded, and we'll find our way.
00:43:42 · Alexa von Tobel, Cristóbal Valenzuela
[00:43:42] S1: So in short, you're basically saying, we will figure it out. Yes, many jobs will disappear. Many more jobs, things that we can't even imagine, like dancing in front of a video, influencers in the wild, will be a new form factor that... And and actually, stressing over it is probably, in your opinion, kind of a misuse of energy because we will figure it out. We always do. [00:44:10] S0: We always do. Yes. [00:44:12] S1: I love that. You're clearly an optimist. Cristobal, I wanna ask a few quick questions to end here today. Sure. Just fire around. And I'm really excited to ask some of these because you're clearly somebody who thinks a lot about the evolution of these technologies. But my my question would be, what is a book that you've read in your life that's really shaped you that you would just say it would be a misuse for people in the world not to read? [00:44:38] S0: Oh, wow. Fiction or nonfiction? [00:44:40] S1: Anything. You tell us. Anything. You can pick you can [00:44:44] S0: pick two [00:44:44] S1: if you're struggling.
00:44:44 · Alexa von Tobel, Cristóbal Valenzuela
[00:44:44] S1: if you're struggling. [00:44:46] S0: No. I'm gonna go with a with a rare one. Maybe it's not the the book people might have thought of, but, I really like poetry, and there's, an Chilean poet that I like a lot. It's called Nicanor Parra. He... The reason I like him is because a lot of his poems... And there's there's a different set of books and probably, like, if you can search for some of them, there's, like, a collection of of them. And I think the whole idea for him has always been like, question the premise of what poetry should feel like and be like. And so when you read it, it's strange. It's weird. You feel you're reading something new. And this is like sixty, seventy years ago. So he's like, he, he was like thinking about just the structure of what makes society very differently. And I like that. I like that idea of like, take this established institutions and the thing that the way things have were supposed to work, and you kind of like ask the most difficult and perhaps, like pointing question, which is why? Like, why? Why do you have to do that? And when people like give all these convoluted answers as to why, it's like, well, it doesn't matter. It's just like if if you just wanna do differently, do it differently. And I think for us, at least for me, that's a lot of how we look at the world. So always questions the why and always question like the institutions. And I took a lot of inspiration from reading his books early on. [00:46:10] S1: I love it. What is a mantra that kind of runs in your head, a saying, a phrase that you kind of swear by?
00:46:10 · Alexa von Tobel, Cristóbal Valenzuela
[00:46:10] S1: I love it. What is a mantra that kind of runs in your head, a saying, a phrase that you kind of swear by? [00:46:21] S0: Figure it out. Just figure it out. We were discussing that a few minutes ago. It's actually a mantra we say at Runway a lot. You might do things you've never done before, and there's going to be a lot of questions, and there's one thing I want to tell you, figure it out. You can figure out everything you want if you just, like, have the right mentality. So, I like the idea of figuring things out. [00:46:41] S1: I love that. I love that a lot. What is the favorite creation you've made on Runway yourself? So like something you made that you're just like, cool, I love this. [00:46:52] S0: This week or this month? I use it every day. I recently made this, there's this, like writer that I really like called, Cortazar, that's like an Argentinian, like it was... He was at the same time that Borges was around. And it's a short story that I really like that I've never, like, have seen into, like, in a video format. And so I made it and just feel great that I could do it in, two days or so. [00:47:17] S1: That's so cool. I wanna ask, what is the most unique way you've seen someone use Runway? I know you mentioned your your siblings, your sisters, your brother. What is the weirdest, quirkiest way that sort of the team was, like, kind of blown away where someone used it?
00:47:17 · Alexa von Tobel, Cristóbal Valenzuela
[00:47:17] S1: That's so cool. I wanna ask, what is the most unique way you've seen someone use Runway? I know you mentioned your your siblings, your sisters, your brother. What is the weirdest, quirkiest way that sort of the team was, like, kind of blown away where someone used it? [00:47:36] S0: I mean, there are many. I recently was having dinner with a famous actress and she was telling me that she was writing her first screenplay and she was using Runway to visualize the scenes she was generating or creating or writing. And then there were objects in the scene that appeared that she didn't prompt to, but then those objects ended up like influencing the script. And she was mentioning this idea of like a red cup. So she was like, I don't know, a dialogue between two people in a table. And then she was using Runway to kind of visualize that idea. And then like Runway just placed like a red cup in the table. And she was like, oh, the red cup red cup became like a trope and an object within the scene. And that's that's great. I never thought you could use a tool for brainstorming your writing, and now you can. [00:48:17] S1: I'm really glad that you shared that example, because that is such a visual way to reimagine even writing. Correct. I mean, that was a perfect example, Cristobal, of just how there's a shift in the future, which is right now we think in our mind and then write it, versus see it and then write it. I mean, that's an entire paradigm shift. [00:48:40] S0: Yeah, that's such a technology limitation that we can fix now.
00:48:40 · Cristóbal Valenzuela, Alexa von Tobel
[00:48:40] S0: Yeah, that's such a technology limitation that we can fix now. [00:48:43] S1: That's incredible. Okay. Last few quick questions here. What is your favorite hack to using AI? Not Runway related, just in general. Pay it forward to us a way that you've improved your life. [00:48:55] S0: By using AI? [00:48:57] S1: Yeah. [00:49:00] S0: I I just, like, try to automate as much as I can. Like, there's many things I think people are underestimating what models can do. And if you just, like, experiment enough... And there's no real rules. Like, these are general purpose systems. You can figure out how to connect into your life in any way you want. And so if you're referring too much on what others are doing, it's like, that might work for them. But like for you, you may do something else because your life is different. And so being very flexible and customizing things, I think, has worked the most... The best for me. [00:49:28] S1: So automating as much as you possibly can. My last question will be just because I'm really... I'm I'm personally just so interested. You are clearly a fabulous entrepreneur. You have built a wildly successful company that is at the paradigm shift of a generational change. What was the biggest pinch me moment for you? Just like on a human level, on a personal level, what was like a day where you went home and told your family and friends you were just like, I can't believe this cool thing happened? Like, what what made you get goosebumps?