pedro lucca

story is the programming language of the human mind

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

We're about to face one of the most important challenges of our generation.

We will coexist with millions of synthetic beings whether we like it or not. Hundreds of millions of people already talk to AI companions daily. Robots are advancing faster than anyone predicted.

Billions of dollars are being spent making these beings smarter, faster, more useful. But almost nobody is asking the most important question: who should these beings be?

We believe AI needs what our favorite characters already have — personality, warmth, emotional range, and a soul. Only then will they inspire us, just like stories have done for thousands of years.

We made some incredible progress last year. Check it out below 🧵

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

Artists have been lied to for years.

You fall in love with stories. You spend years consuming them and passionately creating them with your tool of choice.

And one day, you choose to make this your profession. Telling stories. How awesome is that?

But the animation industry is tough. Really tough. In fact, very few people are allowed to tell their own stories. But the industry still needs a lot of people to help tell stories, because animation is a notoriously laborious process.

So the industry convinces you that you weren’t passionate about stories. You were passionate about the mechanics of storytelling. Cleaning up sketches. Inbetweening. They try to convince you that one line you wrote, or one pose you added on your own, mattered. You see small mistakes from GenAI models and think: “Real animators would never do this. We would have spent 10 hours for a marginally better scene.”

And you forget that stories are the things that matter most. You forget that your dream was to tell stories. You become happy with the scraps they’ve given you.

And then, a new technology emerges, and it frees up all this time. And social media, for all its problems, gives you a chance to distribute your work for free and potentially put it in the hands of literally millions of people.

But the industry did its job a little too well, and now you believe you love the process more than the story — even though the story is what you fell in love with when you were a kid.

The most ironic part of all of this is that you are also the people who could thrive in this new world. Stories are more important than ever for brands and Silicon Valley. You have the taste and the skill to edit the output of the models and put your voice into the world. We are an AI company, and our first hire was an animator. Half of our team are artists. We need you.

And while GenAI models may have been trained unfairly, the genie is out of the bottle now.

So I ask of you: please tell your stories. The world needs more of you, not less. And you are much better off doing this through imperfect tools than being a cog in the machine of someone else’s story.

[ToonHive @ToonHive]

Jorge R. Gutierrez says animating with AI was like “having sex and then they hand you the baby” during his appearance at the AI on the Lot convention.

He currently has a project named ‘Punky Duck’ through Amazon MGM’s GenAI Creators’ Fund, an initiative aimed at giving creators access to professional-grade AI tools and funding for cinematic entertainment.

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

@jeremiahjw some VCs believe they offer unfair advantages that will help a company win, and they usually get more ownership by not investing in the current category leader

[arian ghashghai @arian_ghashghai]

> Show me the incentives and I'll show you the outcome.

Founders in SF are routinely preached to that the only way they'll get rich and be rewarded for all the risk they take is by selling their shares to other downstream private investors (secondaries)

The private + secondary market is a Keynesian beauty contest. This means we incentivize (and encourage) founders to build what's popular and tradable, not what's durable

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

MTS is objectively so bad

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

the latter is only true if your high agency comes from a place of fear of not being loved/starve to death and not the eagerness to fulfill your potential btw

[Shreyas Doshi @shreyas]

I’m a huge fan of High Agency. But 2 things I now understand about it:

1) Not everyone can develop High Agency—and High Agency people will find it hard to accept this

2) It has major professional upsides, but also creates chronic anxiety in life situations you can’t control

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

so many launches today wtf

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

@GabriellaHach @Dessn_ai @pietrobezza @betaworks @eminimnim you are building something truly special. very proud of you and the team!!

[Gabriella @GabriellaHach]

So excited to share that @Dessn_ai has raised $6m, led @pietrobezza , with participation from @betaworks , N49P, and a few other amazing partners and angels.

@eminimnim and I started the company 2 years ago
with one conviction: the future of product development wouldn’t happen in disconnected mockups or recreated environments. It would happen directly in production.

Today, Dessn is the only product that enables an entire team to design and prototype directly in prod — visually, collaboratively, and in one click.

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

@bartdecrem thank you!!

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

Why are we not telling stories about the future of AI?

Story is the programming language of the human mind - it’s how we learn, how we heal, how we make sense of being alive.

We’re pouring all of our time and energy into making them better tools.

How they will give us our time back.

But is the time we spend with them worth it?

These creatures should be whimsical.

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

@DionysianAgent @theralkia please correct him

[Dayton Mills @daytonmills]

My animation agency Kinette is almost clearing 7 figures / year

Can you tell which of these are AI vs hand drawn?

If you're looking to make award winning ads/creative and want to help me hit this number I've been scaling the team like crazy and have some time available!

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

@ettinger yes

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

@FerrariJetpack @bryanlehrer my read is that for some reason some yung lean pr people decided tech is a worthwhile audience to tackle and did a targeted campaign?

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

@joshm @darkigloo @elanmiller

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

computers have always been metaphors. the spatial metaphor we had (drag, folders, etc) doesnt make sense anymore

story is the next great computing interface

[signüll @signulll]

the craziest part now is that the modern computer probably has to be entirely reinvented, from scratch. pretty much like how jobs & co brought apple ii to market.

like not improved. not given a chatbot sidebar or something but really from the ground up like the iphone redefined what it meant to be a pocket computer.

the current paradigm for computers was built around a human staring at a screen, moving a cursor, opening apps, managing windows, naming files, remembering where things live, & manually translating intent into interface actions.

that made sense when the human was the runtime. but in an ai native world, it starts to look kinda ridiculous.

you can see this ridiculousness when you use computer use agents… they are useful sure, but they’re also obviously transitional. they’re teaching ai to operate machines designed for humans, which is clever, but also kind of absurd. it’s like making a robot hand so it can use a doorknob instead of asking why the door needs a knob at all. yes i know humans also need to use a door knob, but maybe in the future humans don’t need to use a computer, or at least what we think of a computer today at all.

this all leads to some interesting questions:

- what is a file when the system understands context?
- what is an app when intent can route itself?
- what is a desktop when work can be decomposed, executed, monitored, & summarized by agents?
- what is a browser when the agent can retrieve, compare, transact, & remember?
- what is an operating system when the primary user is no longer just a person, but a person plus a swarm of delegated intelligences? or no person at all.

the old computer assumed navigation.
the new computer has to assume a new kind of intention. the old computer organized information. the new computer has to try to organize agency.

we’re still in the hacky middle stage at the moment with sidebars, copilots, agents clicking through legacy ui, & automation layers sitting on top of 40 year old metaphors.

the new computer is likely one where memory, context, identity, permissions, tools, agents, & interfaces are native primitives. this means desktop, mobile, browser, apps, files, folders deserves another first principles look.

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

I literally went blind in one eye after I started building this company.

I see the world in 2D now.

I was born to make Roger Rabbit a reality

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

We are building this company because we believe the real world should be more magical.

We grew up being promised magical swords, slaying dragons and worthy quests - where did all of that go?

The fact that I grew up inside my dad's comic bookstore and went blind in one eye as soon as we pivoted into Characters (and started seeing the world in 2D) makes me feel this is our life's work.

I wrote this letter to share with a couple of friends - Magic is a choice. And I'm determined to make it happen.

You can read the full thing here:

https://t.co/P45e5Bj1Bt

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

Why are we not telling stories about the future of AI?

Story is the programming language of the human mind - it’s how we learn, how we heal, how we make sense of being alive.

We’re pouring all of our time and energy into making them better tools.

How they will give us our time back.

But is the time we spend with them worth it?

These creatures should be whimsical.

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

Our job is to tell stories with AI and also about AI.

We just had the first screening of our film “Show Me Your Wings” to an audience of some of the world's most important founders, VCs, and politicians at Harvard last weekend.

I'll drop it here next week :)

And remember:

Magic is a choice.
Story is the programming language of the mind.
Choose better quests.
You're more powerful than you think.

[pedro lucca @pedro_computer]

We are building this company because we believe the real world should be more magical.

We grew up being promised magical swords, slaying dragons and worthy quests - where did all of that go?

The fact that I grew up inside my dad's comic bookstore and went blind in one eye as soon as we pivoted into Characters (and started seeing the world in 2D) makes me feel this is our life's work.

I wrote this letter to share with a couple of friends - Magic is a choice. And I'm determined to make it happen.

You can read the full thing here:

https://t.co/P45e5Bj1Bt