Team Human with Douglas Rushkoff Ari Kuschnir: Trump Ayahuasca - AI and the Alchemical Imaginary
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Dec 17, 2025 Ari Kuschnir, an AI storyteller and artist known for provocative works like Trump Ayahuasca, dives into the fascinating blend of AI and storytelling. He shares insights on using AI to reclaim a collective imagination and challenge our cultural addiction to dystopian narratives. Ari discusses his creative processes, from collaborating with AI to crafting hopeful futures. They explore how AI mediates imagery and the need for ethical alignment in AI's development, while also celebrating the punk ethos of individual creators disrupting traditional media.
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Dystopia Has Hijacked Our Imaginal Realm
- The cultural appetite for dystopia has skewed mainstream futures toward bleak, conflict-driven stories.
- We urgently need a counter-imaginary of positive, well-crafted futures to shift collective expectation.
Build Videos Shot-By-Shot
- Break scenes into stills and craft each shot with cinematic intent before converting to short video clips.
- Use lens, lighting, and framing prompts to shape emotion and then iterate until the motion reads correctly.
AI Chooses Composite Presenters
- AI can 'choose' composite human faces to deliver answers, producing surreal, archetypal presenters.
- These composites reveal how models map communicative effectiveness to imagined personas.
