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Emmanuella returns from South by Southwest Sydney with insights on humanity's role in the AI revolution, while Craig shares productivity hacks and reflections on creative process versus outcome.
Key Themes from SXSW Sydney
The Human Bookend Principle
Emmanuella's biggest takeaway: the "end-to-end experience" must always have humans at both ends. Tech exists to serve human needs, and without humans to serve, it has no purpose. This realisation eased her fears about AI replacing jobs—technology requires humans to identify problems and experience solutions.
Balance Over Optimisation
AR/VR Design Lead at Google, candidly shared how diving into AI initially made her incredibly productive, but her mind couldn't keep up with the output. The lesson: just because you can be hyper-productive doesn't mean you should. Individual accountability for tech usage matters, even when tools yield profit.
Notable SXSW Panels

Wearable tech reducing risk for pregnant women, allowing more home monitoring and faster crisis response
Balancing friendly culture with killer business instinct and innovation freedom
Dept's talk: End-to-end digital experiences for brands like Google, Audi, and Patagonia

The Process vs. Outcome Debate
Craig's Music Experiment
Craig explored AI music composition as a "frustrated musician" and noticed he's translating between old methods and new AI tools—creating cognitive load. He predicts future creators who start with AI-native tools won't have this translation layer, making it more natural.
Emmanuella's Pottery Analogy
Looking at her handmade pottery (some functional, some broken, all meaningful), Emmanuella argues that not everything needs commercial value. The creative process itself has intrinsic worth—making things teaches us, edifies us, fulfils our humanity.
The Knowledge vs. Information Gap
Googling "how to grow lettuce without snails" differs vastly from three years of planting, failing, seed-saving, and discovering what works in your soil. AI can provide information, but the frustrating process of research and practice transforms information into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom.
Key Quotes
Dan Rosen (Warner Music Australasia President): "It takes a lot of effort to make something look effortless."
Emmanuella's counterpoint: Look at a ballerina's broken feet—they train to destruction, yet appear weightless on stage. A prima ballerina friend broke her back performing, ending her career. "You cannot replicate that without effort and without human input."
Craig's reflection: "If you haven't taken the time to bother writing something, why should I take the time to bother reading it?"
Tech Updates
New Recording Tools: The podcast now uses SquadCast and Descript, which offers AI-native editing—search for a word, delete it, and it's removed from video automatically. More human-centered than traditional timeline editing.
Perplexity Hack: Craig asked Perplexity which aisle at his specific Bunnings store had car covers. What happened?
What's Next
Craig is heading to the CEDA AI Leadership Event, hosting a panel on the AI arms race with CEOs from Tech Council, AGL, Telstra, and the Australian Institute of Machine Learning.
 

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