How can artistic thinking and practices foster a healthier and more effective organizational culture? On this episode of The Culture Kit, hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava host a panel of four experts to discuss using art in the workplace to unleash a team’s creativity and innovation—regardless of the industry. From Google’s art-infused Quantum AI Computing Lab to new methods of teaching, the discussion revolves around the profound impact of integrating art into business, the role of AI in creative processes, and practical advice for overcoming resistance from those who don’t understand the value of the sometimes-messy creative process. Panelists: Erik Lucero leads the Google AI Quantum lab. He believes in the deep relationship between art, beauty, and the ability to innovate. Erik brought art into his new lab for the sole purpose of inspiring creativity in the team. Forest Stearns is the Principal Artist and co-founder of the Artist-in-Residence program at the Google AI Quantum project. Nir Hindie founded The Artian, a training company committed to nurturing an artistic mindset in the business environment. He’s a relentless advocate for the connections between artistic talent and business entrepreneurship as two areas that fuel each other. Léo Boussioux is an assistant professor of Information Systems at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. He’s passionate about the transformative power of AI in art and creativity, and believes that we all have an artist within waiting to be unleashed. This episode is based on the CultureXChange forum “Finding the Synergy between Art, Creativity, and Innovation” held on December 2, 2024 by the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. Learn more.
How can artistic thinking and practices foster a healthier and more effective organizational culture?
On this episode of The Culture Kit, hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava host a panel of four experts to discuss using art in the workplace to unleash a team’s creativity and innovation—regardless of the industry.
From Google’s art-infused Quantum AI Computing Lab to new methods of teaching, the discussion revolves around the profound impact of integrating art into business, the role of AI in creative processes, and practical advice for overcoming resistance from those who don’t understand the value of the sometimes-messy creative process.
Panelists:
Erik Lucero leads the Google AI Quantum lab. He believes in the deep relationship between art, beauty, and the ability to innovate. Erik brought art into his new lab for the sole purpose of inspiring creativity in the team.
Forest Stearns is the Principal Artist and co-founder of the Artist-in-Residence program at the Google AI Quantum project.
Nir Hindie founded The Artian, a training company committed to nurturing an artistic mindset in the business environment. He’s a relentless advocate for the connections between artistic talent and business entrepreneurship as two areas that fuel each other.
Léo Boussioux is an assistant professor of Information Systems at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. He’s passionate about the transformative power of AI in art and creativity, and believes that we all have an artist within waiting to be unleashed.
This episode is based on the CultureXChange forum “Finding the Synergy between Art, Creativity, and Innovation” held on December 2, 2024 by the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. Learn more.
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:00:02] Jenny: Hi, I'm Jenny Chatman.
[00:00:03] Sameer: And I'm Sameer Shrivastava.
[00:00:05] Jenny: We're professors at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and we've dedicated our careers to studying and advancing effective workplace cultures.
[00:00:15] Sameer: Jenny is a psychologist who helped create the field of organizational culture research.
[00:00:19] Jenny: And Sameer is a sociologist whose pioneering new ways to use big data, AI, and deep learning to uncover insights about what happens inside organizations.
[00:00:32] Sameer: Together, we founded the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation to help business leaders create and cultivate healthy and effective workplace cultures.
[00:00:43] Jenny: In this podcast, we'll tackle hard-to-fix issues that your organization is facing as we look to the future of work.
[00:00:50] Sameer: We'll take your questions about culture and give you practical advice that you can put to work right away.
Join us for The Culture Kit with Jenny and Sameer and start building your culture toolkit.
[00:01:05] Sameer: It's our pleasure to welcome you to the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation’s Culture XChange. The topic for today is finding the synergy between art, creativity, and innovation.
We have four exceptional panelists with us who are going to help us dive into how to do this, both from the perspective of research but, as I mentioned, also practice. And we're going to be diving into a case study that of Google's quantum computing lab, which has really been a pioneer in thinking about this.
[00:01:35] Jenny: Let me add my welcome. We're so glad that you're here today. It's going to be a really, really interesting session. We'll start with some brief introductions, and then we're going to move on to our moderated fireside chat, followed by the live audience Q-and-A session.
So let me welcome our incredible panelists here. First, I'd like to welcome Leo Boussioux, who is an assistant professor of information systems at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. He's passionate about the transformative power of AI in art and creativity and believes that we all have an artist within waiting to be unleashed. I hope that's true because I've never seen mine, but I would love to. My sister is an artist. I think she got all of it, but we'll see what happens.
Next, we welcome Nir Hindie, founder of The Artian, a training company committed to nurturing an artistic mindset in the business environment. He's a relentless advocate for the connections between artistic talent and business entrepreneurship as two areas that fuel each other.
Next, we have Erik Lucero, who leads Google's AI Quantum Lab. He believes in the deep relationship between art, beauty, and the ability to innovate. Erik brought art into this new lab for the sole purpose of inspiring creativity in the team.
And our fourth guest, Forest Stearns, is the principal artist and co-founder of the Artist in Residence program at the Google AI Quantum Project.
These are some great jobs. Oh, my gosh. So, as you can see, these four creative minds have, I'm sure, fascinating perspectives to share. So let's begin.
[00:03:22] Sameer: Great. So I wanted to start with a lightning round question for all of you, and then we'll dive into some questions that are specific to each person. But the lightning round question is really going back to the specific moment or project that crystallized in your mind the connection between art and innovation.
And maybe, Leo, we could start with you.
[00:03:43] Leo: Thank you so much for the kind introduction. For me, you know, my name is Leonard. My parents named me after Leonardo da Vinci, Leonard Cohen, Leonard Bernstein. So as a kid, I was really raised by looking at art, innovation, nature, all at once. And all those people were visionaries, innovators in so many ways.
And as a kid, I would read Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks, and I could see that it's a mix of observation of nature to get inspired. So biomimicry: how did nature solve something so hard that humans cannot? And at the same time, lots of representations of all of this. And I really learned from this that art is all around us and nature is an artist.
And I can see that nature can solve so many problems. So, for me, this was this awe as a kid that's just looking around and just seeing that so many problems can be solved just by being inspired and by driving to our heart and soul to imagine how nature would do it and how an artistic brain would also look into it.
[00:04:52] Sameer: Great. Erik, how about you?
[00:04:54] Erik: Yeah, thanks for the question, and thanks for the introduction as well. I would say that it was early on, as a scientist, I remember going to these conferences where colleagues of mine would be sharing amazing data and awful photographs of their work. And I knew this data, and I knew this work, and I knew they were doing really great things.
And, in fact, I had seen some of those pieces of technology. And so I was inspired to actually start taking photographs of this work. And I think that really prompted this connection of being able to invite others to then ask questions. Certainly, a scientist will be able to ask questions about data. That's kind of their photograph. But I feel like for any human, you start to just open up the number of people who can be curious about what you're sharing. So it was definitely when I started to take more and more of these photographs of the technology I was building and that my colleagues were working on.
[00:05:47] Sameer: Nir, how about you?
[00:05:49] Nir: Yeah, I mean, for me, it's not a specific moment, you know. I’ve always been in the entrepreneurial world and started to have a lot of artist friends. And probably, like many, at least, I did a mistake to think that art is painting and artists are painters, but the more I got to know entrepreneurs and artists, the more I saw similarities between them.
And if there is, kind of, some moment of revelation for me is that when I learned that Samuel Morse, that we all know from the Morse code or the invention of the electrical telegraph, actually was a painter that came up with this idea from his canvas stretcher. When I saw a project of an artist in the ‘70s basically creating interactive map and allowing you traveling to cities you've never been in 1978. So I think that kind of nailed to me that art is not an object; art is a way of thinking, and the object is the end result of it.
[00:06:40] Sameer: Forest, how about you?
[00:06:42] Forest: Yeah, I grew up in a maker household, definitely up in nature, in the mountains by Yosemite. So I grew up in this environment that celebrated nature and how to make things and solve problems. I always had permission to be a traditional artist, and I found that illustration was the place where I could help you bring your valuable ideas to life through my craft as an illustrator, as an artist, through that emotive side, as well as that super problem-solving side.
And I always have found that scientists, business people are really interesting to work with, to be friends with, because they love to deliver, and they love to ship, and they love to be mission-driven. Where, quite often, artists are shoegazing and emotive, which is wonderful, but it doesn't always get you somewhere. It gives you something and maybe feel good, but I love the dialogue and the “yes, and” that is creativity with this bigger, fun community.
[00:07:33] Jenny: Right. So I have a question for Leo, which is really about this connection between art and business education. And so, I wonder, how are you using AI art to transform business education?
[00:07:47] Leo: I love this question because I consider a mission for me to convince that everyone can be an artist, including yourself, Jenny. I believe you can be.
And what I do is that by the end of my first session, in my course, the students have to be considered themselves artists. And how do I do this? I engage them into creating, because many people think that creation is not for them. For instance, business school students think, I'm not a coder. I'm not an engineer. I'm not an artist. What I do is, for instance, business, I want to remove all those limiting beliefs and instead replace this with this awe in front of our brain, our ability to connect the soul, the mind. And I get all the students to leverage AI-generated models to create a few pieces.
And then I want to engage them into realizing what makes them artists as they start using this because you don't become an artist just because you prompt an AI model but because you start engaging in the process, and I want all the students to feel this process.
And then I always want to motivate my students about how can they leverage the knowledge I teach them to solve the sustainable goals extremely fast, which is, of course, super challenging. I tell them about all those things around climate change, hunger, equality, education for all, financial inclusion. And I tell them, Look, there are so many things to solve. And then this is all together that we'll do it.
[00:09:16] Jenny: Yeah. So how does this artistic thinking change a student's approach to business problems? Like, can you share a specific success story of this?
[00:09:24] Leo: Yes, absolutely. So, for instance, in my course, the students have to create by the end of the month, like, it's a one-month-long course about generative AI. They all have to do a live demo of their product, and they all have to create a story. They all have to be storytellers. And through the whole course, I create an ambience of chaos into what I build, a very well-organized chaos.
My course is very well-structured, but I overwhelm the students with contents and concepts such that they will have a more personal experience about what they will remember or not remember. I want to encourage them to take the pieces that matter to them. And then at the very end, you can see that because the whole course was there to unleash their creativity, their innovation spirit.
They're able to storytell in new ways, and they're able to all leverage those different AI tools to accompany them in this whole process. And they all felt, wow, this was a transformative experience. I did not expect me to be able to code. I did not expect I would be able to create a beautiful website, for instance. And the students feel very emotional.
For instance, one of my students had lost their partner. And this student, at the creation of their website, decided to create a memorial website for their partner, including poems generated by AI, co-generated by AI, including pictures and including little movies. And I was extremely moved by such an example.
So I bring back this AI champion mindset to the students, and they feel ready to bring this spirit, this energy with them wherever they're going. And many of them are hired by many top companies, and they end up spreading, disseminating this beautiful spirit around.
[00:11:16] Sameer: That's really inspiring, Leo. Thank you for sharing that.
So, Erik, I wanted to bring you back into the discussion a little bit. Google has been realizing a vision, an artistic vision for the quantum AI campus that you lead.
And so, I wonder if you could tell us a bit more about what drove that vision for you and what concrete impact it's had on how you approach, your day job, your day work.
[00:11:41] Erik: Thank you for the question. I would say that the first step to this vision here on the quantum AI campus starts with thinking about what quantum computing and quantum mechanics is.
I love this concept that quantum really speaks the language of nature. And I think that very basis is to make sure that we continue to have that connection as we're building this technology. There are humans that are working on this, and I feel that there is an important part of that showing up every day into the lab and in this laboratory space that people feel inspired to be there, that they get to be the best that they are at their work. And I think some of that evokes these places that we walk through in nature, whether that is taking a walk through the desert, seeing big arches out in the desert, big mesas, these big fields. How do you bring something like that experience inside of a laboratory?
And that's where it's really been an awesome project to work with an artist, like Forest, architects that are here local, great architects that have been working with my team, myself, and thinking about how those elements would come together inside of the lab.
And so, there's plenty of opportunities to see some of this online, but there's example of a piece where we've transformed, I would say, what looks like from the outside a concrete box in Goleta, and when you come into this space, there's a completely different, almost like a chapel feel, right, where you're walking into a space that there's almost like a stained-glass effect where Forest has put together 130 foot by 30 foot mural that speaks about this concept of superposition, which is a very important concept in quantum mechanics.
And what's lovely about this is an object can be in two positions at the same time, can hold two states at the same time, and when you're inside of the lab, there's actually a stained-glass kind of field that you can see the outside, see nature coming, pouring in. And it's not just this, you know, hygienic clean space. You have permission to make a mess, and you also have the ability, I hope, to be inspired to finish something and make it look good. I believe a lot in that science can also be pretty as well as functional.
So I think those were some of the original kind of inspirations and elements. And, of course, that execution of that that we see today looks very different from when we first moved into this space, right? Big, you know, high bay laboratory space where the first things that went in were really large pieces of art next to quantum computers. And now you can barely see the difference between what is the architecture, the lab, the artwork, the sculptures that are quantum computers altogether.
[00:14:21] Sameer: So I wonder if you could give maybe an example of a, you know, breakthrough that might have come about in part because of the art.
[00:14:29] Erik: Well, that's fun. Well, I can think of a couple. I'll start with the first one, which was the scientific breakthrough that our team achieved in 2019. This breakthrough was this beyond classical experiment where we showed for the first time that our modestly sized quantum computer could outperform any supercomputer on earth on a particular task.
And that's a lovely brief to give to an artist and say how might you actually, I don't know, draw something like this. How do we memorialize or how do we even think about explaining this concept to the public? We knew internally that we had achieved that. We had a lot of work to show this. And then now how do you describe that even to the public, to the scientific audience, to nature, where the article was published.
And then I'll say the second part of that is, even in the way that we started to, at the very beginning, the question was, Forest, can you put art on a quantum computer? And so, that was yet another wonderful brief and challenge for people, and Forest himself, other artists to start to think about, how do we put art onto a quantum computer?
Once we started to actually wrap these machines in art, that changed the modality of the work that people were doing on those machines, where somebody who was consistently showing up every day to build them looked at that and said, we're spending all this effort to make these things beautiful. I'm even going to make the wiring that I do to connect this system beautiful.
The quantum computers themselves look really beautiful, and people take the time and care to do that work when they see that we are also taking that time and care to make them look beautiful.
[00:16:04] Jenny: That's fascinating.
So, Forest, I have a question for you, which has to do with how your artistic practice has evolved within Google's technical environment. And maybe you could tell us, as you reflect on that, what has been one of your most challenging projects.
[00:16:23] Forest: Yeah, I think, well, to the front of that question, how has my artistic practice evolved? I really feel like when I stepped across the line into the science realm, from the art realm, I started to make art with people and not just at people. And that's really fun for me. That's really fun for my heart. That's really valuable to the common conversation, is when we all are affected and can drive what's being made with the artwork, we all feel involved. We all feel heard and seen and listened to.
And quite often in a hard science or hard business setting, we are driving for an agenda. We're less human and more product-based. And in this case, I get to be an empathetic human because I work with such beautiful, driven, hardcore scientists. Like, this is the future of science computing, and I feel like we are all very much human in this.
So I had the opportunity during COVID to come and work with Erik, awkwardly social distancing, but it made a project that was a short-term on paper project into a multiple-year project, so we got to slow roll it and really get to know the team. As Erik built his team, I got to illuminate the space and the common conversation. So that was stunning and great in my development of my career. I got to study design thinking at Stanford in the business school there because I really wanted to figure out how to advocate for art conversations with business people and how to advocate for conversations with business people to artists, which quite often you feel kind of inside or outside.
So I really love being that ambassador of both worlds. I don't profess to understand quantum physics. And we're business as much as I would love to, but it's great for me, the human, to learn as well as being a practitioner of great art.
[00:18:12] Erik: I think Forest is being a bit humble there because there's a number of times that we've had guests here as we've hosted a tour where I can basically pass the baton, pass the mic to Forest, and he'll actually walk people through all of quantum computing history here.
[00:18:25] Jenny: He's tutoring them on quantum physics. Yeah.
[00:18:27] Forest: And what a joy that is to be an artist that has been invited into this and prompted to say, Hey, show up like our scientists show up; deliver like our mission delivery schedule is showing; like, be one of us, bring your A game next to us. I've never been a better artist than when I switched lanes from the art world, with a capital A, into this more inclusive, illustrative world, where I'm bringing valuable ideas to life. Not just my own, but everybody's.
[00:18:54] Jenny: Yeah. I’m guessing, though, you have met with your share of skepticism among engineers. So, like, how do you bridge that gap?
[00:19:03] Forest: I think being an artist, it’s no stranger to skepticism . Like, you know, I am told that artists are starving. I am told that it's really hard to have a career in the arts.
And, honestly, I drive really hard to not be starving and to shine great light on all of these challenges. So the challenge is just, how do I listen? How do I be compassionate? How do I bring everybody's valuable ideas forward? And, to me, I love a little bit of criticism so I can up my game.
[00:19:30] Sameer: Great. So, Nir, I wanted to bring you into the discussion because I'm sure there are many people listening or watching live right now who are intrigued by what they're hearing, but then imagining going back to their organizations to try to make the case for art and thinking this is going to be a really difficult task, right?
And so, you have a lot of experience talking about art and explaining the value proposition in tangible business terms. So can you say a little bit more about, how do you do that? What are the types of metrics you tend to focus on? How do you make the case?
[00:20:03] Nir: Yeah. I mean, I think I chose myself a very hard path in that sense. But, you know, I'd be happy to kind of address some of it.
I think that, first and foremost, what I think it's important to understand that art is not an object; it's a way of thinking. And it's a way of thinking that we need in innovation because it's not about going to a place; it's more about, I always say art is about departure, not about arrivals. And when you think about it that way, it means that you need to feel comfortable with uncertainty and exploration, experimentation, trial and error, creativity, obviously. And when, obviously, business wants to know what does it mean mindset, I try to bring another layer, which what I say is the skill set.
Now, one of the things we often tell innovation teams or a customer team, whatever it is, is that go and observe our clients. But observation is not something we are trained for. Now, if you think about what art is, specifically visual art, it's a visual language; before you even use words, you need to use your eyes.
So when you think about, first of all, the mindset is, about departures and feeling comfortable with exploration, then how can I do it? Be better observant. And then, obviously, artists are not driven by answering questions but rather asking the questions, which is opposite to business.
Business, everything, we try to find the answer as quickly as possible. That's why we also bring consultants. But oftentimes, artists will ask the questions: what if, why not, what will happen? And after you question what you observe, you need to offer alternatives. And I often tell business people two hours ideation workshop once a year won't get you there.
Imagination is something you need to cultivate and something that you need to nourish. And mindset and skill set, when you combine them, then it has a value. Because one of the things I try to tell business, I'm not here to sell you another framework. There are enough framework out there in the world. But if everyone has the access to the framework, how come we don't see a lot of innovation over there?
Don't try to fall in love with the process. I think that many companies that didn't need a concept of human-centric design to know that the right thing is to put the customer at the center. They didn't need a framework. It just was the right thing to do. And I think art gives us this. It gives us the mindset. It gives us the skillset that we need specifically when you want to departure. I always say that artists are explorers, not tourists. They don't follow map. They create them.
[00:22:44] Sameer: Yeah, that’s super helpful. But maybe a question for you, Nir, as a follow-up and also for you, Erik, which is: so, say, you believe what you just said and you're still trying to make the case to a skeptic, right?
And, Erik, in your case, you presumably had to secure some budget to set up an Artist in Residence program and to do all of this. And somebody presumably asked you to tell them what the ROI was going to be, you know. So how do you respond to those kinds of questions or displays of skepticism?
[00:23:13] Nir: Listen, I always say that, you know, there are metrics to tackle it, because at the end, I always ask business people, how long does it take you to recruit someone? How long does it take you to train someone? How quickly do they leave you? And I would claim that one of the metrics that you can think about is how satisfied my employees are. How do they bring their whole self into the organization? Because if you will ask across the board, most of people leave 20 percent of themselves outside the gate, 30 percent, 50 percent because they don't feel they can bring who they are.
So I think that, first of all, if you create a creative environment, you will most likely see more satisfied employees and you will see more engaged employees. And all of those things you can put a number on.
And then come the question of ideation. We tend to think if people come with ideas that that's one good metric. The question is, are they coming with original ideas? Are you developing a culture that kills ideas or invites ideas? And all of those things, Sameer, we can put certain numbers and metrics and build the case because when you have 20 percent, 30 percent churn rate of employees, that hurts very much in the pocket of the company.
[00:24:30] Erik: So what I love about this question is also what we think about here at Google and I think about even in creating technology. We are building hardware here, right? And a lot of the aspects of that means that people have to come into a lab and work, touch hardware, they're working together.
I also think this gets at kind of this paradigm shift now post pandemic of why do people get together? What are we yearning for in our relationships and the connections that we have? Work is typically a place where we get a lot of those. Here we are on a, you know, on a podcast here on Zoom where a lot of what would be amazing is to be sharing this space together in one room.
We thought about this even in our connection here of bringing all of us together that we would have that connection in this relationship, in this conversation.
And when we look at the people who show up to our space, and this is, you know, an opportunity of, like, actual numbers of how much we get for, let's say, people who are badging into work regularly, on our campus.
And here on the quantum AI campus is one of the highest, you know, numbers of people who show up on-site across Google. That's really an important metric. And that's the kind of thing when people are looking at, well, why do people want to show up there? And they come to experience it for themselves. People are delighted to come into work, right? They show up here. There's this, not only the lab space, it's the art. It's everything about what has been set at the very beginning, right, that we've been able to pull through that make people want to show up to work. Of course, there's amenities, you know, but this is the same, if you look across, you know, all of Google, they’re similar amenities. But what is different is the way that we've approached the way that we've designed this space.
[00:26:06] Sameer: Super helpful. I mean, it just leads me to think about an untapped research opportunity because organizations like Google are large enough that one could actually run an experiment, right, and introduce your type of approach in some sites and not others, and then actually get some metrics on what happens to, you know, badge-in rates and retention rates, and all of these things. Seems like a really useful way to kind of prove out the intuition that you're all communicating.
[00:26:32] Jenny: And even like health and wellness outcomes would be interesting. Yeah.
[00:26:38] Erik: Yes.
[00:26:39] Jenny: So I have a question for the whole panel here. So anyone can take a shot at it. There are a couple of these, and they're big questions.
The first one is, how do you see AI changing the art, science, business relationship?
[00:26:55] Leo: I think we'll have lots of amazing complimentary things to say about this.
Me, I'm so passionate about leveraging AI for the better world, and I believe that art is an amazing opportunity to have debates with the students because there are, of course, lots of challenges about how those AI models are trained, like they use lots of data, sometimes with some copyright infringements. And then you start thinking about when you create something with an AI model that was trained with the, sort of, whole knowledge of humanity, who owns the final creation? And then how do you feel that you're the owner of this creation? Because I want my students to feel that they created something and they feel proud of their creation.
And then there is a whole process to go from the initial output of an AI model to something that will actually represent what you wanted. Same if you talk with ChatGPT and you want the model to write you an essay or write you a poem, there is so much more work that can be done, an iterative feedback with the model.
And then this is this relationship that we start building with the tool that allows us to recover the artistic sense and the feeling of ownership. And what I've seen is that the students start realizing that there are many ways to use the models that are not obvious. And then because the artistic way, the artistic mindset is an immediate way of visualizing things, it gives some cues for the students to leverage what they can see, to actually put it into practice with other types of models that are more challenging to use.
It's very easy to generate images and to evaluate how you like it, to curate a collection of images you like. But now with this newly acquired relationship with AI, leverage this knowledge of human AI expertise to put it into practice with, for instance, text-only models or how to better prompt, how to signal to the AI where you want to go.
And I think it's an amazing learning opportunity. And art is bringing joy, enthusiasm, happiness, and it helps us to bring us together. And this is why I think it's an amazing opportunity to leverage.
[00:29:13] Jenny: Forest, do you want to weigh in?
[00:29:14] Forest: Yeah, I think that the second word of AI is intelligence, and humans are really benchmarking their own humanity against what that means. To me, humans are a mark-making species, and we really rely upon our use of symbols and systems and our love of making marks, in our expressions and our interpretations of expressions and how we move forward and how we make, you know, the time machines of, like, this is what I did, and then the next person gets to read that.
In the case of AI here, I see AI as a beautiful tool to make art with, as long as we do not extract the human intelligence from the bigger intelligence conversation.
I love the fact that the practice of making art here inspires the practice of creative permission. That's really important to me. The built environment is so crucial to have people feel meaning. And if we take the human out of the picture, there's no human in the picture, then we just are making machines, just making API models, dah, dah, dah, dah, dahs, then it's, like, not poignant for the human to show up.
I think what Erik was saying, the yearning of people wanting to come to work is because Google has solved that challenge of giving people a hard science problem. They give them good benefits. And then we create a space where they feel heard and seen, and they feel an ownership to come solve things with yet another epic tool.
[00:30:40] Jenny: I mean, it sounds like you see the risks of this new intersection as a lack of balance between the machine contribution and the human contribution. Is that right? Can you say a little bit more about that, like taking the human out, what would that actually look like?
[00:30:53] Forest: I think the challenge is sloshing around in the bathtub with us is like, how much water do you keep in the tub versus getting on the floor? It's really going to be messy as we figure this out and also maintain our humanity in it. Some people's feelings will be hurt, and some people's initiatives will be, you know, cut off at the neck, while others will absolutely thrive and make new, beautiful, flourishing gardens. Hopefully, humanity is kinder to each other because of this technology.
We all saw what happened with Internet 1.0 and our love for what that was going to become. Every single technology has its too hot to touch, and, oh, wow, I wish that that would have done something.
So, yeah, I think that there's a lot of promise to this. My goal is that humans never stop making artwork and expressing through our bodies and hands and minds and souls, because that’s what is important to me. Celebrating nature is most important.
[00:31:48] Jenny: Yeah. Well, Nir, Erik, let me shift it a little bit and see if you want to take on the question of, like, the resistance that you encounter. So, so far, mostly you've painted a picture of how wonderful this intersection has been. What kind of resistance have you encountered when you try introducing art to business leaders, and how do you address that?
[00:32:12] Nir: Listen, there is a lot of resistance. You know, the first and foremost is, how can we measure it? Business looking for action and reaction. And the thing about innovation and creativity, it's a very messy process or a very messy journey. So the first thing, you know, it's: I cannot measure it, or how can I measure it? Okay?
The second resistance is that we are not creative company, so it's not for us. I mean, immediately eliminating, you know, if you are engineering or a mining company, you are not creative.
The third thing, we don't have the budget. And one of the things that is amazing is that you will see that I always say that creativity, first and foremost, it's a matter of commitment. It's not only a matter of resources.
So those are at least three, I would say, repetitive things: How can we measure it? We are not creative. We don't have the budget. And then, you know, there are other kind of aspects, but I'll let Erik maybe...
[00:33:19] Erik: Certainly there was the importance of, you know, gaining permission in some sense, and I am honored that I have executive sponsors and leaders here at Google that said yes. And then within that, right, was the opportunity that I saw to start these kinds of programs early, right?
We started that at the very beginning as the team was starting to build. It started small, and we kept that internally focused. What I mean by that is that a lot of the art and a lot of the experiences here for the team. It's showing pieces that people have made through the years, the technology, the artifacts that they have created, and sometimes it's just putting it in the right perspective and shining a light on that work, right? And now I can have when anybody shows up, whether it's with their family or they're hosting maybe a, you know, some other VIP visitor, right, that they have a story to tell about the artifacts that are here and shown around the museums, in our own laboratory space, right? And I think that, in combination with merging the missions that we have, so that the art and the science are one and the same.
We're trying to build an error-corrected quantum computer, and you can see it happening live. You can see the art that is happening with the science, and all of that is coming together as one.
[00:34:35] Sameer: Terrific. So why don't we pause there with the questions that Jenny and I have been asking you and instead turn it over to a couple of the questions that have come in from the audience in the chat.
And one question that came up, which Leo has been responding to a bit in the chat but I want to bring everybody into it, is really thinking about music. So we've talked a lot about visual arts, but could you guys talk a little bit about how you see music relating to creativity and innovation in the workplace as well?
[00:35:02] Erik: I'll start, but I'll be happy to pass this around. And we talk a lot about that. This is a rad question. Yeah, thank you.
One is I really like the musical metaphor in describing how we actually communicate and control quantum computers. In particular, if you were to look at the way that we write a quantum algorithm today, if you were to step back from that and look at it, it almost looks like sheet music. And if you replace the notes that you would expect for sheet music with what we call quantum gates, those gates represent the actual operations that we're performing on qubits. And, in fact, there are lines that connect, say, two qubits to do an operation together.
So in some sense, we have this instrument that is our synthesizers, if you will, and on that synthesizer, we're basically playing waveforms, and those waveforms, although they're not audible ones, they are electromagnetic, right? So they're like EM waves that we've shaped. They are waveforms in time that are basically being played to this quantum processor. And they have to be on resonance with the qubits. The qubits actually do operations.
So I love that just the musical metaphor is a great way where all of us can understand concepts in physics of, like, resonance, right, and a resonator, plucking a guitar string. That's all very similar to what a qubit, a quantum bit, is actually doing. It's a resonator, and we're sending an energy that's resonant with it to actually do these operations, these quantum operations.
So I could go on and on about music and quantum computing, but I think that's, hopefully, that's a good metaphor to share, and maybe I'll pass the mic, because you were about to jump in, too, Forest.
[00:36:39] Forest: Yeah, what Erik is saying is when that resonance is on, it's like when you're at a concert and you can't not move. It's that wind day moment where you're like, what is happening? I'm in it. And Erik and I both come from a bond, kind of, hip-hop background from different places, but we love the audacity and the volume of sound. We love to get down. You know, I came from this side of hip-hop that was all about the audacity of the visual. Erik was a DJ. We love to get the crowd involved. And part of this built environment here is to get the crowd involved with that same audacity. Of course, we have a different flavor, but it's still big and bold and loud and awesome.
[00:37:20] Nir: I can contribute one innovation example. You know, I have many, but even from music, you know, when Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre was thinking about having an audio company, they didn't want to design audio company. They just wanted people to listen to the music better.
And when they brought one of the big brands for audio, they told them, this is how it should sound mathematically. But Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre said, we agree. This is how it should sound mathematically, but this is not how it should sound artistically. And they wanted to bring the artist's intention into the product. And when a regular engineering company couldn't bring it, they basically created beats.
[00:38:02] Sameer: Great story. Leo, anything to add on music?
[00:38:06] Leo: I love music because this is extremely complex to do. And sometimes most of us, we haven't had necessarily the education in music, or we only know one type of music. Those AI music generators are very interesting because they're actually working very well. And then it looks very impressive, very quickly. However, if you look into the details, they always use the same kind of structure. And they don't allow you for a huge amount of control on what to generate. You can choose the lyrics, the style, but you won't choose exactly if you have a drop, if you have a violin popping up.
And so, it creates an interesting debate about, do I really feel the ownership of me creating this music? What was my intent? Like here, I just created a nice piece. I can be proud. I look at this. I just created it. Or I can think, okay, how can I go further? Can I understand the technology behind? Can I understand if I can do my own style now with the AI model?
And also encouraging people to think about different modalities. So I love the concept of multi-modality. I use it a lot in data analytics with the capacity of merging multiple data sources. And very often we don't think about music much in the classroom. Like we think about data, we think about coding, we think about images or texts. But suddenly, if you bring the music in the loop, you bring your ears back. And just this aspect of bringing another aspect of your brain is going to do something amazing to the students or to whoever is doing that. So I love merging technology with teaching aspects and then sparking all those debates.
And so, I think music is a beautiful example, and the models are only going to become better, allowing for more control over it, but also more challenges. Is it the Hollywood for all? Or is it the end of Hollywood? Is it everybody is an amazing classical music creator or not? So there is, Forest said about this, like, where are we human? Like, where do we maintain this very sense of humanity? And I always ask myself the same question, and I have asked the students to ask themselves the same thing.
[00:40:22] Jenny: So we have a really interesting question from a former Haas student. No surprise. Ian Shea.
Ian, do you want to ask this yourself, or you want me to go ahead and do it?
[00:40:33] Ian: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that opportunity.
I thought that comment earlier on opening up the number of people that can be curious about what you're doing was very, talking about resonant, very resonant to me. And one of the things that I work on, or just in society, is: organizational well-being is a topic that's getting more and more appreciation, more and more understanding, but we still have a long way to go.
And so, one of the things I'd be curious to hear from you guys is, how can we raise curiosity? Around the importance of well-being as a strategy, obviously has to be tied to business metrics.
You mentioned a lot of those relative to engagements. I thought your click-through example was great. But do you have any suggestions? Because I'm looking for different ways to use art or to maybe use AI to help spur some of that curiosity so leaders can more and more say, Got it. Got it. This is not gonna get deprioritized. We're gonna keep it in the number two, three, or four priorities because you've helped me frame it and understand it better.
[00:41:30] Jenny: Well, I love this question because I think of Google as being the best company at stoking curiosity that I know of. So I'm really interested in Erik's answer here.
[00:41:41] Erik: Thanks for the prompt, and thanks for the question, Ian. I think it's a really important one to think about the organizational health, your employees’ health, site health, kind of all of the things that you define there, right, and how you're thinking about how to make that a welcoming place.
So our approach here has been to stay internally focused on the team, on the employees, and then giving them the opportunity to talk about how it's affected them, how it is actually making them better each day. And that happens in very organic ways.
Now, we can try to drive to, like, what is the metric that we want to track? But first, I'll explain just a really, really wonderful story around that, which is an engineer shows up, is questioning why we are putting art up on the walls inside of the laboratory. Years later, he stops both Forest and myself and says, I am a better person every day because of those things being up on the wall. So a wonderful thank you and a bit flip.
And it's those bit flips that you want to track. How many people that were skeptical of what you were doing and why, and now they're a part of it saying, Yeah, this is a really great idea. Because whether that person stays on our team or not, they will now take that mission and that idea with them wherever they go. And you have them now helping to bit flip wherever they're at.
[00:43:00] Forest: I can say that there's a “yes and” to this as well. And I find it dangerous to just attach an ROI to try to attach to curiosity or play. Because quite often, you know, I'm not going to ask my 10-year-old daughter, like, Hey, how much are you contributing to the family by playing as a 10-year-old? Like, you know, you're playing with your dolls again. Like, you could get a job. But that's not going to make her a more wholehearted individual if I just made her get a job at 10 years old. It would help her with a few of these things that she's stepping into. Lessons are great. School's great. Education's great.
But in this case, we have to be careful to let there be a cycle of practice and then back into reflection and then practice and reflection. When we're practicing, we're in the flow. We're getting messy. We're speaking our dialect of creativity and science and whatever our initiatives are.
And then we come back to reflection. We're like, wow, what just happened? What did I just do? You kind of become quiet. We create spaces here that are so full of inspiration that they vibrate visually. You're like, wow, what? But we also create spaces where people can go and be quiet and be in their scientific mind.
In this case, you know, we have to have the hacker's mind and then the, kind of, that scientific thinking mind, because you always need to be building upwards. If you're always innovating, then you're always in that pool of chaos. And if you're always just philosophy, then you're in that, like, pool of thinking where you may not be driving the science board. So be careful in just attributing ROIs, but also be creative with your ROIs.
[00:44:28] Jenny: Yeah, fantastic. I think we're going to need to bring things to a close. We want to thank our participants for their active engagement and insightful questions in the session.
So let's take a moment to give a huge virtual round of applause to our fantastic speakers today. Thank you, Leo, Nir, Erik, and Forest. Really amazing insights. I feel like my mind has already flexed out a little bit. So thank you so very much.