Hugo Narciso, Managing Partner at What If Creative Studios on AI.
Hugo Narciso, Managing Partner at What If Creatve Studios, truly goes back to the heart of the issue because, for him, AI, “in simple terms, Artificial Intelligence is the apparent intelligence created artificially. For me, in today’s world, it’s a way to use computing power to automate large human problems.
Narciso, also chops things back to their origin: “we all have been using AI for many years, even without noticing it. Machine learning algorithms are ubiquitous to our everyday life; they are in traffic management systems, in data analysis, scientific research, identity recognition, and, more recently, in generative AI and LLMs open to end users like us.” The What If studios have been experimenting “since OpenAI’s GPT 2 API access was made public, and we’ve been using these frameworks to optimize our workflows as much as possible – things like Whisper from OpenAI for transcribing and subtitling, Midjourney or Stable Diffusion for ideation and storyboarding, LLMs for brainstorming, ideation, and even coding. An example of what we’ve been doing is, with the help of LLMs, coding internal production tools – we have a full stack of small utilities that can be used internally to improve our business without the need to hire a software developer that ultimately makes the life of our employees easier in day-to-day tasks.” these systems create, but as any new technology, there’s a discovery and adaptation period that is a healthy part of the process.” Narciso is not one to fear the machines.
On the contrary, he admits that “these days, fortunately, there are a lot of ways to save everyone time with either repetitive or non-creative jobs using either LLMs or Generative AI. It liberates artists and creatives to actually explore their minds instead of worrying about other tasks that can be easily offloaded to a machine. It is, in a way, how we got to this point—there was a need to automate, and science provided.” Yet, away from the technicalities, Narciso simply says, “it’s this empowerment that AI/ML frameworks give to people that we are most excited about. Suddenly, we got access to an easy (conversational) way of accessing the full human knowledge, and that’s culture changing. The end goal is to make life easier and more convenient, and these systems will be instrumental to achieve this goal.” On the client side, though, Narciso argues that “At What If, we advise, within our best knowledge and experience, the best workflow to achieve results through the path of least resistance. If there is a way of achieving a result that will involves any kind of AI framework, we will present it and explain both options with their pros and cons.”
Yet, he goes on to advise that, “Sometimes it’s difficult to tone down some unrealistic expectations Thankfully, he says in a comforting tone that the machine “does not replace; it assists.” Narciso thinks that AI is both money saving and an investment. Quite simply, “There is definitely a budget consideration while using AI workflows - mixed with a bit of convenience. And yes, while saving in some departments, we can invest in others that might be more meaningful to our overall strategy. In the end, we’re striving for ultimate efficiency, and there is a lot of it to be harvested with the help of AI.”
