#21: Cristóbal Valenzuela — Machine Learning for Creators

Technologist and artist Cristóbal Valenzuela on powering your creative work with artificial intelligence, co-founding RunwayML to put machine learning in the hands of creators, and his take on simple living and creativity. Cristóbal Valenzuela is a technologist, artist and software developer interested in the intersection between artificial intelligence and creative tools. He is co-founder of Runway and researcher at New York University ITP. Previously, he co-founded Latent Studio, a creative studio specializing in machine learning and artificial intelligence. He also contributes to OSS and helps maintain ml5.js. His work has been sponsored by Google and the Processing Foundation and his projects has been exhibited in Latin America and the US, including NeurIPS, Santiago Museum of Contemporary Art, ARS Electronica, GAM, ACADIA, Fundación Telefonica, Lollapalooza, NYC Media Lab, New Latin Wave, DOCLAB, Inter-American Development Bank, Stanford University and New York University. Connect with Cristóbal on his website, Twitter (@c_valenzuelab), or GitHub (@cvalenzuela). Favorite quotes "For me, simplicity is anything that allows you to concentrate your energy on meaningful tasks so you don't spend time around things that are not necessary." "Simple is hard to get and understand. There's no simplicity law." "Being surrounded by people that are not in your field [and things] not related to what you do often, not common to your day to day [makes me more creative]." "The main idea of Runway is to enable creative people to use and benefit from artificial intelligence in a way that's common to a language they understand." "Anyone can do anything [with the right mindset and time]." "We are on the verge of a new creative revolution. [Machine intelligence] is producing radical changes in the way digital content is made, understood, and processed, unfastening previously unimagined ways of creating." Links NYU ITP Runway ML Machine learning ml5.js Processing Processing.py Processing for Android p5.js Processing Foundation Google Summer of Code‌ The origins of ml5.js (article) TensorFlow.js (formerly deeplearn.js) Canvas API MNIST LSTM (Long short-term memory) Style transfer Pix2Pix PoseNet im2txt GAN (Generative adversarial networks) Ars Electronica Inaccurate Collaborations (project) Marrow (project) Lobe.ai Sketching Interfaces Google PAIR Naming ml5 (and other name ideas) Rest of you (video) iTerm (app) Visual Studio Code (app) Paperspace Clear (app) How to make your iPhone black and white (article) The New Yorker Building accessible tools for artists by Cris (article) Books Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas (book) People mentioned Daniel Shiffman Yining Shi Dan Oved Alejandro Matamala Ortiz Anastasis Germanidis Shirin Anlen Gene Kogan Mario Klingemann Memo Akten Hana Davis Mimi Onuoha David Ha Martin Wattenberg Fernanda Viegas Daniel Smilkov Nikhil Thorat Kyle McDonald Jabrils Daniel O'Sullivan Carolina Pino Nathan Melenbrink Chapters 00:33 · Intro 02:29 · Cristóbal Valenzuela 08:18 · ml5 10:44 · Naming ml5 11:50 · Experiments 13:07 · Open source 14:17 · Runway 14:57 · Exposing it to people 16:43 · Runway's roadmap 18:28 · Projects 20:44 · Machine learning 22:19 · Visual artists 23:47 · Other companies 24:43 · Cristobal Valenzuela 24:58 · Day-to-day 25:44 · Commute 26:24 · Exercise 26:54 · Meditative moments 27:14 · Simple living 27:41 · Complexity 28:20 · Hobbies 28:40 · Book recommendations 29:50 · Artificial intelligence on simplicity 30:33 · Your contribution to artificial intelligence 31:26 · Ideal work 31:57 · Starting a startup 34:33 · Focus, flow, and music 36:00 · Distractions 36:41 · Work-in-progress 37:13 · Creativity 38:32 · Serendipity? 39:36 · @c_valenzuelab 39:52 · Ideas 40:35 · Deliberate practice 41:11 · Digital tools 42:23 · The sandbox folder 43:10 · Favorite user interface 44:31 · Simplicity 45:02 · Intuitive 45:33 · Healthy tech 47:10 · Addictive tech 48:42 · Measuring "success" 49:07 · Disconnect 50:25 · Boredom 51:48 · Email 52:29 · Away from the screen 53:11 · Money 54:07 · A positive purchase 54:52 · Clothing 55:30 · Physical clutter 56:10 · Traveling light 56:48 · Personal success 57:31 · A message to yourself 59:01 · A sentence to the world 59:44 · Worries 01:01:49 · Impostor syndrome 01:02:26 · Habit-changing software 01:03:28 · Environment 01:03:59 · Connect with Cris 01:05:09 · New York vs Chile I'd love to hear from you. Submit a question about this or any previous episodes. Join the Discord community. Meet other curious minds. If you enjoy the show, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps. Show notes, transcripts, and past episodes at gettingsimple.com/podcast. Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0. Follow Nono Twitter.com/nonoesp Instagram.com/nonoesp Facebook.com/nonomartinezalonso YouTube.com/nonomartinezalonso