Sabrina Halper Show

Edward Saatchi (Saatchi & Saatchi family, former Head of Oculus Story Studio, Founder of Fable Studios) joins us to make the case that Hollywood is sleepwalking into the most radical disruption in the history of storytelling."Creativity is at a deep blue and Kasparov moment"
"AI isn't just a tool in the toolbox for filmmakers. It's a competitor"
We talk about:
★ Whether AI can be truly creative - Edward says yes
★ Silicon Valley's quiet takeover of Hollywood
★ Tech companies becoming media companies
★ The rise of the one-person film
★ Why AI will bring an aesthetic shift to cinema
Then we go deeper into what this actually means for authorship, storytelling, and who gets to have a creative voice, when the cost of making a film collapses to near zero.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Finding the New Medium of AI Art
00:57 From Obama Campaign Tech to VR Storytelling at Oculus
03:02 Why VR Didn’t Pan Out
04:03 Fable Studios’ Vision
04:20 Why “Cheaper VFX” Misses the Point of AI in Hollywood
07:09 The Playable Star Wars Thought Experiment (and Studio Pushback)
09:08 AI Media: Interactive, Remixable, Personal
12:48 Simulation-First Story Worlds
14:51 AI Will Be Creative
16:43 World-Building vs. Prompt Engineering
20:03 Hollywood’s Shifting Attitude
24:37 One-Person Films, YouTube Discovery, and AI-Generated Feeds
29:21 Can AI Art Have a Point of View?
31:10 From Creativity to Consciousness: Why Simulations Matter
32:13 ‘Exit Valley’: Using AI Satire Against Tech Power
36:50 Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood
40:52 Video Models, Robotics, and the ‘War on Cliché’
44:45 Generated Media’s Role in Globalizing Content
50:51 ‘AI Aesthetic’ in Film
56:06 Saatchi & Saatchi: Edward’s Family Roots

Moxie Marlinspike founded Signal, the nonprofit privacy messenger used by millions. He’s now building Confer, a fully private, end-to-end encrypted AI chat. This conversation covers everything.TIMESTAMPS:00:00 Intro 01:09 Building Physical World Projects Centered on Experiences07:43 Tales from Hitchhiking15:04 The Birth of Signal22:23 Privacy in the Digital Age31:21 Introducing Confer: Private AI Chat37:17 Generative AI and Developer Responsibility38:21 Encryption and Cryptography: A Historical Perspective39:15 Skepticism Towards Crypto41:24 The Impact of Self-Publishing and Cancel Culture44:01 Imagining MoxieLand49:41 Why Do Conspiracy Theories Exist58:00 Signal Gate1:02:30 Limits of Solo Ambitions1:05:09 Solving Aging1:09:00 Moxie’s Next Physical World Project FOLLOW:Follow MoxieSign up for ConferFollow SabrinaPlease support this show by subscribing!

Ken Liu: Renowned sci-fi author of The Paper Menagerie, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, and his new book All That We See or Seem; producer of Pantheon; futurist who works with world governments to prepare for what’s ahead.

TIMESTAMPS:
(0:00) Introduction
(1:41) Mechanism vs meaning: what science explains vs what stories explain
(5:47) What is consciousness, really?
(6:42) Psychedelics and the mystery of the mind
(7:55) Can intelligence exist without consciousness?
(12:10) How mind-uploading might actually work (and the Singularity)
(19:15 — Falling in love with AI - why “imaginary companions” aren’t new
(23:40) Modern day myths around romantic love
(27:15) Preservation vs. transformation of humanity
(32:37) When technical skill disappears: what is craft?
(40:00) When using AI actually makes us feel more human
(41:05) Writing, imagination, and “All That We See or Seem”
(47:35) Dreams, reality, and how we know what’s real
(54:45) Privacy in an age of digital selves
(58:03) Data, the commons, and how knowledge should be shared

Follow Ken: https://x.com/kyliu99
Buy his new book All That We See or Seem : https://www.amazon.com/All-That-Seem-Julia-Novel/dp/1668083175

When will AI become conscious and how would we even know if it did? We talk about the decoupling of intelligence and consciousness in today's LLMs, and the ethical questions in regulating models.
Ken walks me through a thought experiment to understand the singularity: what uploading our minds might actually look like, a theme explored in his Netflix series Pantheon. If we replace our minds piece by piece with silicon, at what point do “we” disappear?
In the age of AI, when many technical skills are made obsolete, who are the experts of craft?
We explore why falling in love with AI may be grounded in our religious history, and is an act of falling in love with our own reflection.
We discuss how phones have killed daydreaming and access to the collective unconscious, and the mysteries of psychedelics, natural intelligence, and the universe at large.
“We are willing to die for the sake of a story. In fact, it’s the only thing humans have ever willingly died for.” Most of human life, Ken argues, has two levels of explanation: 1.Evolution & 2.Stories — the way we make sense of the world and find meaning in it.

Isabelle Boemeke went from Brazilian model to the internet’s most creative nuclear advocate who led the largest pro nuclear rally in US history. In this episode, we talk about nuclear energy's wild history, political drama, and what America’s energy grid needs to look like to keep up with the future demands.

Shownotes: 
0:00 : Introduction
1:37 : Growing up in rural Brazil
3:44 : Getting to the United States
5:15 : Reading Richard Dawkins, getting involved in the climate movement, learning about nuclear
12:05 : A historical deep dive: What went wrong with nuclear energy?
24:32 : What really happened at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl - separating fear from facts.
30:43 : Deaths from Nuclear Vs. Fossil Fuels
37:15 : Nuclear Proliferation Risk
42:17 : Gaps in the US supply chain & AI’s need for more energy
49:40 : Promise vs. reality of SMRs (Small modular reactors)
54:54 : Designing energy grid for the US
59:10 : Why are Germany, Taiwan, and Australia shutting down nuclear energy programs?
1:02:10 : Saving California’s last nuclear plant Diablo Canyon
1:08:24 : Today’s nuclear renaissance

Isa Fulford is only a few years out of school and is already the mind behind Deep Research and ChatGPT Agent - two of the most important and ambitious projects at OpenAI. She’s a close friend from our Stanford days, someone I adore, and someone the world is going to hear a lot more about in coming years.
We talk about how her upbringing and violin training shaped the discipline behind her professional work. Isa breaks down how these systems were built, how they think, and where AI is heading, from agents talking to agents to a future where humans guide the work instead of doing it.SHOWNOTES:
0:00 Introduction
1:50 Early life, math, music, and discipline
4:40 Stanford, Journey into AI, & joining OpenAI
7:15 Deep Research, building datasets, & early indications
11:35 Building ChatGPT Agent
13:47 What comes next from OpenAI?
15:58 Personal Use of AI
16:40 Future of Internet + Agent Communication
19:03 Personal AI agents
20:06 Safety Risks 22:44 AGI
24:03 Agents for personal growth
25:00 How AI is changing the way we work
27:43 Talent war and poaching
28:30 Lessons from Sam Altman: raise ambition level
30:18 Rapid questions

EPISODE LINKS:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SabrinaHalper
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sabrina-halper-show/id1627753991