This Week in Startups — “AI Makes You More Creative: AI Roundtable with Steven Johnson and Grant Lee”

Episode E2231 | January 8, 2026
Host: Jason Calacanis
Guests: Steven Johnson (Editorial Director, NotebookLM, Google Labs) & Grant Lee (Co-founder & CEO, Gamma)

Episode Overview

In this episode, Jason Calacanis hosts an in-depth roundtable with Steven Johnson (Google Labs) and Grant Lee (Gamma) to explore how AI is revolutionizing creativity, productivity, and knowledge work. The conversation centers on how AI tools like NotebookLM and Gamma are transforming workflows, amplifying creativity, democratizing access to superpowers formerly reserved for developers, and how these changes are reshaping organizations and even challenging our notions of human consciousness. There is also a candid discussion on skepticism and resistance in the creative community, as well as a hopeful look at what the future may hold for knowledge workers in the age of AI.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Origins and Intros: Building AI-First Companies

• Grant Lee explains Gamma’s mission: to reimagine visual storytelling for work, essentially “modernizing” PowerPoint for an AI-first world.

  "You can think of us as being the visual storytelling product for work, reimagining how people present and share their ideas. The default tool for so long has been PowerPoint, and we're trying to come up with something to sort of modernize the way people are communicating their ideas." (07:05, C)

• Gamma has seen rapid growth: $2.1B valuation, breaking $100M in revenue in just over two years.

  "We passed 100 million last year. Still making great progress... still, you know, early days, but a lot of fun." (07:41, C)

• Steven Johnson, known for creative and product leadership, leads NotebookLM at Google Labs—a tool for context-first AI assistance, particularly for handling personalized data and knowledge archives.

2. AI and Productivity for Knowledge Workers

AI Is No Longer a “Developers-only” Power-up

• NotebookLM is built for context engineering: the AI genuinely understands, synthesizes, and provides source-cited answers from users’ own documents.

  "[NotebookLM is] a tool for context management ... the real power comes when you load it up with the sources that are crucial to whatever you're working on." (08:45, B)

• Real-world applications include law (analyzing legal docs), venture capital (due diligence), and in-depth research “amplification.” Johnson’s workflow for writing ("Sapiens-type" books) was “totally transformed”—he could draft 13,000-word pieces in weeks, not months.

  "These tools have just transformed the workflow... knowledge workers are just beginning to understand what an amplifier these tools are." (14:23, B)

• Grant Lee: Gamma’s power users feed entire Slack history into NotebookLM for user research, mapping personas—a process now fast and scalable where “synthesizing information that frankly wasn’t possible before.”

  "Now we can take that entire chat history, all the messages that we've ever had, dump that into NotebookLM, and that now allows you to map that world in a very different way." (16:16, C)

3. Democratizing Creativity: From Chore Elimination to Superpowers

AI as Chore Reliever, Not a Replacement for Creativity

• Grant Lee positions Gamma as democratizing visual storytelling—making complex presentation-building effortless.

  "We've been on a mission to... democratize that visual storytelling. How do we make it dead simple for anybody to be able to convey what's in their head and really get that information out there?" (18:38, C)

• Much of the “chore” work in knowledge jobs (formatting, repetitive synthesis, information management) is now handled by AI, liberating users’ creative focus.

  "So my brain is freed up to just think about the creative things and the more original writing or the better way to phrase the sentence or the paragraph or the chapter." (48:59, B)

• AI enables unprecedented “mass personalization”—templates in Gamma can be instantly tailored to individual customers, roles (VCs, HR, sales), or industries, something previously too laborious to be practical.

  "Now, all of a sudden, you can personalize it to whatever audience you want, and you can specify... Let's make sure that we're not pitching stuff that's not relevant." (29:44, C)

4. Changing Organizational Structures

• Jason, Steven, and Grant contemplate startups where the classic early hires (accountant, HR, in-house counsel) are replaced by AI tools—raising questions about the nature of organizations and careers.

  "They had no lawyer in two years of a startup, no accounting. They just had a bank account. And the way they did their legal was they would dump a convertible note into ChatGPT... And it told me how to negotiate." (21:49, A)

• Johnson: AI exposure allows every product manager or founder to essentially have an on-demand "agent" for law, HR, research, and—crucially—direct access to the "voices" and feedback of their customer base.

  "I have my whole audience, like my user base or potential user base here as something that I can, like, have a conversation with..." (23:41, B)

5. Philosophy: AI, Consciousness, and Human Experience

Can AI be Creative, Original—or Even “Conscious”?

• Johnson argues that language models’ “interestingness” is an emergent property of next-token prediction.

  "Interestingness was a concept that the models kind of natively understood... a thinking machine that is built around predictions is going to be... really good at interestingness." (26:34, B)

• On the difference between human cognition and AI:

  "We truly have... understanding without sentience, without consciousness. And that's what's confusing to people because we've never had that before." (28:10, B)

• For brainstorming and creative work, both guests see AI as unblocker and amplifier, not replacer.

  Johnson: "I'm convinced that these tools make me a more original writer and thinker... I have all these things as a writer, as a thinker, where I'm stuck in a familiar pattern or a cliche... I have this tool where I can say, OK, I wrote this paragraph, but I'm so boring, like, give me five alternative versions..." (33:46, B)

6. Resistance, Skepticism, and the “Creatives’ Chasm”

• Many (especially creatives and younger generations fresh out of school) are wary of AI, seeing it as “cheating” or as dampening originality.

  "There is much more of that resistance, that chasm feels so much more daunting because...the default mindset today is like, well that's, you know, copyright or that's IP infringement. Like you can't do that. And I want to be an original creator and artist." (37:38, C)

• Johnson and Lee suggest this is a repeat of prior tech resistance (digital vs. film, Photoshop in photography), and expect broader adoption as creative professionals witness supercharged workflows.

7. Surveys, Skepticism, and Why Public Perception Lags

• Pew (June 2025): 53% think AI will make creativity worse; only 16% think better.
• Both guests agree: most people have not truly experienced AI in a context-aware, “your data” mode—public skepticism has more to do with unfamiliarity than fact.

  "When people actually experience it... you load your own context, and then you ask questions based on that context... I have a lot of friends who make documentaries... they were, like, oh, wait, I can just... start sketching out ideas for scenes... Instead of having interns go through like 500 pages... that is so much better." (42:46, B)

8. Education, Assessments & the Challenge of “Learning by AI”

• MIT Media Lab (June 2025): early study suggests students using ChatGPT for essays disengage and perform worse when tools are removed. Is AI making students dumber?
  • Grant: As a parent, cautions about AI as a crutch; role of teachers in establishing the right balance.
  • Johnson: If you want to genuinely learn, AI is a powerful tutor. If you just want to “appear” to have learned, it's also great (and a risk).

  "If you are interested in genuinely understanding and learning something, this is the greatest time to be alive ever... If you are interested in creating the illusion that you understand something, it is also the greatest time to be alive." (52:41, B)

• The "assessment problem" in schools becomes more complex; but solutions exist, like oral exams or blue-books, and AI can also support more authentic assessment.

9. Jevons Paradox, AI, and the Future of Work

• The classic paradox: efficiency leads to increased use and unforeseen positive side effects (e.g., skyscrapers after cheaper steel). Grant and Steven see clear analogs for AI: more apps, new kinds of software, and “skyscraper moments” just beginning.

  "We're seeing much more internal software, personal apps being developed... my question is, what are the sort of, you know, skyscraper moments for AI?" (56:36, C)

• Johnson adds the “intelligence grid” analogy: like electricity created new jobs and industries, AI will do the same.

  "We're going to have like an intelligence grid... Isn't it at least plausible that it will create a whole set of professions that we can't yet imagine?" (60:10, B)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “These tools have just transformed the workflow... knowledge workers are just beginning to understand what an amplifier these tools are.” — Steven Johnson (14:23)
• “Once you unlock that [integration], it’s kind of like... when we taught someone how to install TCP/IP on their Mac. All of a sudden they got on Usenet and their brain exploded.” — Jason Calacanis (17:51)
• “I'm convinced that these tools make me a more original writer and thinker... I have all these things as a writer, as a thinker, where I'm stuck in a familiar pattern or a cliche... I have this tool where I can say, OK, I wrote this paragraph, but I'm so boring, like, give me five alternative versions...” — Steven Johnson (33:46)
• “For us, it's about the building blocks. How do we, every step of the way, simplify it, reduce the amount of tedious and mundane tasks...” — Grant Lee (18:38)
• “We truly have... understanding without sentience, without consciousness. And that's what's confusing to people because we've never had that before.” — Steven Johnson (28:10)
• “If you know how to use these tools, you'll be infinitely employable. And this fear and loathing of AI which we're contending with because so many people are getting so rich so fast and the revenue is going up… you don't need to be scared about this stuff.” — Jason Calacanis (62:21)
• “Super optimistic… new opportunities, new jobs, jobs, hopefully replacing a lot of the mundane and tedious work that nobody wants anyways.” — Grant Lee (65:17)
• “I think it's the most profound technological change of my lifetime... but to be in the middle of it and to be trying to figure it out and to steer it in a responsible way is an incredible opportunity.” — Steven Johnson (63:53)

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Description | |-----------|--------------------| | 07:05 | Grant Lee on Gamma’s mission (visual storytelling, displacing PowerPoint) | | 08:45 | Steven Johnson on NotebookLM & context-based AI | | 14:23 | Johnson: how AI fundamentally changes creative workflow | | 16:16 | Lee on using AI to synthesize Slack history/user personas | | 18:38 | Reason Gamma exists: democratizing presentation building | | 23:41 | Johnson: Organizational structure change—on-demand "agents" | | 26:34 | Johnson: LLMs natively understand “interestingness” | | 28:10 | On understanding vs. consciousness in AI | | 29:44 | Lee: Gamma’s mass-personalization (different decks for different audiences) | | 33:46 | Johnson: Creatives’ resistance, why LLMs can unblock originality | | 37:38 | Lee: Creatives’ chasm, professional embrace, and lagging mass adoption | | 42:46 | Johnson: Most people haven’t experienced context-loaded AI—reason for skepticism | | 48:59 | Johnson: AI removes 50% chore, frees up creativity | | 52:41 | Johnson: AI in education—the best/worst time to learn or "appear" to learn | | 56:36 | Lee: Jevons Paradox & AI—unanticipated use cases and "skyscraper moments" | | 60:10 | Johnson: “Intelligence grid” analogy (AI as fundamental as electricity) | | 62:21 | Calacanis: “If you know how to use these tools, you'll be infinitely employable.” | | 65:17 | Lee: Super optimism about AI’s societal impact |

Conclusion: Tone and Final Thoughts

The conversation is candid, optimistic but nuanced, combining tactical insights for startups and organizations that want to deploy AI, with philosophical musings on creativity, the future of work, and how to stay valuable in a world of suddenly super-empowered knowledge workers. There’s recognition of the resistance, particularly from creatives and educators, but consensus that tools like Gamma and NotebookLM are not subtracting from originality or thought—they’re augmenting and expanding it. The message is clear: experiment, find the “trailhead,” and you’ll become the irreplaceable engine of your organization.

“Stay optimistic, folks... these kind of paradigm shifts, and this is the largest of our lifetime... you just start using the tools every day and then you become the most valuable person in your organization, like instantly.” — Jason Calacanis (65:54)