AI: Tools & Art — Zo World interview edit
Zo World host So while people are jumping in, I'll just give one inform an introduction about Ben. I attended Ben's first session through in peak, and I was totally blown. He there was a session on introduction to AI, and I just hopped in as a casual listener, but then I had to rush and get my notes, notebook, and pen because I knew that this is this is something really amazing coming up. And since then, Ben Hans put on five more sessions within pink on different topics on AI and AI tool that home and history and what we can expect in future. So so, Ben, nice having you here tonight.
Ben Good morning. Good morning. Can you all hear me okay? Yes.
Zo World host Yes. Yes. Perfect.
Ben Good deal. You never know the Twitter's faces. You know?
Zo World host Yes. You're right. How are you doing, Ben?
Ben Very good. It's Friday morning here, so kinda getting ready for the work today and figured I'd call a bit of a late start, talk to you guys first, and then get into the work day. So do doing great. Had some coffee. Ready to go.
Zo World host Amazing. Amazing. So let's wait for a minute more.
Zo World host So, everyone, Benjamin is a seasoned blockchain technology expert with over a decade of experience in the industry. Ben is also a multidisciplinary artist who has been pushing the boundaries of digital photography and artificial intelligence in art. He has advised several projects in the web three space and has been featured as a speaker on blockchain technology in various events and podcasts. Ben is an active member of several arts communities as well, including Fingerprints DAO, GMDAO, UltraDAO. In addition, Ben has extensive experience in sales and management, having started companies and held executive position in multiple phones. He currently resides in Arizona where he works in sales and consulting and also serves on the board of directors for search for for search fund and a charity. How is Arizona treating you when?
Ben So I just moved back out here. I used to live here over a decade ago. Loved it because it's beautiful. It's the desert. You know? It's sunny, like, 300 days a year or something crazy. And I really missed it when I lived back east, and it could be rainy and dreary. So just moved back a couple years ago, and I just I love the desert. It gets a little hot. In the summers, it gets up to, like, a 115 Fahrenheit, which is a little extreme. But outside of that, it's a great place to live.
Zo World host Amazing. So where are you originally from?
Ben So I'm originally from Florida, and then I went to school, in Tennessee, lived in Texas, which is probably where I picked up a little bit of the accent. But originally from Florida, and I got tired of hurricanes, so moved out west.
Zo World host Nice. Nice. So, Ben, taking it forward, I wanted to ask you, as someone who has been working with blockchain technology for over a decade, how have you seen the space evolve over the years, and what do you think the future holds for blockchain in Web three?
Ben So I think one of the most interesting things that I have seen over the last decade is when I very first got into it, it was Bitcoin, Litecoin, Bitcoin, but we were pretty much looking at the technology as a form of digital currency or a digital store of value, and that's really all it did. I got really excited in about 2015, 2016 when I first heard about Ethereum, and Vitalik was talking about a world computer. And I could understand the potential in a conceptual way, but not really in a real world way. So I bought into the idea that there wasn't anything to do with it. It still functioned much like the earlier currencies. And I would say for me, it wasn't really until 2017 and then things cooled off, so maybe '21 where I really could see, the potential becoming realized for this world computer and the Ethereum virtual machine, and could start to see real world use cases.
And at first, of course, that looked financial. It was DeFi. And then it slowly evolved beyond that into CryptoKitties and Tulips, but it still looks sort of like a toy. And I would say it wasn't really until the end of twenty one, early twenty two for me that I realized this wasn't just a toy, and I realized that nonfungible tokens and things like that had applications beyond just collectibles. You know, they have applications in the medical world for medical records or in the construction industry to track, you know, construction projects or warranties or you know, then I started to understand that this could be more than just a toy. So I think for me, that's what I've really seen over the last ten years is more and more at first conceptual applications for the technology and then slowly practical applications.
There's still a long way to go and a lot of hurdles. Now where do I see it going? I think the next you know, I think there's a couple things. On one hand, there's the there's the improving what we already have side of things. There's layer twos and there's, you know, charting and and scalability and and security. So that's one side of the point is just sheer technical improvements, making things faster and cheaper and more secure. On the other side of the coin, where do I see us going is mass adoption. I think that's gonna take a lot longer than everyone thinks it will. I think that's we're all super early adopters. I think it's five or ten years before our grandparents will be using the blockchain, you know, built into their Android or Apple phone or before government agencies begin using the technology wide scale, not just testing it.
So that's that's where I see things going. And then, of course, you're gonna throw in, you know, some AI and other disruptive things, and it may accelerate the change or change the change. You know? You can't really predict what somebody's gonna invest next year. It'll be different.
Zo World host And you have created and sold several NFTs yourself. What do you think sets successful NFTs apart from those that fail to gain traction? And how do you approach the creative process when making NFT? As we also you know, with Zoho Studio, I think we were cut off in between. We'll talk about it later. But, yeah, we're also doing the same with Zoho Studio. We are trying to help traditional artists launch their art in digital form. So how can you guide
Ben through it? So I think there's a couple questions there. I'll try and answer them all. So what makes a successful NFP, I would say, is probably the hardest question to answer. I think there's some combination of creative vision, technical skill, and chance. And I would I would put it this way. Just because someone has the most technical skill does not mean they they're the most famous artists. I'm sure if we went back in history, you know, there were people while, you know, da Vinci and Michelangelo and and all these great older masters did have excellent technical skill, I am sure we could have found other people living in Italy during the Renaissance that had even more technical skill. At some level, it's the creative vision combined with we'll call it chance, but but combined with sort of where you are, who you know, and just hitting things at the right time that makes something successful.
I really think the part that you can control is the creative vision and the ideation. For me, a successful NFT starts with an amazing idea, solid execution, maybe not the best in the world, but solid execution and creating that idea. And then past that, there's only so much you can control. As for, let's see, sort of the process, how did I end up doing this and how do I? I would say I grew up, you know, being trained in art, both appreciating music, physical art, and photography, but didn't personally, you know, tend towards the physical arts. I'm not a painter. And I think one of the big changes that happened for me in the last couple of years really was AI allowed me to take my creative vision.
You know, what I could see in my head and I couldn't get on paper because I'm just not that good of an illustrator or a painter, and it allowed me to to see it. Now I will say something that I think well, Klairsilver talks about, you know, taste being the new skill. And I think that's true with AI art that anybody can create just a bunch of of noise. But I think the skill aspect is twofold. Number one, it's it's really understanding how these things work. You know, if I just want a cute picture of a dog, can generate 5,000 of those. But if I have a particular vision in my mind for a particular type of dog in a particular type of setting displayed in a particularly artistic way, I have to understand how to use the tools to get that out of the out of the machine.
So I think first of all, there is a a level of skill in producing and curating this. And then number two, there's there's still an aspect of manipulation and skill. So for for instance, what I mean is, let's say I've got this artistic vision for this image that I want to produce. Maybe I need to produce 50 or a 100 or 500 images to really get what I want. And maybe I take two or three or five of those images, and first of all, I, you know, edit them in Photoshop. And then maybe I upscale them, you know, because I want them to be at a particular resolution. And then maybe I, you know, cut and paste, layer them, and then maybe I manipulate them some more after that, you know, before I come with a finished product that I'm happy with.
And so, you know, that's not just telling the machine make this for me. It's much more involved than that. And then I think there's also an aspect of around AI and some of these things. There's two aspects there that that bring up some controversy. I think the first one is it's too easy. It doesn't take enough time. I think we can see sort of the counterargument to that in photography. When Ansel Adams took a beautiful photo of a mountain, how much time did it really take him to produce that? He pressed the button on a tool. And that goes back to the taste is the new skill. There's this curative aspect that goes along with the creative aspect. And then you also sometimes have this debate amongst artists. Everything from a, you know, physical artist that's painting an oil painting with their hands or a or a watercolor, you know, to a digital artist, to an AI artist.
The digital artist may say to the AI artist, that's not real art. You told the machine to create this and created it, so I don't feel like that's real art. And the physical artist says to the digital artist, well, that's not real art. You're not you're not manipulating a physical medium. You know, you're not getting your hands dirty. You're not stretching your own canvas and and dipping the brush in the paint. And then if you go back to the old masters from the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci says to you know, or Michelangelo says to the current watercolor artist, well, you're not even mixing your own Tempuras. You're not making your own pigments. You're not a real artist. So I think there's these, you know, levels that we gotta get beyond that and appreciate the art for the art's sake and get away from this judging of which tool is better than another tool.
So, anyway, that's that's a few of my thoughts on on sort of success, process, curation, creation. I'm sure I've got more scrambled around in my brain, but that's my two cents on that question.
Zo World host Thank you so much for, such a nice, explanation. I'm sure it was very helpful for everyone here. Rulmi, how was your experience with AI so far?
Speaker 2 I've been experimenting with AI for almost a year now, just generating images, testing out diffusion, testing out DALI and with journey and a couple of more tools. There are more on Reddit. There are a couple of filters that I keep on trying. It's it's very mixed. Like, my review is very mixed. Like, sometimes what I achieve out of a 50 word prompt, Like, a friend of mine also achieves a three word prompt, and it's very mixed. It's it's sometimes, it's it's feels like that I am I I I've understood that what I want to create is the set of words, but then there are things which have which just negative negifies it, like, totally negates it. So I'm I'm still struggling to find what is the right format or thing is it although although I'm very deep into it, like, generate at least thirty, forty images every day, and I keep on pushing the prompts into more geometric terms and percentages and then, you know, degrees and all.
So I I tried to create, like, a perfect pyramid inside the search engine and all these kind of things. So, nevertheless, now we have we have Ben here. Like, Ben, what do you what do you have a do you have a recommendation for a enthusiast like me? Like, keep on doing stuff like this.
Ben So I think one thing that's helped me and there's there's a fine line here. One thing that's helped me is experimenting with new things. So how is stable diffusion different than Midjourney, different than Dolly, you know, different than a GAN, a generative adversarial network, or even some of these new things that came out like Deep Floyd IF or what are they good at, what are they bad at. But then you also have to understand just how fast they're iterating. Right? I mean, you look in the last nine months just at Midjourney, we've had version one, two, three, four, five, five point one. Six is in development. Version seven's in development. Four had three different versions, and then they've got the Nidji and the Nidji five, and then there's different styles. And each of those versions has their own prompting techniques and and peculiarities and intricacies, and the same is true of stable diffusion.
And so I think one of the hardest things well, there's there's two things. There's an easy thing and a hard thing. I think the easy thing is get out there and experiment. You know? Try different things and find your style and find what works and how it works. The hard thing is the rate of change is so fast that unless you don't have a job, none of us have time to trial these things all the time and get good at all of them. But I think that's true of any art. You know, I think AI is a broad category, and it would be like saying, you know, if your question was how do I become a good photographer, the answer probably is that go find 20 cameras and use all of them all the time with 20 different lenses. That's just too many choices.
So I think it's good to be aware of what's occurring in the, you know, sort of space as a whole, but figure out what works for you and what what feels good to you. You know? Just like if you're you know, if you if you tend towards oil painting or watercolor painting or drawing with a pen and ink, figure out your medium and your tools, and then get good at it. And then maybe read about the others, experiment with the others, but none of us have infinite time. If you spend all your time researching, you can't create. And at the end of the day, I still think it comes down to your creative vision, not the tools. So with the tools, I would say, what's out there, know what's coming, don't get stuck, but you're not gonna have time to try everything all the time.
Speaker 2 Yeah. It's a it's a lot of variables that the AI decides for itself, and it's only limited for a human brain to, like, you know, choose a set of variables. There's always something which lefts out and that AI fills it up with something which is very unexpected or something which is right there. As a artist, it becomes it becomes very difficult to take take credit and as well as to avoid the guilt, if you know what
Ben I mean. And I would say there's a couple things that are hard right now that'll get easier in some ways. I mean, if you look at Midjury version seven, for instance, one of the big things they're working on is coming out with a better language understanding model. And I actually posted about this on my Twitter the other day. There is a new technology out for instance. One of the hard things is where things go in an image. If you tell it that I want Yeah. It's called the GlideGem, Open Set Grounded Text to Image Generation. It's a pen tweet on my Twitter. If you go to that and look at it, one of the hard things is if I say I want to have a duck or a chicken sitting on top of a very large egg, the language model just doesn't understand that. Right?
I'm not really gonna get what I want. I might get a lot of eggs. I might get a I might get a chicken sitting beside an egg, but to truly get an egg three times the size of a chicken and a chicken sitting on top of it, the language model just doesn't understand that that this diffusion, you know, software uses. And so there are things coming out where we'll be able to say, no. I want the chicken in this location. I want the chicken this size in relation to the egg and this size in relation to the photo. So I think some of those problems are gonna go away very soon, like within the next three to six months. Yeah. But then it'll just get back to kinda what we're talking about. Then it's gonna be about who has the best creative vision because the execution is gonna become easier.
And and because of that, we will probably see more high quality images that are actually what people intended to create. So I think that's a intermediate problem right now that we're having. These tools are hard to use, and we'll get past that.
Speaker 2 Alright. Alright. So I get you. And, I I see you talking so passionately about art and AI at the same time. So I just wanna know, bro, like, the were you always an artist from a young age? Like, how was your early childhood? When were you introduced to art? Can you can we get can we get something about that?
Ben Yeah. Absolutely. So from a young age, my parents did a great job of making sure we have a lot of exposure to art. So that was going to museums, reading about it, experiencing it. And as a quick aside, I will say that I think that's a huge advantage, to anyone is having that perspective. The history of art, the the context of art, and just understanding the names and styles, and that goes a long way, in creating an image prompt, know, for instance. That being said, so we had great exposure to art. We had a lot of good hands on art. I played piano from an early age. Both my parents played instruments, sang, played guitar. From a and then I took photography. I loved photography. Took tons of photos. Got to travel a bunch as a kid.
And, you know, back then it was all about how do you brain the shot, what kind of film you use. There was only so much post processing you could do before computers existed. But loved photography, had, you know, had some of mine blown up. Then as I got into my twenties, sold some of my photographs here and there, you know, not a lot, but but a little bit. Continued playing instruments, made some music, did some mixing over the years, but I was just never a great like I said, my little brother's a great illustrator, great watercolor artist. He's just a good physical medium artist, I gravitated more towards music, images, digital manipulation of images. And so for me, you know, I've always loved sort of, you know, visual art, but I just wasn't real great at doing it with my hands.
And so it's been amazing for me that this sort of dovetailed and allowed me to do that. So, yes, I would say I've loved art, had a passion for it, I've always had a love for technology, but the two never really met up until the last couple of years where, you know one of the best examples I like to give is this. I've got a photograph, and you can go onto my foundation page, and it's this beautiful photograph of a mountain and it's vivid and it's gorgeous, sort of an HDR style photo. And here's one of the best examples I love to give people about sort of where technologies come and what it allows you to do. I took that photo on an iPhone four back in 2010. I was up in Canada, and I saw this just amazing scene, but you couldn't really capture it with an iPhone four image sensor.
It was a small sensor. It didn't have great resolution, so I immediately started taking a ton of photos. And then I took them at different exposure levels, and then I tried to combine them. And the software back then just wasn't there. There were all these funny lines and exposures, and it was a bit blurry, and it still wasn't that great resolution. But it was an awesome photo so I kept it. And it wasn't until last year that I was able to finally stitch the photo together, fix the exposures, you know, fix the blurriness. I used an AI algorithm to upscale it, Realistically used a fair amount of AI tools, you know, machine learning tools and the imaging software to clean up this photo and make it look the way it does today. And I like to ask people, is that a photograph? Well, no.
I mean, it's not it's not photon sitting on photographic plate. It's not truly an accurate representation. You know, it's not a photograph, but it's also not AI. It it it is a representation of what I saw with my eyes in 2010 looking out at that mountain vista. So for me, that's why I'm passionate about technology and art is it's finally gotten to a place where it's allowing us to do things that we couldn't do before, and it's blurring the lines between, you know, our technology. And I just love that conversation and what it's capable of.
Speaker 2 I think this is amazing where technology has led us. And in 2023, and we could do all kinds of things. And this is an amazing example, and it's so good that you saved all that all those pictures from that time, and you almost waited for the right technology to come in and to use it altogether. This is just phenomenal. I think it's an amazing story.
Ben Well, one of the cool things technologically that's coming down the road too, as a brief aside, is, you know, I've minted all of my NFTs so far on Arweave. You know? So they're they're not stored on chain. Right? They're off chain. And partly that was because it was so expensive to store art on chain, but also because of the tools to store art on chain, you know, could be kind of a pain in the butt. But now you've got manifold contracts. There's new extensions for manifold contracts that are starting to store data in new ways. There's new ways to compress, you know, those images down. So for instance, I had a piece of on chain art that I really wanted to mount, but it was gonna cost, you know, hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Well, just in the last few months, it looks like I can now mend it for maybe point one e, point two e that gas will come down a little bit. So I also think, you know, one of the things we're gonna see with technology and our, our different ways of storing it and presenting it, you know, from the NFT blockchain side of the world. That is
Speaker 2 definitely true. And, one thing I I I've always worry about when I generate AI images, and, the one thing I said, you know, like, as a creator, when a lot of variables and a lot of things that I cannot decide in images is the decisions are made by the AI. You know? And do I take credit for it? Like, do I feel guilty about it? And and you have been into the midst of it. You have been teaching AI classes for art and bake, and you have been in conversation with so many artists. How do you see AI influencing the art world in the coming years, and what are the ethical considerations should we be be aware of, when we are using AI in art?
Ben So I think it's a good question, but it's also a difficult question. And I think it's a it's a multifaceted question. So for me, personally, I think there's let's start with sort of where does the arc come from. Right? Is is are these diffusion models, stealing artists previously made works? And I think that's a hard question. They certainly trained on a dataset that includes lots of artists' works. And whether or not that training is legal or not, I think we'll sort of or if moral or will will be decided in the coming years. You know, I I've heard arguments saying that, you know, you really shouldn't allow these things to train on this data. And then I've heard other arguments that say that's kind of what a search engine is. You know? It's it's human beings doing the same thing.
We're we're looking at all of this data and synthesizing it and creating something new. So I think that's one one aspect that's gonna have to be dealt with is the training data. And I think there are practical ways that that's already being dealt with. You know, there are people working on open source datasets, and there's some other there's some less moral and legal ideas around it and just more practical ones, that are being worked on. So I think that's first of all. And then you get, you know, people saying that, look. I can take images from the training dataset, and the AI will output them. And then you get other also very bright people saying, no. That's not at all what's happening. It looks very similar, but it's not the same image. You know, it's it's still a new image.
So I think, first of all, there's this sort of technical legal question that there's not a lot I can do about that. You know? I could worry about it, but I try not to because that's sort of, you know, above my pay grade as they say. Then there's the issue of, you know, what about what I'm producing? Is it art? Is it not art? Is it and I think for me personally, one of the things that I've wrestled with is is twofold. Number one is is time and effort correlated to the value of my art? And I have to say no for the same reason as, like I said, if if a famous photographer takes a photograph, all you really did was press the button and it happened in an instant. There's very little time and effort.
Now you can argue that the time and effort was all the training and all the context that led up to that point, but that would be true for me as an AI artist too. So there's this time and effort argument that I don't think really holds up. I don't feel bad if it doesn't take me, you know, if I get the image I want in 10 generations or a thousand, I I don't know that that's a reflection on, you know, how much the art's worth. But I do tend to, for me personally, not sell raw outputs, And I think that's a personal decision. If there's a if there's a AI artist that's particularly good at prompt engineering and they feel like, you know, they put all the time and energy into that and they they, you know, whip a really good prompt into shape, and it puts out just the image they want, and they're happy selling it.
Who am I to judge that? But for me personally, I like to add my personal spin on it. And in The US, the US Copyright Office has said that an AI work is only copyrightable if it's been modified from the raw output of the program. And that raw you know, that could be upscaling it, editing it in Photoshop. But for me, personally, I like to put a personal spin on it. I'll put out a whole bunch of generations, but I will I I will very rarely, I don't think I've ever done it, released an actual raw output. Like I said, I like to upscale. I like to clean it up. Maybe I want to, do something with the color or radically change the image by applying a glitch algorithm or pixelating it. For me, the AI is a raw output, but then I'm gonna put my personal spin on it before I'm gonna sell it to someone.
But I don't think that's necessarily true for everyone. That's just my personal what I enjoy doing. And and back to your comment about, you know, I can feel good about doing that. I I I know beyond the shadow of the doubt that I put as much human intention into it as there was machine intention. You know? Now I've also even heard there's a very old argument from, I think it was back in the seventies, where somebody said, look. A human made the computer. A human made the code. A human made the art that it was trained on. How is it not a human, production? And I think there is some truth to that too. These these machines didn't arise, you know, x and a kilo out of nothing and start making art. We made them to make art.
It might not be my machine, my code, but there's a famous email Steve Jobs wrote before he died that also said, he said, I don't make the clothes I wear. I don't grow the food I eat. I don't, you know, by and large, make the computers I use or the operating systems I use. And we don't say that if someone writes a letter, you know, on Microsoft Word that they may have to, you know, attribute Microsoft Word for helping them, which brings up a separate issue, let me very briefly discuss because it goes back to the sort of moral issue. So there's this debate going on right now of do we need to disclose whether we use AI or not in the creation of our art? And I I'm not settled on this yet. On one hand, I've heard people say, yes. Absolutely.
If you have used an AI tool to create a piece, you need to disclose what tool, you know, exactly. And on one hand, I'm like, okay. That makes good sense. There's no there's nothing to hide here. I don't mind to tell somebody exactly what tools I I used to create something. On the other hand, that'd be absurd if I said, have to tell me the exact camera and lens you used or the brand of brushes and canvas you used to create this. And I think this is where it started to, you know, where I started to have a little better understanding is when I look at large language models like a chat GPT or something. People say, look. You need to disclose if you use that to write a letter or a document. And on one hand, that makes sense right off the top.
But then I noticed that Grammarly is now including AI tools, you know, if you use Grammarly to check your writing. And then I kinda took it another step back, and I said, what if I use Grammarly without AI? It still is like a machine learning algorithm. There there are still, you know, all these rules that are put in about the English language and grammar. Do I need to disclose if I use Grammarly to edit the letter that I wrote or the email I wrote? Well, no. Nobody would say that. So I think we're in this transitory phase where it's sort of the hot issue of the moment, and it's a revolutionary technology and people are up in arms about it. But I don't think we'll need to disclose if we use a particular tool to create something in five years anymore than you have to disclose what operating system or word processor or spell check or if you use Photoshop to edit the image or Pixelmator or something else.
So I think some of these issues are interesting and they they bear thinking about, but I don't think they're gonna be long term issues, if that makes sense. I didn't
Speaker 2 even know that I had some strong opinions about things that I've never thought about. And I totally agree with you. You know? Like, if it's the human who are using the prompt engineering, it's us who are devising the way and the method how to instruct AI. And I know, like, me agreeing with you doesn't create a lot of conversation, but here I am. Like, anybody in the audience here in the spaces, if if they want to, like, raise up their hand and, like, ask to speak, feel free to talk and ask more question. And I see Shashikanth is also here. Shashikanth, do you want to ask any question? Hello. Hi, Zoho Zoho.
Speaker 1 Hello, Ben. It's great listening to you. Yes. It's absolutely great listening to you, and I just saw your work, and it's amazing. I I really love the way you are doing throughout, bro. I mean, very
Speaker 1 So and I was listening to you very closely about, like, telling your information out, saying it out, it is AI or it is not AI. Yeah. All these things is coming from a very simple mechanism that of fear and insecurity. Right? Because AI is now the skill that I think even a five year old can try AI and even a 50 year old can try AI. Right? So they both are trying in their own combinations. And whoever who feel insecure and whoever who were feeling injustice, they are asking the other person to give the information to the other people. So but whoever is the master or will become a master who will put in more effort and time will eventually succeed in this process. And whoever who is just trying experimenting and experimenting way less, but looking for an excellence are going and getting affected.
So they are the one who are asking for this information to be out. And that that's what is happening. And this is happening with every every art as you suggested. Like, even in photography, it has happened. The Grammarly example was very, very hilarious, and I could not agree more with that.
Speaker 2 And I think it's more of a temporary thing, like, for this period, this this kind of contradictions and this kind of demand for justification is required. And I I really don't think it's gonna last very long. It's going to be very short lived where people are asking for and I don't think it's
Speaker 1 fair. Yes. Yes. Even even I feel the same thing. Recently, one thing happened, the Sony Awards thing, I think I think if you are aware, Like, they even gave the award for an image which was generated through AI, and it created a lot of debate everywhere. So I think there I I don't think it is a human error, but during such places, you really need to be separating your art as a different thing. You cannot mix both there. That's the only decision that they have to take. Apart from that, I feel every art needs a respect.
Speaker 2 Thank you so much, Rashidun.
Ben Even you all said add something. So I think I I thought about this too a little bit. You know? I mean, I've done some computer programming over the years. I've done and I've worked with developers. And, you know, those guys get very scared about LLMs and programming and things like that. But I think for me, what'll happen is if we take photography for an example, you know, there used to be portrait painters. Right? And they would paint portraits of people or people at events. And that's by and large gone, you know, sort of the way of the buffalo as we'd say. They don't you know, nobody hires portrait painters. But I think what it has done is elevated the level of people that are still doing portrait painting and oil painting. You know, there's not a bunch of mediocre people doing it for a mediocre living.
There's a few that are doing it very exceptional. And I think that's what we're going to see is, you know, the people that are really good at this and have the the the best execution and the best vision will still rise to the top, but all the mediocre graphic designers and the mediocre illustrators will be surpassed. And so it's not that they'll be out of a job. It's that the jobs will shift, and it will it will sort of raise the bar for art in my mind. So I I do think it will have an effect, but I don't think it you know, I don't think all the torches and pitchforks are gonna have the effect they want. I think there's just a natural effect to new revolutionary technology like this. And it sort of democratizes art in general, but it will also elevate good art in a new way.
Speaker 2 Nervous is beautiful, and Nervous is scary, and change is scary. And, you know, that's just human to just react it that way. So, yeah, we are Jeeja Jeeja, you have raised your hand. Please go ahead.
Zo World host Yes. Yes. Yes. It was a very interesting conversation going on between you all, so I didn't want to interrupt before. But I just wanna remind you to everyone that we have pinged POAP form, and the the secret code for today is Artists. Okay. We do lovely, POAP drop every session, and you don't want to miss this one, guys. The secret code is Artist. Okay.
Speaker 2 Alright. This is awesome. And Artist is always the secret code for any problem in life, by the way. Just in case anybody is wondering. Sure. Ben, I have an
Speaker 1 amazing question. Sorry, Shashikan. Are you Yes. Okay. I don't know if it is going to be an elaborate explanation, but, Ben, I really have few things to ask you. See, we all love magic, which will happen in our hands. Right? Like, whenever we experiment with such AI ad, there will be a magic, and it will give us more hope and more fun, more adventure, and it will give us more happiness to create more and more. But when you come to the NFT space and you start selling out your ads, you will be in a lot of anxiety and you will fall into a lot of, like, depression that might happen because you are creating something and your NFTs may not be getting sold for so and so reasons.
So if I may ask, is there, like, is there any, like, few pointers that we can keep as a beginners to the NFT space to make a better out of this NFT space being a in a AI generating artist?
Ben So I think for me, I created a lot of art before I ever put a piece up for sale. And I and I created it for me, you know, not not to sell. So I created maybe 800 or and I'm talking this was last summer and fall. I created maybe 800 or a thousand, images using AI generators. And I spent money on Medjourney, and I installed stable diffusion, and and there was no expectation of profit there. Right? I was just doing it, a, because I love learning, and, b, because I was excited to have this new outlet for creation. And the first piece of art that I ever minted as an NFT, I gave away. It was an open edition, called Bear Market Blues Desert Sunset. And and I did it more because, you know, I had done a couple contracts here and there, but I wanted to try a manifold contract with an open claim for free.
Gas was low back then. ETH was relatively low. And I said, you know what? I'm just gonna throw it out there. Maybe 50 people will take this thing and it'll be kind of fun. Well, it ended up something like 3,700 people mentored this thing. Zeneca Emblem sharing out his follower. You know, sitting at home. I was sitting at home going, what did I do? So for me, it was sort of accidental. You know? And then people said, what are you gonna do with this? When are you gonna sell stuff? And, you know, I started out and just sold a couple pieces here and there. And one of the things that I I have decided for me is I'm not gonna release 10,000 pieces, but I'm also not gonna be one of these people that's so concerned about the price that I'm only gonna release for a year or so for me, when inspiration strikes and I really go, that's a great idea.
So for instance, the other day, there was a news story about a fellow in South Korea that took the duct tape banana off the wall from the art piece, Comedian, and he ate the banana, and he duct taped the empty peel back to the wall. And people asked him, why did you do it? And he said, well, I was hungry, but I also wanted to do this transformative piece of performance art. So I read this story, and I heard this. At first, I said, well, that's kind of absurd. Then I thought about it little bit more and I actually had a discussion with a couple people about conceptual art, performance art. What are they? What is art? It inspired me to create an image. I went and created about 70 images of bananas in glass boxes on walls, and I finally came out with one I liked.
I did a bunch more work to get the style I liked. I actually showed one of my artist friends some of the different animated versions, non animated versions. There were all these bizarro ideas they came up with. And I sold upon one I really liked, and I said, you know what? To me, this speaks to me as a as a commentary about what art is. I'm gonna release this as an NFT. If anybody buys it, great. And if they don't buy it, that's okay too. That photograph I spoke about earlier, I think is probably one of the best photographs I've ever taken. I love it. It's listed at, like, half an eater or point 70 because that's what the value is to me, and I'd rather not sell it for less than that. You know? Somebody offers me a $100, I'm not gonna take it because for me, that's a representational piece.
But this piece, I didn't have any such know, it was just something really cool that I like, I made, and I wanted to put on the blockchain put out into the world. So I threw it up, and it got a bid. Somebody bought it. Spent about a 130, a 140 US dollars on it. It was called, in case of art, break glass. But it wasn't about the money. I've got a good job, you know, in sales and consulting, and it wasn't about the money. It was about putting it out there. And if somebody valued it, great. And if they didn't, that's okay too. It's not gonna hurt my feelings if they don't buy it. So for me, it has to be about the art and the inspiration. I I'm not saying I'm not a capitalist, and I don't, you know, I don't mind it when people give me money for my art.
But for me, that's not the primary motivation. And because of that, I don't worry too much about, you know, the art being too scarce or too much of it being out there. Because it's about inspiration and feeling, I feel like, you know, I'm gonna be true to myself and not flood the market with my art, but I'm also not gonna hold back things I wanna share with people just so I can hopefully get a higher price someday, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2 I think that totally makes sense, and I feel you. And if you if you don't know, Shashi Khan has is a tenured photographer, videographer. He creates documentaries, and Shashi Khan has been doing this since since more than a decade now. He's one of the most celebrated photographers here in our country. And so I understand, Ben, what you are saying, and I see what art also means to you. I have another question, which is a little different. I we come to more broad web three space now. We come to more macro, and and we know that you have advised multiple projects in web three space. And, so our question is, how do you evaluate which This is going to be nice. How do you evaluate which projects to support? And, what quality qualities do you think are essential for a successful web three project?
Ben So there may be two answers to that. So number one, which one do I support may be a different answer than than the successful part. So for me to support one, it it has to have a couple things. Number one, it has to be interesting. If I'm not interested in it, I'm I'm just too busy to have time to do it realistically between my web two job and making art, teaching classes. You know, it has to be interesting. So that's number one. Number two, there's a moral aspect to it. You know? If it's dishonest, if I don't trust the people that are involved, if I think they're gonna defraud people, you know, that's sort of number two. So, you know, a, it has to be interesting. B, you know, I have to make sure I'm not going to sort of injure my reputation or my name.
And then c, you know, past that, it's more about time than it is compensation. You know? It's really do I have the time to do it and do it correctly. So for instance, I'm a financial steward for the EV Mavericks. It's It's a project that came out of EAP Finance. It's a community run DAO. It's a public goods project that's not for profit. And I you know, I've I've been doing that for a lot of months. At one point, I actually held the contract, was worth about $1,500,000. I put up some of my own personal collateral, held the contract to do some things with it for them, and I haven't received any compensation for that. But I but I spent a lot of time on it because I love that project. It's interesting. I like what they're doing. The people that are there, honest, good, you know, moral people.
So so that's that's part one. If I'm gonna get involved in a project, that's sort of my criteria. Part two, what makes it successful? I would say it's a lot harder to answer because, I mean, I've I've made and lost money on NFTs. I would say some of the things that that for me, I think would make something successful are, is it innovative? Do they have, you know, enough backing, whether that's money or time or to make it through the hard times? You know, back to the quality of the people. Are they honest people? You know, if if they're out trying to, you know, defraud people or they're gonna rug pull or you know, those things aren't aren't gonna make you successful long term. But beyond that, I really don't know the magic answer. I mean, once again, we're talking about sort of the transformative technology, a new market.
Yeah. I don't I don't know the the solid answer. If I did, I would be very, very rich and sitting on an island somewhere.
Speaker 2 I think the solid answer I have figured out doesn't make sense because the thing I figured out is that the project has to be consistent, and there's no way to know if the project is going to be consistent before you mint out and before you are there in the market. So it's a lot of vibe for me that I catch. Okay then. So moving on, I have a a very nice question. So as an artist, how do you see NFT, LTS, and web three changing the art world, you know, both in terms of how artists create and sell their work and how art is valued and appreciated by audience.
Ben So couple things. Number well, let me think for a sec. Yeah? Okay. So to start with, I would say my gut reaction is it democratizes access to art. And what I mean by that is, traditionally, I either had to go to an art gallery, go to a website, look at, you know, auction houses to try and have some idea of what art is and what the art market was. It's not a very clear sort of thing. What is this? I I can look at, you know, auction houses like Christie's and stuff. They can assume that's fine art, and it must be worth a lot. And then I can just browse the web and, you know, try and figure out artists that I like and maybe what their work sell for by what's on their website, or going into a gallery and chatting with someone.
But I think this sort of makes the world smaller in the sense that I can go on to OpenSea or Foundation or Twitter or and there's it's like gripping from a arc fire hose. You know? There's there's more arc than I could ever wanna see. But I also can go see what things sold. You know? And I can see that, this guy's works are going up in price or down in price or, in a way that I didn't have transparency to before Web three and NFTs. Number two, there's an ownership aspect of NFTs that doesn't necessarily exist in the traditional world. And I think there's a couple aspects to that I'll speak briefly on. So number one, you know, if I go buy a physical print, it could be a one of one, it could not be. The artist could go paint another one.
It's very hard to know how many are out there, what it is that I'm really getting outside of this print. With an NFT there's more of an expectation. If I release a ERC-seven twenty one one of one, there's an expectation that that's the only one in existence. You own it. If you want to display it in a digital frame or at your home, that's yours. I'm not saying that you know, the artist gives them a copyright or something, but but there is an expectation that you own that one, and you can certify that you own that one through the blockchain. Now I think there's still a lot of questions that have to be answered there in the sense that, you know, what's being transferred? What promises are being made? What expectations are there? You know, does IPFS and Rweave are these public forums? Are they nonpublic?
Who really owns the image? Is the non fungible token in the image at a legal level? At what point are they related? So I think there's still a lot of questions that have to be answered. But I also think we will see sort of a convergence of, you know, traditional or and web three art as time goes on just because, you know, if I look at my infinite object that has a moon bird on it, I can show that to a non Web native and they say, that's really cool. And they can scan the QR code on the back and they have some understanding, of the link between this provenance with that piece. So I I think we will see more Web three applications in the traditional Web two R world, but I think that's gonna be a long process.
But I certainly think Web three is is both democratizing and technologically revolutionary and what it's doing with R. So that's my really long answer.
Speaker 2 No. I I I understand what you're saying. And, you talk about Sotheby's, you talk about exhibitions, and you talk about people who display, or showcase art of different Web three artists. You are you are an active member of several art communities in Web three space. And But how do you see these small communities or big communities contributing to the development of the space? And what role do you see them playing in shaping the future of art and technology while there are big giants like SoftPease and Phillips, for example?
Ben So I think if you look at, you know, Fingerprints DAO or GMDAO or one thing or Art Blocks or, you know, if you look at sort of these web stream native art communities, one thing that they've done really well that or traditional art house hasn't done is they have focused on disruption. And what I mean by that is they focused on generative art. They focus on things that can't easily be replicated in the traditional art world. And I think that's why we've seen these generative web free art platforms and communities, are the more well known bigger art communities because they're doing something that those guys can't do. And there's a debate there about whether generative art is something new and shiny or whether it has staying power. Just because you can make an algorithm and you can create a thousand outputs doesn't mean you need to.
Maybe you should have curated it down to the best five or 10. I think that's a whole another discussion. But I think what they're doing is they're operating like little auction houses in a way. They're operating like little art incubators, but they're doing it with things that are different than the traditional art world. And And you can see that when you look at there are pieces of Tyler Hobbs, for instance, that have been sold both on chain native platforms, whether and then have also been sold at a South of these electricity. And they generally end up, if I remember correctly, selling for a little bit less of the traditional art houses. They really struggle with how to value them. However, the artists have said we like it because it gives us better brand cachet and and more visibility in a world that wouldn't otherwise see our art.
So I think in a lot of ways, they operate very separately still. And I don't think we've really see maybe Proof Moonbirds as striving to be sort of, you know, the art collectors community. But most of those other communities I mentioned, like I said, are are more either up and coming new artists or generative artists, not sort of the well established huge artists. And like I said, maybe Proofmembers will successfully do that. They haven't yet, but that would be interesting. Right now, though, I think they're still kinda running in parallel, sort of the traditional art world and these Web three point art communities.
Speaker 2 Yes. I think when we hear proof and generative art, we should, know that we have, like, deep we've dwelled, very deep into the subject now. And and, I just want to ask another question. You have a very extensive experiences experience in sales and management. And, in addition to your work in web three and the arts, how do you see, this world intersecting? And, what lessons from your experiences have applied to your work in web three space?
Ben So most of my sort of web two traditional work has been in the construction industry, whether it's owning construction companies, running them, starting divisions. And so it's very hands on practical real companies, you know, with people building thing. So I would say a a couple things. Number one, in in Web three, one thing I've noticed is we're still not sure what everything is, and what I mean is a DAO for instance. Is it a company? Is it just a group of people? If it's just, you know, democracy, just, you know, mob rule, that's not gonna work. And so what I've seen in the real world is a couple of things. Most DAOs really operate like companies. They have they have most power consolidated in a very small group of individuals, and those that don't struggle to get things done. So that would be my my first takeaway.
Let's see. What else have I sort of learned between the two? I do I do see this is interesting. So I've been in construct, and it's a very old school web two tech web zero industry. You know, there's not a lot of technology necessarily in plumbing or roofing here. But I can see amazing opportunities down the road for even the construction industry for blockchain technology and NFPs. And here's a great example that I like to give people. You buy a house. That house had the roof done by a roofer and the plumbing done by a plumber, and those guys issue warranties. Traditionally, that's done on physical paperwork or maybe if the company's real fancy on an email. That can get lost over time or it doesn't transfer or someone can't find it.
So I buy a house and the roof was done three years ago and I didn't get that paperwork and no one knows who did the roof, I have no way of using my warranty. But if down the road, these things are issued, you know, the the house has a contract from the blockchain and that contract has NFTs issued to it for the work that's done, when I buy a house, I can see the history of that house. I can see who worked on it. I can see, you know, what warranties are still active and inactive. And the same might be true for a car or other, real world physical items. So I'm excited about the intersection of those two industries. And I really think you know, I don't think that's tomorrow. I think that's a ten years off thing, but I can see the real world application there.
Speaker 2 And, you talk so positive about this new industry. You all you sound so bullish about Web three and NFTs. What do you think, is stopping the mass adaptation? What do you think is the biggest misconception about NFTs and Web three technology? How do you see the industry working to address the to correct these misunderstandings?
Ben So I think the biggest hurdle to adoption, well, is gonna be twofold or two sides of the same coin. It's a decentralization versus the centralization fight that's gonna occur. On one hand, if we look at the Internet and the technology that sort of backstops the Internet, it's very decentralized. These are open protocols. You know, you look at email, for instance, with SMTP and DKIM and DMARC and all the ways it works together. These are you know, it's a it's a patchwork quilt of old open source technology. And it works, but it doesn't always work effectively. Sometimes it's sort of a band aid. Right? If we look at, you know, I p v four versus I p v five, the way the way things work or I p v six, I'm sorry, the way things work together.
You know, things don't always work the way you want them to, and then maybe they don't even work in the most efficient way possible. So I think the biggest hurdle for web three towards mass adoption is going to be exactly that. That that decentralization is philosophically amazing. It's censorship resistant, but it's also really hard for that to get over that hurdle of centralization faster. Centralization can have security advantages. Maybe not censorship advantage, security advantages. And this is what I mean. If you want you know, I like to use the my parents or grandparents example. For them to use this, it has to be built in, and it has to be, you know, there have to be some standards that are accepted. And so, you know, my I can't worry about my parents losing their seed price. You know, that that or sending their money and it's gone forever.
You know? Until we get over that hurdle, we're not gonna see mass adoption. So that's really on I I am philosophically very bullish. Practically, I'm still bullish because I think it's a great technology, but I also understand all the problems we have right now, and I think it's gonna take longer to get those problems worked out than most of us think because we're all early and we're early adopters and technology people. And so we're going, all we gotta do is get past this and, you know, we'll have a a native, Android and Apple Wallet that everybody knows how to use it, but that's not the real world. That's that's a number of years down the road. I
Speaker 2 keep listening to this phrase, number of years. Go on. Let's have a number to it, Ben. Go on. He would give
Ben us a number. How many years? I I think five to ten. I think I think ten years for sort of mass mass adoption, five years for, you know, there's a there's a Apple blockchain wallet that comes with your new iPhone, maybe five years, but not everybody's using it. It. So I think we're probably a solid decade, Al, from true mass adoption.
Speaker 2 That's that's just playing too safe, Ben. I think this is just being too safe. But as as someone who has been involved in web three space for quite some time now, And what do you think are the key trends you are seeing emerge in the industry that are shaping this, future of Web three, you know, enabling, a faster mass adoption, let's say?
Ben So I think AI will enable will enable a faster mass adoption. I mean, is is, you know, increasing at either a logarithmic or exponential, you know, rate of change in terms of improvement. So I think that could cause mass adoption because I think if you look at AI, there's some very real security concerns. I was on a podcast a week or two ago talking about this, and somebody said, what's your biggest concern? I said, this is my concern. You can clone my voice with something like three seconds, which, you know, there's like an hour of me talking here. So someone clones my voice. Right? And they call my wife and they say, hey, you know, wife. I forgot my Social Security number. I need my Social Security number for the bank. I need to do this thing. I'm out of the house. Can you give it to me?
And my wife says that sounds exactly like my husband. Here you go. Then that AI that's cloned on my voice calls the bank, and this is a good bank. Right? They're not they're not stupid. They've got voice recognition technology in addition to, you know, passwords and things. So they they match up the voice, and they say, yep. That's Ben Meadows. That sounds like Ben Meadows. What's your Social Security number, mister Meadows? And the AI says, this is my Social Security number, and they now have access to my bank account. That's scary, and it's already here. You know? I've heard somebody say that all the keys to all the locks in the world, you know, have just been given to AI in 2023. You know, none of the locks are safe anymore. So that's the problem. But I think blockchain provides a solution.
Whether that's an AI generated Drake song or whether that's me calling my bank, cryptographic proofs on a public blockchain are a way of combating that that AI can't really get around easily. And so for me, I think that might be one of the biggest things we're gonna see is blockchain may actually get adopted faster because of AI, not because of improvements in AI making our lives better, but to combat rampant AI being able to copy everything of her.
Speaker 2 That is something that I've never thought of before, but it totally makes sense. Like, in order to combat AI and the replication and the clonism, which is which can potentially be out there, there is blockchain where you can reach out to the source code. You can reach out to the source of the creator. I think that is something I I really never thought about, to be honest. This is fantastic. So, we are here, bro. We are here, Ben, and, I do not have any more questions. I would love if anybody in the Twitter space would like to unmute or raise hand and ask any question for Ben. And I think I have a very amazing evening talking to Ben. It it is still your GM, Ben, if I'm not wrong. And indeed, GM to you. Okay. GM to you, sir. Jijal, do you have something to ask or to say?
Zo World host Thank you so much, Ben, for giving us your valuable time. It was indeed a very great session, and we are enjoyed a lot. I would have really loved it if if more people would have hopped in, but we are we are going through a mental health weakness sorry, mental health week, and we have had lot of spaces back to back. So maybe this is one of the reasons, but we are going to save this for future content, and we'll be converting it into an animated form. I'm sure this is going to be a gold for our community.
Speaker 2 Well, you should know about this, Ben. We every time we have this kind of space, we convert this into an animated video where your avatar, your PFE would speak, and our PFE would speak. It's like a it's like a David Letterman show. And if you want to see the previous ones, you can always go back to our YouTube channel. You can see that. So it's going to immortal immortalize, sir. We're going to have we're going to have a repeat telecast of this so many times you can't even imagine, Ben. And I'm excited. I've watched one
Ben of the previous ones, and I'm I'm excited. Oh, Yep. And I just wanted to say I've really enjoyed being here talking with y'all. Questions have been great, and the the time has gone by. I've really had a good time.
Speaker 2 I think it was more of us who enjoyed. It was an honor having you here in the show. And while we were drafting the question, we never expected this quality of answers to come out. Thank you. And it it I think it it all has to go with for your experience and the kind of time and emotion you've invested in this technology. It has given us real clarity. A lot of us artists will be listening to the spaces in repeat, and it's going to help them all. Thank you so much, Ben. Thank you, guys, very much.
Zo World host Thank you, Ben. Thank you, everyone, for joining us tonight.