KERRY WASHINGTON:
I am really excited about AI. Anybody who wants to put it back in the bottle, like, I’m so sorry. Like, that’s just not happening. And I think there are extraordinary possibilities with AI in the creative landscape, for sure. So I think the biggest issues are around protecting the humanity that is utilized to foster the creativity. So for me, it’s really about both consent and compensation, which are two things that we fought for in the SAG negotiation.
REID:
Hi, I’m Reid Hoffman.
ARIA:
And I’m Aria Finger.
REID:
We want to know what happens if, in the future, everything breaks humanity’s way.
ARIA:
We’re speaking with visionaries in many fields, from art to geopolitics, and from healthcare to education.
REID:
These conversations showcase another kind of guest. Whether it’s Inflection’s Pi or OpenAI’s GPT-4, each episode will use AI to enhance and advance our discussion.
ARIA:
In each episode, we seek out the brightest version of the future and learn what it’ll take to get there.
REID:
This is Possible.
REID:
This past year was a tumultuous one in Hollywood. Historic strikes not only left much of the entertainment industry out of work; it also surfaced a lot of important questions regarding writers’ and actors’ rights, forcing a reckoning around identity and ownership.
ARIA:
Our guest is an Emmy-winning, SAG-and Golden-Globe-nominated actor who is on the ground striking with fellow picketers opposing studios’ use of AI to replace actors without proper compensation. But she also speaks with optimism about the ways that technology can benefit humanity. She has embodied many different voices and personas on screen. Soon you’ll see her starring alongside Oprah in Tyler Perry’s World War II drama “6888” as a member of an all-Black, all-female battalion. And perhaps you know her from her leading role as DC crisis manager extraordinaire Olivia Pope on the ABC hit political drama “““Scandal””.”
REID:
Kerry Washington is one of Hollywood’s most powerful actors. She’s a New-York-Times-bestselling author, director, and producer. In 2016, she launched her own production company, Simpson Street. She also has a strong voice as an activist.
ARIA:
Kerry joined us to talk about how AI and other technology can change the course of our most important relationships in life. Whether that’s the ability to instantly be in dialogue with new audiences across the globe, or to redefine what family means as a DNA test did for her. She knows and is embracing how transformative technology can be.
REID:
We need more luminaries who believe in the potential for emerging AI technologies to be leveraged as a force for good in Hollywood, in education, and in social justice. People who are both deeply creative and deeply ethical. That’s why it was so refreshing to talk with Kerry, who sees how technology can reshape and fundamentally deepen our connections.
ARIA:
That’s right. There’s a fine line between extracting and amplifying one’s identity and intellectual property and how that impacts our relationships with others. In this episode, we introduce both an AI avatar of Reid and a personal AI called Pi to Kerry and discuss the uses and implications of these technologies and how we relate with ourselves and others.
REID:
So without further ado, here’s our conversation with Kerry Washington.
ARIA:
Just wanted to kick it off with something fun. You lived in Kerala, India, and you studied Kathakali, which is a traditional style of Indian theater. Can you just tell us something about that journey, something fun or humorous that happened during those really meaningful times?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Oh my goodness. It was such a pivotal time in my life. You know, it was just after college, but before entering into that new adulthood post-college [laugh]. So when I was living in Kerala, I was learning Malayalam, which is the local language. And it’s a completely different alphabet. And it’s not like the Greek alphabet where like some of it’s familiar, some of it’s not. It’s like totally [laugh]—unlike anything I’d ever seen before in my life. It looked very much like many doodles that I made as a child—like so innate and intricate and beautiful. And so I was learning this alternate alphabet and the phonetics that corresponded with these different, with the different iconography. And I remember walking down the road one early morning on my way to study the movement traditions I was working on, and I saw this sign. And I was like a child, you know, like my kids a couple years ago signing, like verbally trying to mouth out the signs. I was like, “BE-A-U-T-Y shop.”
KERRY WASHINGTON:
And then I looked in the window, and it was a beauty shop, and I was like, “Oh my God.” Like, “I can read!” And I don’t, I think we, you know, we’ve lost so much of that like, visceral memory of what it feels like to become—to like step into new wisdom. And I don’t think we do it enough as adults—give ourselves the opportunity to step into the unknown and really gain new wisdom. So that’s a memory that I really hold dear, and a feeling that I try to capture often: that excitement, that like intellectual curiosity that leads to discovery.
ARIA:
That’s amazing. And I think it’s so important—sort of the learning piece. It’s not just curiosity. It’s also the willingness to be bad at something and to ask questions and to say like, “Yeah, am I going to get this wrong?”
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Yeah, it is. I think travel is really important. It’s something that we try to instill in our family. You know, I just, I think it’s really important even just to be reminded of how small your life is in comparison to the globe. You know, to get outside of our provincial worlds and see like, “Oh, there’s all these other languages and cultures and foods and names and fashions and ideas.” And anytime I get my kids on a plane outside of the United States, I’m so grateful, because I can feel their minds growing. And I can feel their hearts growing. That they’re getting used to not being normal. That they’re getting used to being uncomfortable. That they’re getting used to being resilient and curious and capable, just by being outside their comfort zone.
REID:
We have a mutual friend, Trevor Noah, and apparently the shift in the title of your memoir— which I think is beautifully named, you know, Thicker Than Water—came about because of a conversation with him.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Yeah, what’s so weird is that I had chosen the title of the book, but I didn’t even understand what it meant [laugh]. Trevor, because he’s Trevor, taught me about the title I had already chosen for my own memoir. Because I have this moment in the book where I say, you know, “If it is true that blood is thicker than water, then love is thicker than blood.” Because I was trying to convey the idea that although one of the big discoveries of my memoir—and if you haven’t read it yet, I’m sorry to spoil this for you—but one of the big reveals in the memoir and discoveries of my life is that I recently, in the last five or six years, discovered that my dad, my beloved dad who raised me, is not my biological father. And a lot of the memoir is about, kind of, what that revelation inspired in me in terms of my understanding of myself and my understanding of our family.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
But when I was talking to Trevor, he said, “You know, we don’t get it right.” That phrase “blood is thicker than water,” it’s actually not the idea that biology is more important than relationship. That in scripture, it’s that the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. So the promises and relationships that we make are more important than the body that we were born from, more important than family. That our relationships that we commit to are more important than where, who we’re born to. So it was in fact true that, for me, that idea of “love is thicker than blood” is even what the original scripture was saying to begin with. And I had no idea.
REID:
Well that’s profound. How do you find that technology kind of affects your relationships with other people? You obviously present through technology, right? In various ways you use technology. Here we are using technology to create this. Like when, when someone says technology and human relationships to you, how do you — given your depth of how your appreciation of this, both in your personal, you know, in your life with people, your collaborators, and also of course in the stories you tell. But when someone comes and says technology transforming human relationships, you say?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Well, listen, I mean, in many ways there would be no memoir if it were not for technology transforming my relationship with my parents. Because, you know, when my parents decided—made the decision—to receive the help of a sperm donor, the doctor would say like, “Okay, you have this artificial insemination, and then you go home and have sex because then you have plausible deniability.” It also helps with, you know, conception. You know, even then they had an instinct that that might help with the process of conception, but also it was like: That kid is yours. Like, you go home and have sex, and nobody’s ever going to know the difference. Nobody ever has to know because nobody thought there would ever be a DNA test that you could buy over the counter online that would provide your entire genome sequence and tell you exactly who you come from, or who you don’t come from.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
So technology has truly transformed my family in the last few years. We, you know, when I first—so all this happened because Skip Gates, who has a wonderful show on PBS called “Finding Your Roots,” he approached me to come do that show, and I got so excited. And, by the way, so did my parents, because they thought that it was all going to be public records and census reports and slave registries and, you know, immigration boats. They thought this is how we’re going to discover who our family is. So it wasn’t a threat. The threat to the identity of our family came when I said, “Oh, also spit into this DNA test, and we’re going to send it off to a lab, and technology’s going to give us even more information.” And that’s when my dad started having panic attacks. Because technology became the limit to where we could keep our secrets. The technological advances in DNA made the secrets my parents kept untenable.
ARIA:
You know, I mean, I tear up when I hear, you know, you responded to your father saying, “Dad, you’re going to have to have a chance to know what it feels like to be loved unconditionally.” I mean, I tear up now because it’s, you know, it’s so beautiful. Like, can you tell us what this moment taught you about generational outlooks and how it shapes how, you know, humans see ourselves—and how you saw yourself?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
You know, I’m so grateful that that was my initial response to my dad, because I really don’t know where it came from. It was like—I felt a real sense of grace in that moment, because I’ve talked to so many people who have been donor-conceived or even adopted and didn’t know. And for a lot of people in that moment of revelation, the first emotion that rises to the top is anger. And a sense of betrayal. And I just, you know, I really was very blessed that—that I felt a grace, that I felt a closeness to my parents. That I felt a deep compassion for how hard it was for them to deliver that news. And for the fear that they were walking through that—that they might lose me, or that our relationship might be shattered.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
And so I’m really grateful that in that moment I was able to look outside myself and see my dad’s pain and realize in that moment like, oh, this is actually an opportunity. Like, he thinks that I only loved him because I thought he was my biological father. And that’s why the need to maintain that lie was so vital. And I now have a chance—I get a chance—to be able to prove to him that our love is deeper than biology, and more profound, and stronger. And that we can walk through this together.
REID:
Completely beautiful. And important, I think, for people to generalize to all of the human condition. Kind of, as part of these relationships, how do you think about these relationships, and how do you think about the learning of those moments to appreciate that deeper human moment?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
It’s funny—when you look at the book and the chapter names, I have a chapter in the memoir called “Family.” And that chapter is mostly about my years at ““Scandal”” [laugh]. And I think that, you know, I, up until being on that television show, a lot of my work as an actor had been tele—movies, where you work for three months, maybe six months, or a television show where I was doing like a small arc of five episodes over a month or two. And ““Scandal”” was the first time that I was kind of a part of a family in the television and film business that was around for a really long time. You know, we were together for seven seasons, and I learned in those years what commitment looks like in a different way. I, you know, we watched each other get married and watched each other get divorced. And we were there through pregnancies and births and deaths and purchasing new homes and selling other homes and sickness.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
I mean really, like, in sickness and in health. And it felt like sometimes until death would do us part. And I think it is in some ways, right? Like, those—I have friends from ““Scandal”” that are stuck with me for the rest of their lives. Like there is nothing Tony Goldwyn will ever be able to do to get rid of me. Same with Katie Lowes and Bellamy Young. Like they, we are stuck together. And so I think that kind of found family taught me a lot about how to love my family I was born to with more strength and commitment. So I’m, I think it’s true that the families that we create, our found families, can really teach us so much about the true essence of family. And I’m lucky that I got to bring a lot of that back into my biological family.
ARIA:
You know, I think technology, we talk about sometimes it brings people apart and sometimes it brings people together. But it also sometimes gives people a seat at the table. And as one of those avid ““Scandal”” watchers on a weekly basis, who was really pulling for you and Fitz, you know, it also was the first network drama in 40 years with a Black woman lead—which like, I can’t even believe I’m saying that out loud because it’s so ridiculous. But I think without social media and—you know, it might not have gotten sort of the following—it wouldn’t have gone to that place. So I would love to hear you talk about that. Like, how does technology equalize things in some ways and give people a seat at the table who maybe didn’t have one before because it was, you know, just the head of the network who decides?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
A hundred percent. So when we premiered [laugh], ““Scandal”” was thought of as a risk. It was a calculated risk, but, and it was a risk that ABC was worth taking, but nobody thought that it was commercially viable to have a woman of color as the number one on a network drama. They thought, how—you know, at the time, this is really before streamers had taken over, and so for your show to be a hit, you have to be able to sell soap in between the act breaks, right? And they thought, ‘Who’s going to tune in and buy soap to a show starring a woman of color? We’ve never done it before. We haven’t done it in 40 years. It’s not possible.’ And, you know, thank God our showrunner was a Black woman and the show was inspired by a Black woman in real life.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
So it wasn’t, you know, when people said like, “it’s impossible that a Black woman could have that much power,” we could go like, “No, it actually isn’t. Like, she exists in the world and she worked for the Bush White House, you guys. Like, this exists.” And so — although she never slept with George Bush. I just want to be super clear about that. That was only Olivia Pope. So we knew that we were going to have to have some sort of grassroots engagement to get people to tune in, because this was, we were going to have to be willing to make history. And I was coming off of another journey of making history with the Obama campaign. Because I was a surrogate with that campaign in ’08 and had been on the road in, I don’t know, something like 16 states for then-senator, and then eventually President, Obama.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
And I knew how the campaign had utilized social media, and I knew how powerful that had been in being able to move eyeballs toward the campaign and spread the message and gain traction. And especially reach out to young people. And so we—I didn’t want to be like the bossy lead actor on the show, so I called my boss, Shonda Rhimes, and I said, “Why don’t you tell everybody to get on Twitter, and we’ll start tweeting about the show?” And live-tweeting was not a thing, nobody else was doing it. But we were so proud of our show and so passionate about it that we, the whole cast, got on Twitter and started to create community. And people on the platform called themselves “gladiators.” That wasn’t like a marketing ploy. People called themselves gladiators over the first scene in the first episode of the show.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
And from there it just kind of took off. We, because we would respond to people in real time. We used this technology to be able to create community and build an audience that really fostered success in a more traditional media landscape. But we were able to, to utilize social media to get us there. I mean, I remember Oprah Winfrey coming to interview me on the stages and saying, “I only started watching “Scandal” because it’s all anybody was talking about on Twitter on Thursdays.” And I was like, “Oh, interesting.” [Laugh] Like, you could really feel it. And our poor directors who would come, people would, we could be having a great workday on set, but Thursday at nine, or at ten in the beginning and then at nine, good luck getting a scene done because we all had our faces buried in our phones responding to every single person who was watching the episode in real time.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
And what happened was, it was funny because in a way we were up against another kind of technology. Event television was dying because of DVR, because of the very beginning of streaming. The only shows that were event television were sports. It was like that idea of sitting in front of your television when it’s on in real time was really fading away. But social media allowed us to maintain “Scandal” as an event television show, because there was this live party happening in real time. And if you waited to watch the show on DVR til Friday, you, it would be ruined for you. Because all the spoilers were all over social media from the night before.
REID:
And what was this interface point with social media? Like, where did it work? Where did it not work? Where did you experiment with it? Where did it become part of, you know, making community, human relationships, telling the story? And what parts of it would you have wanted to also—like, if you were to call your younger self, what parts of it would you experiment with differently?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Well, one of the things that really helped us know was it helped us understand what parts of the show people were resonating with — without a test audience, without having to poll. We could see what was trending. We knew which lines, which characters. I mean, I remember saying to my social person at the time — brilliant woman named Allison Peters, who really how to kind of come up with this whole idea and spearhead it and drive it. And then she worked, of course with ABC digital. But she, I remember saying to her, “the fashion on the show I think is a character all its own.” And she was like, “Really?” I said, “I think her clothes are going to be really groundbreaking for professional women.” And so I used to get this book of all my looks for the episode with all the tags of all the different designers.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
And I would give that to Allison Peters. And I would respond to people when they were talking about the show and the character and the plot. Allison would just tweet fashion for the whole hour. She would let people know where to get things, what, where it’s from, what designer it was. And what we realized — because it, there really was an audience for it — is we were able to build out a whole capsule collection for the show that I co-designed with our costume designer, Lyn Paolo, that we were able to sell. And so you could have access, like entry points to the show. And there wasn’t anybody at marketing or research or data analytics that said, “you guys should do a fashion line.” Like, we knew because we were in direct communication with our audiences. I have a showrunner that works with us at Simpson Street.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
She actually was a writer at “Scandal,” and she now is a showrunner on her own. She has a show called “Reasonable Doubt” on Hulu that we’re really proud of at Simpson Street. Her name is Raamla Mohamed. Raamla has this gift of writing for what we used to call Black Twitter. Raamla knows what is going to make Black Twitter explode. And therefore what will be viral, what will be exciting, what is the thing everybody’s going to be talking about at the water cooler, because Black Twitter ripples out to all of Twitter. And, and it’s a real gift, you know. And I think part of why Raamla is so good at that is because she became a writer. She went from being a researcher, to a baby writer, to now a showrunner. Like that happened during the “Scandal” years. So she became a writer always in dialogue directly with our audiences because of social media.
REID:
You know, the headlines about AI and Hollywood have focused a lot on the concerns actors have about deep fakes, losing agency, voice, likeness—super understandable concerns. But we hear less about the opportunities for actors to use AI to actually benefit everyone. So,one example, my acting skills are so limited as to be non-existent. But I do do a fair amount of speaking to audiences. And so I’ve been recently experimenting with my personal AI avatar. And now every presentation I can give pretty much can be instantly translated into many languages I do not speak through AI-powered dubbing and connect me to so many more people authentically. So let me show you the avatar in action. Just in English this time.
REID AI AVATAR:
What defines humanity is not just our unusual level of intelligence, but also how we capitalize on that intelligence by developing technologies that amplify and complement our mental, physical, and social capacities. If we merely lived up to our scientific classification, homo sapiens, and just sat around thinking all day, we’d be much different creatures than we actually are. A more accurate name for us is homo techne: humans as tool makers and tool users. The story of humanity is the story of technology.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Okay, you have to tell me, what am I watching right now? How much of this is you? How, like—what is happening right now? Did you say any of that?
REID:
No.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
None of it.
REID:
None. It is based off a video of me that has been AI modified for it. But it is an effective deepfake. Now, they are, they are—I didn’t say them, but it’s words that I wrote in an article in The Atlantic.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Oh my goodness.
REID:
The question, well, is, how do you feel about tools like this and AI powered tools? Do they excite you, terrify you, intrigue you?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
I’m really excited about AI. Anybody who wants to put it back in the bottle, like, I’m so sorry. That’s just not happening. And I think there are extraordinary possibilities with AI in the creative landscape for sure. So I think the biggest issues are around protecting the humanity that is utilized to foster the creativity. So for me it’s really about both consent and compensation, which are two things that we fought for in the SAG negotiation, right? And the key is going to be to figure out how we are able to track consent. How do we figure out what is authenticated from the talent and what isn’t? And then how do we compensate accordingly? Because I think it, it’s really important that people still be treated like human beings as their image and likeness and voice and thoughts are being utilized in this way.
ARIA:
Yeah, and I mean, I think, you know, you mentioned the SAG-AFTRA strike and the negotiations. Like, it would be terrifying if they were like, “Yeah, we’ll do a, you know, ““Scandal”” season eight. We’ll just take the video we have of Kerry from seasons one through seven. Pop her into the show. Like, you needn’t, you needn’t be involved. You needn’t apply.”
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Well, that’s what I would say to people when they would constantly say like, “What do you, what are you fancy actors—you guys all make so much money—what are you striking about?” And I would say like, first of all, I’m not striking for me. I’m striking for all of the other actors who are dreaming of this career the way I dreamt of it 20 years ago. Because there was a roadmap for me to be able to get here. And I’m worried that that roadmap is being destroyed, that that ladder is, is broken. But also, they could make a “Scandal” movie without me [laugh] and not pay me, right? If we don’t protect ourselves, there could be a “Scandal” movie utilizing all seven seasons, bring the actors back through AI. And I think if, if that’s going to happen, then I need to have some consent.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
I need to have some compensation. I’d like to have creative input and approval. Because also, you know, as an actor, one of the things that makes me nervous is like, okay, so Kerry Washington played Olivia Pope. So we’ll just utilize Kerry Washington AI, and we’ll make a “Scandal” movie. But for me, if you go to “Fantastic Four,”a movie I made 20 years ago—or you go to “Django” or you go to “Confirmation” or you go to “The School for Good and Evil”—even my most recent work, and you say like, we can lean into AI learnings from those roles to create the “Scandal” movie, you’re no longer creating Olivia Pope in the way I would because those characters are also very different. So being able to have input to say, “it’s not just like, I can take anything from the Kerry Washington universe and plug it into this character.” The character I play on “Little Fires Everywhere” is so different from the character I play on “Scandal.” I would need for that encyclopedia, that vocabulary, that AI vocabulary that builds on those performances, to be consistent with my choices.
ARIA:
Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think as you said, like those are table stakes. We need to make sure that people can have livings. We need to make sure that people are adequately compensated. Like this, this transformation is going to be, there’s going to be so much change and so much disruption. We want to make sure people aren’t left behind. But then we get to the exciting part, you know, as you just said, like, I am also super hopeful about AI, that AI can transform things in amazing ways. Like can you talk about where your excitement lies? Like what are the exciting things that you’re seeing in the field of AI?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
You know, one of the things that always interests me—and again, I, I think there’s, so, and I will say, it does worry me, right? Like, I worry for our stunt performers. I worry for our doubles. You know, that there will be people who are going to struggle with more and more advancement in this area. But the thing about technology that I’m always drawn to is how it can democratize things, right? Like, how it can give access to people at all different class levels and socioeconomic backgrounds, access to similar ideas. So a lot of the companies that I invest in, or the interests that I have in technology, are geared toward this idea of like, I was this little girl growing up in the Bronx who somehow wound up living in Beverly Hills, and I want to make sure that people, people’s access and ability to enjoy life is not determined by the zip code that you’re born into.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Because I see the gap between the zip code I was born in and the one I live in today. And I want there to be more equality and equity in, in how people are able to access things, especially given where we are with technology. So I think there’s some of that with AI, right? Like I think about not everybody can—for example, on my book tour—not everybody could afford to fly somewhere or buy tickets to see me in person, to be in the room with me, to be able to have access to me. So are there ways to utilize AI to create experiences for people where they feel like they’re having the next closest thing to a personal touch that is generated by me, inspired by me approved by me, licensed by me—that, that is as close to me as you can get without me being able to be in everywhere at once? That, that’s the kind of thing that I get excited about AI creating an opportunity for people to be in places and experience things that they maybe would not have the ability to otherwise.
REID:
I think that’s a great tee-up for our other creative AI element that we’ve brought to our discussion. Because one of the things you had been thinking about before you had the revelation for Thicker Than Water was that you were thinking about a book called 10 Things I Learned from Olivia Pope.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Yes, that was the book I sold. That was the original book I sold.
REID:
So we’re going to try something fun with generative AI, because this is in that kind of vein of this. We asked Pi, which is, by the way, the product personal intelligence that I have a company called Inflection that I co-founded two years ago. And the conjecture of what might be the 10 things you learned from Olivia Pope.
Pi:
Here are 10 lessons Kerry Washington may have learned playing Olivia Pope. One, crisis management is all about staying calm and focused. Two, power comes from preparation and decisiveness. Three, trusting your instincts can be both a blessing and a curse. Four, true strength lies in knowing when to ask for help. Five, sometimes you need to bend the rules to do what’s right. Six, secrets have a way of getting out. Seven, the truth can be a powerful weapon. Eight, loyalty is a two-way street. Nine, compassion can be the greatest form of strength. Ten, and finally, a white hat doesn’t always stay white.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Those are really good. So I, I’ll tell you what’s interesting is — and this is where the limitations are, right? Like that, that — and I think if we invited Pi into to think about this, if we added one directive, Pi could do this — but what Pi is, what I hear Pi saying are the things that anybody would have learned from Olivia Pope. As opposed to the things that I specifically as Kerry gained in my personal experience of having to be her. So like some of those are very close to, God help me, ideas that were in my original book proposal, but there were additional ones which is I, which I talk about a little bit in Thicker Than Water. This idea that like, I deserve to be the lead character in the story of my life. So that’s not something that Olivia Pope taught audiences, but it’s something that Olivia Pope taught me because I was playing her. So that’s where I, I see, I can hear the limitations in, in what Pi is thinking. But I would argue that if we said to Pi, “what, what lessons did Olivia Pope give Kerry that are specific to Kerry Washington’s psychological growth,” I bet Pi could get there.
ARIA:
Absolutely. And at the very least, a good creative partner for you. Like, I think that the whole point of this is not that AI is like a final product out there that replaces you. It’s your partner that helps you, it jogs your memory.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
It’s a spit-baller. Mhmm.
REID:
Because this is part of the thing that I think artificial intelligence will bring is each of us will have multiple personal intelligences that help us navigate our life and world. And the idea is not to be like the movie Her, you know, kind of distract you from the world. But to engage you with it, right? So like, and by the way, that’s also in terms of creativity, in terms of, of things like, you know, my hope that it isn’t that we’re going tobe reducing the number of people we have. And storytelling and the whole field is going to be increasing. Because just as your democratization, we’re going to bring more people—
KERRY WASHINGTON:
How, how do you think it would work to increase rather than decrease?
REID:
Well, it’ll change for sure, transformation, right? So it won’t be the, because some, some things that previously you, like, for example, you know, you might have previously had three sound engineers. Now maybe you only need one. But the question would be is to say, well, if I am, I have an idea for, for example, a Possible book, I can go to Pi and I can say, “Give me 10 things. Oh wait two, seven and eight are great. And then I’m going to think about these other ones,” [laugh] right? You know, as instances. So that’s the, the kind of adding in and amplifying. And I don’t think we have a constraint about how much content we can generate. You know, obviously there’s a limit or amount of time in the day for consumption. But it’s a I think that part of what we do is we try to create a panoply of things that matter to people as ways of doing it.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
I wonder which parts of our process, our creative process, will deepen and which parts will atrophy. So like I even think about, you know, with the introduction of smartphones, so many of us do not know telephone numbers by heart anymore, right? Like I can still tell you the telephone number of the apartment that I grew up in as a kid, but I, I barely know. I don’t know the, the number to my kid’s school by heart. I don’t know my mother-in-law’s number by heart. I like really struggle to remember my husband’s number by heart. But there is this other deepening because of smartphones where at the touch of a button, I know when their birthday is, where they live, what their allergies are, maybe what their schedule is, right? Like I have, I have a deeper intimacy with other parts of their life because of my smartphone, even though I’m atrophied. And so I, I wonder what, what that’s going to look like when it comes to AI. Will we be less able to brainstorm and spitball, but more able to I don’t know, to like find the deeper truth or find deeper through lines? Or will we all become better poets because that’s sort of more uniquely human as opposed to researchers? Will be, you know, more poetical and less scientific? I just don’t know.
REID:
So I, by the way, I think it’s all. Because I think what you would do is we use them as amplifiers and tools. Because I think, you know, for example, when, you know, in writing now, I will use AI assistance to say, to critique my argument — to get a sense of what might work or might not work. If I’m doing research on a topic or I, or I go, “how would someone think about — what would the key issues to pay attention to in AI and synthetic biology? You know, in investing?” And it would say some things and it can get you going and that. But it can also go deep. You can say things like for example, say I wanted to do drug discovery with AI and create new kinds of drug discovery. What would be the key AI papers and scientific papers to go look at to, to see what might be possible? And it can point me in those directions. Those, and that this is just to say it’s, I think it’s, I think it’s everywhere. I think it’s creativity. I think it’s, it’s communications.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
It’s funny because I think about, you know, like a lot of people, when I decided to write a memoir, I met with some ghost writers. Because I’m a really busy person. And, and I decided to work with this one person in particular. And we met for the first time. You know, we met, but then once, once we engaged, we agreed, okay, we’re going to work on, we’re going to try to work on this together. And we met and we talked about something and then they said, “okay, I’m going togo off and try to write something and send it back to you.” And I thought, “great, this is fantastic.” And the next day I opened my email and I read this thing and I was livid. I was furious because I thought, “I would never say that. I wouldn’t say it like that. I don’t use words like that.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
This is insane. That never happened.” Like, I was so angry. And it, it’s making me think about what you’re saying about AI because what I realized in this moment was there’s no easy way out. If I want this memoir to really be me, then I have to write it. If I want the voice to be mine, it has to be mine. But I can still work with this person. We can spitball ideas together. This can be my accountability coach. I can send them something and they can say, “oh, tell me more about this moment.” They can say, “oh, you know what I really thought was interesting that you said yesterday.” Like, they can give me prompts. I still have to do the heavy lifting. I have to actually write this thing. I have to be the person who makes sure that every adjective is the one I want it to be. That every comma that matters to me is in there, but it doesn’t mean that I have to do it alone. And so I think there’s a, a version of thinking about AI in that way. That it’s not about giving over our authorship, but it is about saying it’s okay to have some help. I still have to be the final arbiter of what this is or isn’t.
ARIA:
No, absolutely. And I think also to your question about how do we expand the folks who are doing creative work. I think of the, you know, three, 4 billion people on the planet who don’t have the luxury of having creative professions. And imagine both if, you knowLaos is a country that I visited that I loved right after school, much like your India trip. I would love to hear stories from the people in Laos that never get told today. And similarly, they should be a market consumers for your stories. They should be able to like, you should be able to even reach so many more people because we’re bringing these billions of people into the global middle class because of AI, because of the education AI will bring and healthcare, et cetera. And I think so like that’s where I get really hopeful about what AI can bring.
ARIA:
And one of the things I wanted to ask you about is, you know, you’ve talked a lot about being a big advocate for mental health and wellness. And, you know, both of us have children and we think deeply, I’m sure about social media and our children and ways that it can actually be negative. In sort of those respects, I would love to hear from you, like, do you think there’s ways that technology can be positive in the mental health sphere or in combating any of these things that we, you know, we worry about?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Well, one thing that I’m thinking about as we’re talking is — you know, I know I leaned into consent and into compensation — but I think the other thing that’s really important to me in this space is transparency. Because, and I thought of that when you brought up mental health, because one of the things I talk about a lot in my memoir is that I think one of the things that contributed to my struggles with mental health was that I was being gaslit as a child. That there were things happening in my household, realities that were going on in my household, that I was being, that were being kept from me. And that made me feel like I was crazy [laugh]. And I think that it’s important as we advance in AI to not gaslight people. To not show them AI and say, this is me.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
And I think that’s part of why the consent needs to be coupled with transparency to say, I’ve consented to this. It’s authenticated. It is approved by me and co-designed by me. It’s not me, but it’s as close as you’re going to get. Because it has my blessing and I love it and I love you, right? Like, if I engage in AI with my audiences, I think that’s what it needs to look like. Because I don’t want people, I don’t want to be trying to fool people. I think there, I think we’re at a real, I think that’s a very tricky place to be. And it also reminds me — I, I read this incredible study, I have to find it, I can’t remember where I read it. But it was about how there’s a whole generation of people in their thirties who are struggling with emotional intelligence because of fillers. Because of Botox and Restylane and all these things that there’s a generation of mothers who did not express emotion in their face to their children. And so kids are now in their adulthood struggling with having emotions, expressing emotions, recognizing emotions because their primary caregiver did not embody the physicality of emotion. And so, and I want to make sure we’re not doing that with AI, right? That we’re not misidentifying humanity. That we’re not losing touch with what truth is. I want to make sure that when we’re looking at something that’s altered, that we understand that it’s altered so that it doesn’t mess with our ability to identify nature.
ARIA:
Absolutely. I have never heard of that. And that’s terrifying. And I also think to your point, like in the age of AI, like EQ and emotions are just going to become more important. Like the human aspects of it are just going to be so important because we’re in this new age.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
I know. What would you say no, where you sit in the, you know, really at the forefront of what’s happening with technology. What would you say to a young person who’s going off to college? Like what would you want them to study. Or what would you say to a 9-year-old who says, like, I don’t, what should I want to be when I grow up?
ARIA:
It’s interesting. I, I think all the time about that for, for my own kids. You know, my 8-year-old today is at a field trip at MoMA with his local public school. And I think it’s like so beautiful. They went to the Brooklyn Museum a few weeks ago. He’s in like National Dance Institute and I’m like, this is awesome. Because for me it’s all about curiosity. And so I want him to be super curious about the arts and about creativity, but I also want him to be curious about computers and AI. And we, we played with Khanmigo, Khan Academy’s, you know, AI teacher. And so I think that as long, like, as long as we’re teaching our young people how to think and how to be curious about the next thing because it’s going to move so fast. That, you know, whatever they know at 22 is going tobe, you know, obsolete at 27. So as long as they’re infinite learners, which is another thing you spoke about, like they just need to be curious enough to learn and that’s what we should be teaching them.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Yeah, I think I really love that, because I think there was a false sense of security when we were growing up that if you chose to be a doctor, you were set for life. You chose to be a lawyer — as if those industries would never evolve and change and grow, you know. And, and as if that is the point is to choose one thing you want to do for your, the rest of your life and only have expertise in that area. And there might be some sort of revolution in learning where we let go of moving toward any one profession and we just become problem solvers. Because we’re just going to have to keep saying like, “what are the problems that need fixing and how do we address them?” Yeah, I mean it might really help us as human beings get back to a more, a truer version of, of intelligence, right? That the artificial intelligence might push us toward our own truer human intelligence — not just memorization or not just rote learning. But true ability to think for ourselves. Yeah.
REID:
And that’s part of what like Wikipedia and everything is bringing, because as opposed to remembering everything, it’s like I keep thinking, I keep reasoning, I keep learning. I’m always curious and I can look it up. So I think we should move to our rapidfire questions now. Is there a movie song or book that fills you with optimism for the future?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
My favorite musical — and this is going to sound silly, because it’s not about the future. It, this, this musical takes place in the past, in an imaginary past in the world of fairytales — is Into the Woods. And it’s based on kind of combining all the characters from all the Hans Christian Andersen fairytales as if it’s one story. But I love that musical. It always makes me feel hopeful for two reasons. It’s funny to say because it’s very dark in the second act, but it always makes me feel hopeful. Because that, that genius that Stephen Sondheim had of interweaving these seemingly desperate fairytales into one narrative is such a reminder for me that as human beings, we think we’re in our own story, but that we really are all coexisting in this one ecosystem of culture and history. And what we do impacts each other. You know, the decisions we make matter for each other in our larger communities. So I love that idea that gets carried through the musical. But also this refrain that appears in the musical again and again that children will listen. That we have to like really be careful the things we say and that we do, because — but that it’s a beautiful thing that children listen and they learn from our joys and from our trauma. And that they get to do better than us and be better than us and evolve, you know?
ARIA:
I love it. So, Kerry, what is a question — and this could be personal or professional — that you wish people would ask you more often.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
You know, I wish that people — and I think I I, you know, on our team, I think, think we do a lot of this — but I, it’s not the question itself. It’s, I wish that they asked it with the intention of truly wanting to know. I wish that when people said, “how are you?” That they really made space and time to, to for the truth. That I, I think we do a disservice to each other when we walk through life and we’re like, how are you? And the expectation is fine, and then move on. It’s like we cut off each other’s humanity right then and there in the beginning of our interactions. So I just wish that more people asked me or each other like, how are you with, with the intention of really leaving some space to know. Not that we have to derail every meeting that we’re in with like people’s personal trauma. But, but even like, one of the things we do on our team, you know, when we, even when we’re meeting for like our operational gatherings, we start with a one word check-in. And it can be a feeling or it can be a word that represents a metaphor.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
I mean, your one word could be hot chocolate — as it was today for somebody, even though that’s two words. For somebody else, it could be grieving. But it just allows for a little more like humanity in the room.
REID:
That’s great. Actually, we may even borrow that. I think the one word check-in is a very good idea. Where do you see progress or momentum outside of your industry that inspires you?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
I see a lot of progress and momentum in community organizing. You know, I talk sometimes about how like in 2016 in the morning after the election, my character was trending on social media because so many people were thinking and typing, “Olivia Pope has to save the day.” Like, “Olivia Pope has to step in.” And, and as funny as that was, I also thought, “I think we have a problem here, because I think people have forgotten how powerful they are.” Like the biggest, the thing that made me most upset about the election in 2016 was just how many people didn’t vote. Like, I really believe in every person’s vote mattering whether I agree with them or not. And so the fact that so many people didn’t vote to me made me feel like, “oh, people don’t know that they matter.” And so I’m really excited about since then how much innovation I’ve seen in the landscape of community organizing for people to really galvanize their own families, their own neighborhoods, their own communities, to understand how much they matter and how much power they have to transform the conditions of their lives.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
That it’s not actually about this one election that happens every four years. And it’s really about like the day-to-day engagement of knowing that you and your family and your neighbors and your loved ones — that you matter and that you get to have a say about, about the things that happen in your world. That that’s what politics really is. It’s not about like fancy people in suits on Capitol Hill. It’s about like participating in democracy so that you have a say for how we live.
ARIA:
I love that. And I think, I think we’ve seen this past year people really having power, which is, which is awesome. Can you leave us with a final thought on what you think is possible to achieve if everything breaks humanity’s way in the next 15 years? Like, what is possible in our most brilliant future? And what’s our first step in that direction?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
I feel like what’s possible is justice. And I guess what I mean by that is: I did a speech recently for an industry event here in Los Angeles, because I got this award for equity and entertainment. And I was like, I think I need to look up equity again to understand like, what is this award they’re giving me and why? And I started thinking about — actually last year — my daughter who’s now nine, last year in her class, they were talking about the difference between equality and equity and justice. And the idea that equality is when you give the same resources to every person. And I asked the audience to close their eyes and imagine this fence. And that there were three kids all about the same height on the side of the fence that we are on. And then the other side of the fence is like this beautiful apple orchard. Just this blooming apple orchard filled with resources.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
But on this side of the fence where we are with these three kids, the ground is not level and it’s not stable. It kind of slopes down along the fence. So one of these kids is able to see into the orchard and the other one is kind of like struggling on their tippy toes. They’re, they can’t quite get there, but they’re almost there. And the other, the third kid is like in a ditch like two feet from the top of the orchard, from the top of the fence. And so equality is that somebody comes along with a box that’s one foot high and that this three of these boxes and they give the three boxes to the three kids. And so then what happens is the kid who could see in the orchard is now towering above and can, is like, “I could climb this fence and get in there and get all the apples.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Like this is fantastic.” The second kid is now just barely able to see in the, into the orchard and their mind is blown. They’re like just standing there trying to wrap their heads around the possibilities, because they’ve never seen an orchard before and they didn’t know that’s what was there. The third kid is so far in a ditch, it doesn’t make a difference. That box doesn’t matter. They’re still not going togo home with apples. So that’s what equality is. That’s the challenge sometimes with equality. Equity is really asking and figuring out what each of those kids needs to be able to get over that fence and into the orchard. And equity is tough because it takes more time. You have to pause, you have to be willing to consider somebody else’s humanity. You have to be willing to say, I’m going to give this person this resource and this person a different resource.
KERRY WASHINGTON:
Maybe this kid doesn’t even need a box, but this kid actually needs like, I don’t know, a, a trampoline. Like you, you figure out. It, maybe it’s not a box. It might be something totally different. Maybe they all need one ladder they can share. Like equity is about being willing to think outside the box, literally, to figure out how to meet the needs of your community. But justice, justice is like, “let’s just level the ground and rip the fence down. Like apple’s for everybody. Why not?” I think that if everything breaks our way, that we’ll be able to level out the ground and tear more fences down. In the least, build more ladders and get people the boxes the size that they need and deserve. But I think that’s it for me. Like that future looks like apples for all. I love it so much.
REID:
Yeah, it’s awesome. And, you know it plays with some of the themes of what we’re doing here in Possible. Because it’s like well let’s impact construction of tearing down the fence — that’s technology — ladders, that’s technology. We, you know, it’s, it’s how do we, how do we deliver these human virtues with technology?
KERRY WASHINGTON:
That’s right.
REID:
Possible is produced by Wonder Media Network and hosted by Aria Finger and me, Reid Hoffman. Our showrunner is Shaun Young. Possible is produced by Edie Allard, Sara Schleede, and Paloma Moreno Jiménez. Jenny Kaplan is our executive producer and editor.
ARIA:
Special thanks to Katie Sanders, Surya Yalamanchili, Saida Sapieva, Ian Alas, Greg Beato, and Ben Relles. And a big thanks to Rae Steward, Tamer Mokhtar, Nicole Butler, Katie Greenthal, Haley Asofsky, Braden Thole, Blair Nelson, Huy Q. Nguyen, Jon Giardiello, and Little Monster Media Company.