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Steve Jobs on why people will still watch Toy Story in 60 years, and it has nothing to do with the technology "I think people are going to be watching Toy Story in 60 years, not because of the computer graphics, but because of the story about friendship. That's something really amazing to me" "Disney released Snow White in 1937. A few years ago they rereleased it and sold 28 million copies, making around a quarter billion dollars profit, 60 years after its release. These stories renew themselves with each generation. You read Joseph Campbell, these are our myths" "I have a young son. We got it, and he watched it 30, 40 times. Everyone I know knows the story of Snow White. Watching my son watch this, it hit me that these stories renew themselves with each new generation of children" "To have the opportunity to put these stories into the culture, if we can work hard and be lucky again and again, is a rare opportunity. We want to make products that will be around for a long time, that everybody will get enjoyment from and learn from"

Congratulations to @nuance_ai on the $50M Series A led by @lightspeedvp, with @Accel, @spc, @nvidia, and @definevc joining the round. What makes Nuance Labs compelling is that the team is working on a problem most AI products still avoid: human conversation is about much more than words. Tone, timing, gaze, hesitation, facial expression, and the simple act of showing that you are listening all carry meaning. The founding team has unusually deep experience for this challenge. Fangchang Ma, Edward Zhang, and Karren Yang are former Apple researchers with PhDs spanning robotics, machine learning, computer graphics, and audiovisual synthesis. They have spent years working on how machines perceive, reconstruct, and respond to people. Their approach is also refreshingly ambitious. Instead of stitching together transcription, an LLM, voice generation, and facial animation, Nuance Labs is building one full duplex audiovisual model that can see, hear, reason, speak, and express itself in real time. That distinction matters. Most AI avatars still pause awkwardly, interrupt at the wrong moment, or stare blankly while someone is speaking. Nuance is treating responsiveness and active listening as part of the model itself, not as polish added later. There is a huge opportunity here across coaching, education, sales, customer service, training, and any setting where trust and communication affect the outcome. As AI becomes more capable, raw intelligence will not be enough. The products people actually want to spend time with will also need presence, timing, and emotional awareness. Nuance Labs has the technical depth, product conviction, and patience to take on this hard problem properly. Excited to see the public research preview later this year. This is one of the teams pushing human AI interaction in a genuinely important direction.

I recently spoke at the Sundance Film Festival on a panel about AI. Sundance is an annual gathering of filmmakers and movie buffs that serves as the premier showcase for independent films in the United States. Knowing that many people in Hollywood are extremely uncomfortable about AI, I decided to immerse myself for a day in this community to learn about their anxieties and build bridges. I’m grateful to Daniel Dae Kim @danieldaekim, an actor/producer/director I’ve come to respect deeply for his artistic and social work, for organizing the panel, which also included Daniel, Dan Kwan, Jonathan Wang, and Janet Yang. I found myself surrounded by award-winning filmmakers and definitely felt like the odd person out! First, Hollywood has many reasons to be uncomfortable with AI. People from the entertainment industry come from a very different culture than many who work in tech, and this drives deep differences in what we focus on and what we value. A significant subset of Hollywood is concerned that: - AI companies are taking their work to learn from it without consent and compensation. Whereas the software industry is used to open source and the open internet, Hollywood focuses much more on intellectual property, which underlies the core economic engines of the entertainment industry. - Powerful unions like SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) are deeply concerned about protecting the jobs of their members. When AI technology (or any other force) threatens the livelihoods of their members — like voice actors — they will fight mightily against potential job losses. - This wave of technological change feels forced on them more than previous waves, where they felt more free to adopt or reject the technology. For example, celebrities felt like it was up to them whether to use social media. In contrast, negative messaging from some AI leaders who present the technology as unstoppable, perhaps even a dangerous force that will wipe out many jobs, has not encouraged enthusiastic adoption. Having said that, Hollywood is under no illusions that AI will change entertainment, and that if Hollywood does not adapt, perhaps some other place will become the new center for entertainment. The entertainment industry is no stranger to technology change. Radio, TV, computer graphics special effects, video streaming, and social media transformed the industry. But the path to navigating AI’s transformation is still unclear, and organizations like the new Creators Coalition on AI are trying to stake out positions. Unfortunately, Hollywood’s negative sentiment toward AI also means it will produce a lot more Terminator-like movies that portray AI as more dangerous than helpful, and this hurts beneficial AI adoption as well. The interests of AI and Hollywood are not always aligned. (Every time I speak in a group like this as the “AI representative,” I can count on being asked very hard questions.) Most of us in tech would prefer a more open internet and more permissive use of creative works. But there is also much common ground, for example in wanting guardrails against deepfakes and a smooth transition for those whose jobs are displaced, perhaps via upskilling. Storytelling is hard. I’m optimistic that AI tools like Veo, Sora, Runway, Kling, Ray, Hailuo, and many others can make video creation easier for millions of people. I hope Hollywood and AI developers will find more opportunities to collaborate, find more common ground, and also steer our projects toward outcomes that are win-win for as many parties as possible. [Original text: ]