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Daring Forever (Find your Extraordinary)
"Kids really need to see adults play" (Russ Mashmeyer bonus episode)
00:12:55
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, welcome to another bonus episode of the Daring Creativity Podcast. This is episode number 28 of this season, and it's scheduled on a Christmas day. I kind of hope you're not listening to this on a Christmas day. I hope you're having time with your family, enjoying your roast potatoes or whatever the food that you have. And I want to thank you for being here for listening to these episodes and supporting the podcast because it's been joy to make this and it makes me happy that you're here. As you know, I'm back to unpack some of the gems from this week's conversations, pulling out those moments that deserve a second look and dig deeper in what makes them special. I'm always on the lookout for those ideas that hit differently. This week I spoke to Russ Maschmeyer, operatic design director at Meta, who bridges fine art, music, and artificial intelligence in pursuit of curiosity about how things work and what becomes possible next. The episode was titled There to Build at the Speed of Curiosity, and we talked about so many magnificent things about his career and talked about his belief that software is an artistic medium and that technology should accelerate human creativity rather than replace it. If you haven't checked out a full interview yet, let me start with these four moments that stood out from our conversation.
- [01:13]
B
I think kids really need to see adults play, right? They need to see that continuity that, that behavior that they just engage so naturally in as kids is okay in adulthood. Because so much of adulthood is about sort of taking care of priorities and getting down to business and getting stuff done, but opening up that window to let your kids see you flub a line or fail, but do it with a smile and having fun and like, doing something together in synchrony with other people. That creates moments of beauty and wonder and awesomeness.
- [01:51]
A
So in a world obsessed with optimization and getting down to business, Russ argues that we silently teach in children that creativity expires in adulthood, creating a cultural crisis where entire generations believe that play is frivolous, making things just because is irresponsible. He's not saying kids need to see adults succeed at creative projects, but specifically see them flub a line or fail with a smile because it's teaching them resilience differently than a competitive environment. It's not about trying hard and winning, it's about continuing because the act itself brings joy. Russ argues that we must let children see you be bad at something, struggle with it, and choose to keep going. Teaching that creativity is a practice and not just talent. His son learning drums while watching his dad fumble through A song teaches something most enrichment programs can't. Creativity is a lifelong practice, not a childhood phase you graduate from when you become serious. We are in the middle of a society where children see adults working, managing, optimizing, but rarely playing or creating for joy, training generations to believe creativity is something you out of age contributing to epidemic levels of adult creative paralysis. So this moment supports my book thesis about daring creativity. If kids never see adults dare fail and continue, we can't expect them to dare into creative careers. Creative risk taking must be modeled as intentionally, as responsibly.
- [03:21]
B
I think people get really worried by the idea that AI can replace human cognitive function and creativity. But I actually think that that's not fundamentally what AI models do. AI models compute and deliver the mean, the average of a particular request or topic. And they are trained to do that. That's the goal of the model, is to deliver mediocre average expected results. And that's just not what pushes culture forward, right? But if you have a particular area where you go really like, you're an incredible painter, but you're really bad at writing your artist abstract, well, gosh, you've got a great tool to help you get your words onto the page in a way that can make sense to other people, supporting your intent, driving your painting work forward, but supported by AI, not replaced by AI, as you can tell.
- [04:13]
A
One of the reasons why I wanted Russ on the podcast is because he's at the forefront of AI development at Meta. And I wanted to know his view on this thing, because I believe there's as much excitement about AI as there is a fear. And sometimes I think the fear is winning a lot more because the media, when you think about it, media pedals apocalyptic narratives. And Russ, who literally designs AI products and Meta, reveals that AI is mathematically designed to calculate the statistical middle, incapable of the cultural insights or lived experience that pushes fields forward. When creators fear AI replacement, they imagine something superhuman. But Russ shows that isn't a limitation that will be solved. It's fundamental to how these models work. Produce an average by design, not breakthrough thinking. And in a world where everyone can create good enough content instantly, the differentiator becomes having something interesting to say, having a perspective that matters, or timing that's culturally relevant, taste that cuts through the noise because AI raised the floor for everyone, making the ceiling and your unique voice more valuable than ever. So understanding AI as inherently average helps you use it correctly, not to create core creative work, to handle the average stuff you're not great at. And while work that moves people still requires bringing something the models can't calculate. So rather than making traditional creatives abilities obsolete, AI's limitations prove that skills matter more. Knowing what's culturally relevant, what resonates with humans and what pushes fields forward remains human territory that can't be averaged from training data.
- [05:59]
B
This actually kind of connects to our earlier conversation about history a little bit. And I think one of the things that has been so important for me to understand or to be able to somewhat reasonably have a sense of where things are going to go or what's going to hit, what's not going to hit when you put it out in the market and people try it, is having that sense of cultural history. What things that came before worked really well. Why did those resonate for people? And the more you kind of study the past and study history and study breakthroughs and sort of what was happening culturally around those things, to have that become like the lightning in the bottle that it became, you begin to see like a lot of patterns that feel really immutable for people over time. And I think like coming back to the point around AI, it's like there have been many cycles of this in the history of commercial activity and industrialization. I mean particularly in the art realm. Like you go back to photography and Walter Benjamin and like his essays on just the cultural uproar over photography as like a fine art medium or even just as a mechanism to reproduce what artists traditionally had to do. 100% of they had to paint every panel that came to a printer or sort of found its way to the public in one form or another. And of course photography comes along and mechanical reproduction and suddenly it becomes almost industrialized.
- [07:33]
A
In a field obsessed with what's next. Rass advantage is understanding what came before. Identifying which patterns in human behavior are immutable across technological shifts. Letting him build products that feel simultaneously cutting edge and inevitable because they address the need that have always existed. While tech culture fetishizes speed and disruption at the expense of context, Ras argues that to build the future, well you must be a student of the past. The photography parallel isn't trivial. It's a framework for understanding what actually matter about AI versus the noise. Most feature of AI conversations are dominated by engineers discussing model architectures. Rust shows that more important skill is cultural leadership literacy, understanding why certain innovations click historically. It's opening space for artists, historians and cultural critics to have essential voice in shaping AI's trajectory. By studying past breakthroughs and what's happening culturally around us, you begin to see patterns that feel immutable. For people over time. In this moment, I really enjoy understanding from Russ that every field has an ongoing conversation about what do we want this to become and what's possible. If you get good at ingesting context up to today, you immediately have jump enough opportunities to build into the space with things that bring joy, value, and how people do what's important to them.
- [09:04]
B
I'm no longer in Sigma, sort of like playing, okay, what's the perfect UI for this experience, devoid of any actual interaction with the software or the model. And I can just go plug into a model, start building UI around it. Really. It feels like going from a place of having to perfectly detail, draw, you know, a realistic drawing of something, to sculpting. I feel like I can sculpt software now where I'm bringing rough pieces together, core functionality, big pieces, getting them locked in, getting them functioning together, and then slowly refining and honing the expression of those. The input, the output, the interactions. Once it's functional and working to get it really dialed into a place where it's satisfying and compelling and already fully functional. And I think that's so magical as creator, as somebody who enjoys creating software as an artistic medium, in a sense, being able to do that solo and have that immediate feedback loop, not having to convince an engineer to take hours to hand code some dumb idea that I had in five minutes and drew out on a napkin sketch, but just to literally take a photo of that napkin sketch and send it to cursor and be like, here's what I was thinking. And like, two minutes later, being able to play with a prototype of that and make a decision about whether it's any good or not. That's what I'm going to be doing for the next five years, I think.
- [10:32]
A
And this is a really interesting moment because for decades, building software required extensive planning, because feedback loops by slow. Let's say you Design something in Figma, wait for engineers, discover your ideas, doesn't work, etc. Etc. And Rust describes collapsing weeks into minutes. Sketch it, a napkin, photograph it, prompt AI, test, working prototype immediately. This isn't just faster, it's a different creative process entirely. To draw something is about perfecting before committing. Every line matters because erasure is costly. Sculpting is about getting rough material into space, see how it sits, and then refine it iteratively. Russ shows AI has made software creation three dimensional in a way it was never possible before. You can feel your way through ideas rather than perfectly conceive them up front. Rasc calls himself an artist working in a software medium. And that shift is real because when you sculpt software solo with immediate feedback loops, you're not managing teams or convincing stakeholders you're directly expressing creative vision through code, like a painting with a brush. Historically, designers depended on engineers to manifest ideas, creating hierarchy and communication friction. Now designers can build anything, prototype themselves, changing collaboration dynamics from convince someone to build my sketch to refine working software together. Russ grew up where everything was new all the time, felt constrained by software slow iteration cycles, and now finds himself in a moment where everything is new again. He can build anything he wants with immediate feedback, returning that childhood sense of possibility at scale. Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode. Merry Christmas again and I hope to see you on the next one. If you enjoyed this episode and would like more accessible resources to help you discover your daring creativity, you can pick up one of my books on themes of mindful creativity, creative business, branding, and graphic design. Every physical book purchase comes with a free digital bundle, including an ebook and audiobook to make the content accessible wherever you are and whatever you do. To get 10% off your order, visit novemberuniverse.co.uk and use the Code podcast. Have a look around and start living daringly.