Dylan Field:AI正在取代设计师吗?设计是新代码,创意民主化
- 代码成本下降后,软件的差异化竞争正转向设计、品牌和鲜明的产品主张。 Field指出,应用供给正呈指数级增长,但人们使用的应用数量基本不变,争夺用户注意力因此越来越难。“设计是新代码”指的是,用人们真正关心的产品赢得竞争;他也明确表示,Figma仍然需要工程师。
- Figma的增长让“一刀切的SaaS末日论”站不住脚。 主持人提到Figma营收同比增长48%,且增速还在加快;Field则表示,Claude Design并未影响Figma的业务。他强调,专业工作流和对目标用户的理解至关重要:“模型进步很容易被误认为是产品进步。”
- Field推翻了自己此前关于AI会抬高创作上限的判断。 谈到几年前在Config上提出的观点时,他说:“我错了。”AI降低了创作门槛,但“抬高上限的不是AI,而是人”。在他看来,真正稀缺的是人的意图、实验精神,以及敢于创造共识之外作品的勇气。
- 200亿美元Adobe收购案告吹后,长期不确定性成了公司运营中的核心难题。 Field回忆了长达16个月的监管审查,以及结局终于明朗时员工的如释重负。Figma向想离职的员工提供几个月工资,但他们必须等待6个月才能重新申请职位;最终接受的人只占一小部分。
- Figma希望人们能亲手塑造AI生成的内容,而披露AI参与也能传递审慎与信任。 Field表示,Figma希望用户能在生成内容和亲手操作之间来回切换;Weave则把模型输出接入工作流:“你得有办法塑造它。”在公司内部,“由AI辅助撰写”的标注,回应的是作者是否清楚材料里写了什么。
- Field看好创作普惠化带来的可能性,但对自动化发现过程也感到不安。 主持人提到,OpenAI发布了700多篇数学论文,并称那是“人类历史上最伟大的发现日”。Field欢迎这些可能性,同时坦言心情复杂:“为一点秘密的消失感到惋惜,并没有错。”
1. Adobe收购告吹:不确定性解除,业务不必重来
主持人将Adobe拟以200亿美元收购Figma描述为一场原本可能实现、如今却告吹的非凡退出。Field说,他尊重Adobe,也认为Figma已经发展到可以加入Adobe、又不至于“被彻底吞并”的规模。但长达16个月的监管审查,迫使员工一直同时设想两种未来。“长期处于不确定状态,确实非常煎熬。”
Field称反垄断论据“很薄弱”,认为监管机构纠缠于过去的竞争,而不是审视市场将走向何方。他举Roomba为例:在他看来,阻止收购导致Roomba破产,而更广阔的市场焦点当时在中国。他说,从美国的角度看,这种阻止收购的做法说不通。他更广泛的质疑是,即使干预的初衷是保护竞争,漫长的审查也可能伤害交易双方。
收购案终止后,员工最直接的感受是终于确定下来,而不是庆幸躲过了Adobe。Field随后明确给员工一个选择:那些被收购流程耗尽精力,或原本就是冲着加入Adobe而来的人,可以带着几个月工资离开;若要重新申请并参加面试,则必须等6个月。最终接受这一选择的人占比较小,其中一些人做出了重大的职业转向。
2. 模型进步不等于专业工作流会被取代
Figma于2012年8月上线。Field说,设计是Figma的核心,但用户也用它做营销、广告、幻灯片、白板、图表等各类视觉工作。他纠正了主持人的说法:Figma曾与Anthropic合作,但Claude Design是Anthropic另行发布的产品。他还提到,Figma拥有MCP,并与许多公司合作。
Field称,双方沟通中有些情况让他意外,并暗示组织扩张过快可能造成内部混乱。被问及Claude Design的发布是否影响了Figma业务时,他回答:没有。
主持人提到,尽管自己也曾认同“SaaS末日论”,Figma营收仍同比增长48%,且增速正在加快。主持人提出的一种解释是创始人领导力:真正理解用户体验的人,或许更善于借助AI加速并重塑业务。
Field强调,模型能力和成熟产品是两回事。“模型进步很容易被误认为是产品进步。”专业设计软件需要多年打磨工作流,并针对不同任务持续收集反馈。主持人将这类软件比作“一件乐器”:把操作机制做对很重要。至于Claude Design本身,Field表示自己“既不乐观,也不悲观”。
Field以Cursor反驳应用必然被取代的说法:在Cursor还没有自有模型时,前沿实验室已经在用自家模型开发编程产品;但Cursor凭借对客户需求的执着和清晰战略取得成功。主持人随后补充了对SaaS论点的限定:并非所有SaaS公司都做得好,也并非所有SaaS公司都已出局。Field表示认同。
3. AI降低生产门槛,真正抬高上限的是人
Field明确修正了几年前在Config上对用户说过的话:当时他认为AI能让人更早做成更大的事,并抬高创作上限。“我错了。”他现在的判断很明确:“AI不能抬高上限,能做到这一点的是人”(AI doesn’t raise the ceiling, but people do)——靠的是专注投入、敢于冒险,以及尝试创造前所未有的东西。
他将软件行业的差异化竞争与供给增长联系起来:应用供给正呈指数级增长,但人们使用的应用数量基本不变。代码更容易生产后,产品就需要凭借独特的设计、品牌、营销和鲜明的观点脱颖而出。真正令人不安的是,敢于表达共识之外的东西。“设计是新代码”并不意味着工程师会消失。
一份由AI生成的演示文稿让信任问题变得具体:Field可能喜欢发来文稿的人,却仍会怀疑这是不是她写的,甚至怀疑她是否清楚其中的内容。Figma要求员工用AI写作时,在文稿顶部标注“由AI辅助撰写”。Field预计,信任会逐渐分化;亲手完成某件事,也会成为建立信任的一种方式。
主持人以Photoshop的图层、滤镜和Kai’s Power Tools为例:当年人们担心这些工具会怎样改变摄影,但它们最终催生了新的创作方式。主持人还指出,手机摄像头带来的变化更大,它改变了人们拍照的方式;至于这种变化究竟更好还是更坏,很难下定论。
4. 创作工具必须让人能够塑造生成内容
主持人问,人类创造力——把经验中的点连起来——是否与AI有本质区别。Field指出,两者的奖励函数和损失函数不同:一个人被水溅到后,可能听一次怒斥就学会了;强化学习则需要反复训练。他承认,架构可能会变化,但神经科学仍有很多未知。
Field还区分了设计与单纯的创造力:设计既要发明新东西,也要在品牌、文化和商业约束下解决用户的问题。主持人提出,如果人先有审美愿景,就能把AI输出当作回应和再创作的素材;若没有愿景,输出就会跟随模型的概率分布。Field说,模型会适应用户的愿景,随后介绍Figma的目标:让代码成为画布上的素材,让人们在搭建和亲手操作之间切换。
主持人设想了一种媒体:创作者先设定叙事和参数,最终体验再像游戏一样动态生成。Field提到Weave——一个基于节点的系统,可以把模型输出接入其他输入。生成只是提供素材;“你得有办法处理这团泥。你得有办法塑造它”(you need a way to shape it)。
Field描述了一种反复出现的新奇感周期:令人惊艳的模型输出先刷屏,但几天之内,人们就会认出其中的套路,转而追问如何突破套路。他认为,数学、网络安全等形式化领域进步很快,创造力和设计领域的进步则要慢得多。“也许有一天情况会改变。”
5. 创作自主权扩大,发现的消逝令人百感交集
Field举例介绍了他欣赏的数字艺术:一个致Figma的网页,每当访客离开后再次回来,网页就会退化,让注意力本身成为作品的一部分。他也欣赏Holly Herndon让自己的声音“几乎像开源素材一样”供人使用。这又引出一个令他着迷的问题:什么属于个人,什么属于集体,什么值得拥有所有权。
Field最后将人们使用AI的方式区分开来:有人让AI替自己思考;他更愿意用AI加深理解、学习,或尝试过去因太难、太耗时而无法完成的工作。“我这一生都在琢磨如何思考。”他认为,只要有意志力、好奇心,也愿意付出努力,每个人都能创作。
主持人提到,据其所说,OpenAI前一天发布了700多篇围绕知名数学难题的论文,并称那是“人类历史上最伟大的发现日”。Field既兴奋又感到悲伤:进步打开了新的可能,也让尚未解决的问题不再那么神秘。“为一点秘密的消失感到惋惜,并没有错。”未来变化究竟会是什么样子,仍无人知晓。
完整逐字稿
Dylan Field, welcome to the All-In interview.
Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
We’re here in the beautiful city of Napa, Yountville, California.
Yeah, you’re already three drinks in.
We had a couple of drinks and decided to take some photos.
Yeah, why not? Why not?
Well, what are you doing here?
As your wealth grows, have you noticed how much more complicated things become? Between investments, tax strategy, and estate planning, managing it all is a full-time job you didn’t ask for. Creative Planning can help. Their coordinated team of investment managers, CPAs, and affiliated estate attorneys can do much of the hard work so you don’t have to. Creative Planning, where wealth works together. Go to creativeplanning.com/allin.
I was at this event that you’re also going to tomorrow.
I’ll be at the event tomorrow—the same event.
We mainly talked about design and product development. I connected a little to security; I thought that would be good. But in general, we talked a lot about how product development evolves.
From my perspective, you’d expect me to say that design is the new code. Coding models are getting better. I’m not saying you don’t need engineers. We definitely need engineers at Figma. We love our engineers. But the nature of programming is also changing, and with change comes increased value in differentiation at the top. It’s design, branding, marketing, courage, and the emotional reaction you’re able to evoke. I think a lot of people don’t notice that.
We also talked a lot about artificial intelligence and things like, “Okay, you did something on stage today. You spoke to Nikesh.” I’m just retelling the interview. Sorry, it’s wonderful. As if that’s good—as if we can fast-forward. But I want to go back.
You’re the CEO of Figma, a public company. Maybe you can briefly talk about Figma. When did you start the business?
We launched Figma back in August 2012. The short answer is that we want to make it possible for the best teams in the world to design, build, and develop the world’s best software.
We’re also used for all sorts of things: marketing, advertising, slides, whiteboards, charts—anything. If it’s visual at all, someone is probably doing it in Figma, even if it’s not intended for that.
People call it design software. Is that a fair characterization, or does it not cover the full spectrum of what the service is?
Design is truly our center and our foundation. When I’m in a product review and talking to the team, we talk about designers and what they want.
Design is also a very interesting term because there are about 100 definitions of it. I think a lot about the definition as creativity meeting problem-solving, though there are so many others you can find. Design can apply to everything from interior design to industrial design, product design, brand design, and more. People think about a lot of things when they think about design.
1. Adobe’s $20B deal blocked: inside the antitrust fight
Just to get acquainted with the history of the business: you started in 2012, raised venture capital, the business took off, and you sell enterprise software. You were doing really well, and then Adobe offered to buy the business for $20 billion?
Yeah, right.
Fast-forward quite quickly. What year was it?
That was a few years ago.
You’d been building a business for 10 or 11 years.
We always respected Adobe, and we still do. They’re an incredible generational company that started everything from printing to creating Photoshop as it is and the entire graphic design revolution.
By the way, I’ve been working in Adobe Photoshop since 1990. I was doing graphic design before layers. We didn’t talk about whether you were using it before layers, did we?
Yeah. I did graphic design and press releases as a kid on computers, as a service for people in the neighborhood, small businesses, and so on.
So cool. Wait, how did you get access to it?
I was in school, and then I had—
I was on a Macintosh. I got my first original Mac in 1984, and I’ve always been fascinated by graphic design. It was something I loved to do as a hobby. You and I have never really talked about this.
I was using Bryce 3D and all these early 3D tools, and then Kai’s Power Tools came out. Kai’s Power Tools was really cool. It reimagined Adobe Photoshop. For me, it was an incredible expansion of the creative potential of what could be done with Photoshop.
I’ve been a big fan of Photoshop since the very early days, and a big user as a personal hobby. I’ve made money doing graphic design and stuff.
That’s great, dude.
Photoshop certainly seems like a very mature product—maybe even more mature since so many different parts have been added to it over the years. That’s the nature of many software products: they get bloated over time if you’re not careful. But there are so many possibilities with it, and Adobe as a company has been very inventive. I’ve always respected them since childhood.
Absolutely. It seemed to me that this was a time when we could join in and not be completely absorbed. If we were smaller, I felt like maybe we would just scatter. We signed the agreement. We said yes. Then various governments around the world decided they didn’t like it.
The antitrust commission intervened and blocked the deal.
Yeah. Antitrust is kind of a broad term, but there’s the United States, the European Union, the CMA. A few years ago, it was a completely different atmosphere than it is today. Adobe would have to get rid of a major competitor. They said a lot.
But I think the most important thing for us was that we just kept pressing the gas. I thought everything would be as if we were just passing through, but after a month or two, it became clear that wasn’t the case. It became kind of normal. As an organization, we had to push ourselves, deliver, and create the next things. If we don’t push ourselves and keep our foot on the gas, we don’t know what’s going to happen on the other side. We have to make sure everything is okay, no matter what.
So, it’s 2023. How many employees did you have?
There were about 500 to 1,200. I’ll have to check again.
When I heard this story, I was captivated. It seemed like I saw you on March 24, 2024. I don’t know if you remember me mentioning this to you, but to me, the story was about telling 1,200 startup employees about one of the most incredible exits in history: this company’s $20 billion exit wasn’t going to happen.
What was it like when you stood up in front of everyone and said, “Guys, this is not going to happen”? How do you get everyone to refocus on building the business and continuing to move forward when it seems like the floor has fallen out from under some people’s feet?
I think you have to keep in mind the length of the regulatory review, which definitely needs to be fixed somehow. If you’re in a situation where it’s actually anticompetitive—and I still don’t believe the Adobe case was worth anything—many people on the internet would probably say yes, or at least they would have at the time. But I found their arguments weak. They fought past battles without looking to the future and what it would all become.
I’m not saying this because I’m not excited about independence. I’m excited to be running Figma. Adobe’s plan was to simply manage Figma. Anyway, running Figma makes me happy. Regardless, we move fast. I’m glad and grateful for that.
But back to your question: it was 16 months of regulatory oversight. Sixteen months of regulatory oversight is a punishment for any company. In a real anticompetitive situation, it could be very damaging to one of the parties, or both.
I think Roomba is a great example. Roomba should have been purchased. It was a small deal, not some crazy deal. They didn’t let it pass, and because of this, Roomba went bankrupt. The entire market at that time was actually focused on China, so from the United States’ perspective, it didn’t make sense.
Anyway, I digress, but I think this is an important point. There are political things here about ideals and idealism, and that doesn’t always practically help America.
It’s also important that almost all markets are now more expansive than they have been historically. Almost anything that looks like “Oh, this is a market” isn’t actually a market. The market is artificial intelligence.
Yes, I mean, that’s right. This is a huge market, and this deal represents 1% and 0.2% of the market. Do you define the market by looking back at history, which is the only logical way to do it as a regulator, or do you do it as a technologist, looking forward? It can be very different in how you think about markets and their size. Anyway, it all depends on the lens.
It was actually the first day of winter break, which is quite funny. We told everyone, “Okay, enjoy the holidays.” We actually have many fewer visitors during the holidays because we’re working on the product.
It was Friday, and over the weekend we realized, “Okay, this is going to end sometime.” On Monday morning, we sent everyone a message: “Hey, everyone, at 12:00, join a call if you want. Here’s what’s going on, and here are the full details.” First of all, so many people showed up.
It was great to see the turnout. It was the first day of vacation, actually. Secondly, I would say the mood was one of relief—not relief that there was no Adobe, but relief that there was no uncertainty. Having uncertainty for so long is really intense. People have to have 2 worlds in their heads; they’re not entirely sure what the future holds for them. The mood was just so much lighter.
And then, yes, I think your question is right: How do you make sure everyone agrees? We did it like this: I posted a video in the company’s Slack and sent everyone an email saying, “Hey, if you’re tired after working really hard, if you joined during this period thinking you were going to work at Adobe, and actually a startup isn’t for you, please know we’re going to work really hard. No shame—we’re still on good terms. If you want to leave, here are a few months’ salary, and you can just let us know. We’ll make it very easy.”
“You have 6 months before you can reapply. That’s the only condition. In 6 months, you can reapply and we’ll re-interview you.” It was a fairly small percentage of people who took us up on it. Overall, it was great, and some people ended up making complete career turns and going down wildly different life paths. I think it was great for everyone.
You continue to build the business, it grows, you go public. I want to quickly jump to the beginning of this year. You guys announced a partnership with Anthropic, Claude Design.
Not really. We worked with Anthropic as a partner, and Anthropic separately announced Claude Design.
Oh, sorry. Yes, that’s true, but you had a connection with them that you announced earlier this year.
Yes, we have MCP. We cooperate with many companies, but yes.
2. Is AI killing SaaS? Frontier Companies vs. Figma, the “SaaS apocalypse”
Then they announced Claude Design. Was it a surprise to you when they did that? How worried were you when they released Claude Design, compared to what you were proposing? The market looked at it and said, “Oh my God, Figma is dead. Claude is going to crush Figma.” The nature of online discourse right now is that we’re back, it’s over. It’s just a cycle, right? How many times have you been declared dead in the last month?
Yes. Maybe a bunch of times that I don’t even know about.
Yes, and everyone’s used to it by that point. When you’re declared dead so many times and then you’re actually not dead, you realize at some point that maybe it’s not true.
Social media isn’t really reality, but, yeah, I was generally surprised by how this kind of communication happened. Usually everyone wants to do good. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, that’s what I assume about people. They want to win; they want to do good.
Organizations scale very quickly. Anthropic is an example of an organization that has scaled that quickly, and that can be very confusing internally. Because of this, strange things can happen. I think we’re on the other side of some strange communication.
Has this affected your business?
No, no, not that it matters.
I read your quarterly report after that announcement. You guys grew 48% year over year, and the business actually accelerated its growth.
Yes.
I look at it, and this was when everyone was generally talking about the SaaS apocalypse. I was a big SaaS apocalypse subscriber. But I think there are many ways to differentiate SaaS companies. One of them, in my opinion, is being founder-driven. There’s a very important built-in user experience and an opportunity to build on that, especially if you know how to use AI to accelerate and reinvent your business as a founder. But your business has accelerated.
Yes. No, it continues to work well. I think the hardest thing about modeling companies and product is: What is the product? Is this a model? Is this the user interface on top? Is it some hybrid of both? If it’s a hybrid, how do you weigh it? Anyway, you’re talking about something like Anthropic and OpenAI.
Yes, I mean Gemini. For example, is it a coding loop, or is it a product like CoDesign that you just mentioned?
I think it’s easy to confuse model progress with product progress. The reality is that a tool like Figma took a very long time to create, and a lot of time to make sure we were setting up the right workflows for our users. We still have a lot of work to do. Our users will tell you that. We’re always trying to make it better.
I think it’s not surprising that it wasn’t an instant hit or anything, given that there’s a lot of work to do on the basic user experience and workflow to meet the needs of professionals. Now they’ve turned CoDesign into a broad product. They’re trying to do all the things you’ll see, like posters and graphic design stuff, when you go to their homepage. Maybe they do well in some areas and not so well in others. I’m neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the product. I think it’s just hard to create good design tools for professionals.
There are many things to design, and many design categories. The feeling is like an instrument. You have to get it right. You have to get the mechanics right.
Yes. We’ve been emphasizing every detail of that and getting a lot of feedback over the years about what people like and what they don’t. It depends on where they come from, their task, and what they’re generally trying to do. There are so many scenarios.
Overall, I think there are more modes for software than the SaaS apocalypse suggests. It’s not that software as a category is binary, good or bad. There are many ways to sustain yourself and have a growing business in the long term as a software company or an application-layer company. Part of it is specializing as much as possible in your target audience: know your audience and create for them. That’s what matters.
A great example of this is Cursor. Cursor definitely shouldn’t have evolved the way it did. You have all these frontier labs chasing them with their own models, before Cursor had any model. But Cursor is truly obsessed with the user. They saw their advantages, developed a strategy, and made sure they were doing the right thing for the customer. They achieved incredible success. I think that’s amazing, and I think it’s an example that will be repeated for many different types of companies. SaaS is not dead.
Well, I don’t think it’s true that all SaaS companies are good. And it’s also not true that all SaaS companies are dead.
Quite right.
I’m going all in. Conservation is often called anti-growth. The Nature Conservancy disagrees. They believe that protecting land, wildlife, and access to nature goes hand in hand with economic opportunity. For 40 years, they have moved at the speed of the market to protect lands at risk while supporting local communities. With 9 million acres protected in all 50 states, The Nature Conservancy is proving that it delivers long-term results that benefit communities and nature. Learn more at conservationfund.org.
3. Creativity in the AI era: why taste and boldness win
In the world of agent-based AI, I have this ability to give a hint, like a human, and say, “I want to create something that looks, feels, and does X.” This magical technology takes off and does it, and as a result, I get a product. Sometimes the product is great; sometimes the product is terrible. But these tools are increasingly able to do that.
Historically, I needed a product manager, a designer, and a bunch of engineers to deal with the actual creation of a product, whether it was a software product or a hardware product. It increasingly seems that AI is using more and more of these tools. Can you share your thoughts on the future of human creativity in this era, this future era we’re waltzing into—the singularity we’re entering? Where does human creativity play a role, and where else do we need to fill in the gaps to bring human creativity to fruition?
I think we’re lowering the bar with AI. We’re making the entire production process easier, whether it’s code, motion, video, design—if it’s a digital process, we’re lowering the bar for it to happen. Everyone can be a part of it, and it’s more democratized.
Ironically, even a few years ago, when I said this at our annual Config user conference, I believed AI would raise the ceiling. You would be able to do bigger things sooner. I was wrong. The ceiling remained unchanged. AI doesn’t raise the ceiling, but people do.
Creatives and designers raise the ceiling when they decide to focus, invest their time, be bold, and try to do something that no one else has ever done before. At this point, the question is: Do you care about being at the center of the distribution? Do you care about the average score? Is that enough for your task? Do you need something that shows you care about this thing, that you took the time to create it? Do you need to go beyond the minimum?
In the world of software and product design, we’re seeing exponentially more software than ever before. That’s exactly what one would expect. The expansion continues. You look at the App Store numbers, and they’re growing exponentially. We see that app usage isn’t changing. People are using the same number of apps, but the number of apps available is greater than ever and growing.
And I think it just goes to show that you need to differentiate if you're building any software. How do you do it? It’s not code, because now anyone can create code. That’s not the difficult part anymore. In my opinion, design is the new code. It’s the top layer. You have to make your design unique, and you have to have a point of view, good branding, and marketing. I think that perspective is what’s most missing. This is the human component.
It’s not just the human component; it’s also the part that people are uncomfortable with. I think people are afraid to say something that isn’t the consensus.
This is so true. That’s what the greatest artists, business leaders, and politicians have always demonstrated: the willingness to be bold, to say and do things that no one else would say or do. That’s what changes the world. I’d also add comedians. Comedians are underrated. Last year, we had Tony Hinchcliffe at our event because he’s one of the few guys willing to say and do things in this day and age of cancel culture. Comedians often tell the truth in a way people might not otherwise hear. They’re ready to say things.
It’s not about political correctness; it’s about whether you have a message that can rise above the noise and do so on a sustainable basis. Look at social media now: every unique point of view, anything interesting, spreads instantly. If you don’t have something that lets you keep creating content and a message that’s truly evergreen because it’s outside the Overton window, you’re not going to break through and get attention. The attention economy is ruthless. Is this also human creativity?
If you don’t do something that’s never been done before, you’re not creating something; you’re imitating something. You copy something, you photocopy something. Doing something new is creating, and novelty requires doing something that’s never been done before, by definition. That’s why you’re operating outside the training distribution. It’s not just about working outside the mean distribution you start with when you’re simply prompting without any advanced framework around it. You’re actually doing something groundbreaking and unique, and I think that will be rewarded by the market. Everyone will see it.
I think it’s also rewarded by the market, through organizations’ attention. I’m already hearing from many people—for example, today I received another deck created by artificial intelligence.
Absolutely.
I don’t even know if the person who created it, who I like, knows whether she wrote it. Does she even know what’s in her deck? At Figma, we made it simple: if you use AI in your writing of any kind, just write “written with AI” at the top. It’s very simple and easy to understand. People joked about it internally, but people do it. It means we can all be confident that when we see something, we know it’s been cared for enough to make it worth our time to process.
I think we’re going to see some kind of bifurcation when it comes to trust. One way to gain trust is to do something with your own hands.
Another important point is that if you have a vision or a point of view in your head about how something should be designed or look aesthetically or empirically, I think you’re in a great place to start creating with AI. It gives you something to overcome, like the problem of a blank slate, a blank canvas. You can react to it and say, “Here are all the things I don’t like. I’m going to fix these things. I’m going to change them.” It’s very useful to be able to exchange ideas.
But if you don’t have a vision of your own and you trust AI to make it happen, you’re doing it through the lens of AI. It’s as if AI has its own distribution.
The model adapts to it.
Yes, so you won’t get exactly what you want.
Now, if you can do both—and that’s what we’re trying to do in Figma—make code the material on the canvas, make it so you can start building. You can build something if you want, but when you want to think and work with your hands, you can do that too.
Yes, quickly switch back and forth. I remember the early days of Photoshop. I was an avid user from the beginning. People panicked when layers came out, then when all the filters came out, and when Kai’s Power Tools came out. Everyone thought, “What’s the role of a photographer now? This is destroying the art of photography, the creativity of photography.” But it unleashed a new era of creativity, because new artists could use those filters, tools, and layering capabilities to redefine what was possible on the canvas. It was, in essence, a new set of tools.
That doesn’t mean the old creative tools were a perfect match for the new creative system and tools. But this led to an explosion of creativity and human potential, and we pushed the boundaries in every way. It seems we’re entering this era again. I strongly believe that, and I think it’s partly what I described regarding the market dynamics. To attract attention, engage, and make people care, you need to do something new. You have to be brave and try bold things.
Resistance to change is real. There’s a great thing you can find on Google to support your point of view: search the mailing list for information about when layers were introduced. People say, “This is the worst thing that ever happened in the world.” You can find it if you Google it; it’s a publicly available mailing list, and you can see all the reactions.
Absolutely.
But apparently that’s the future. There are still photographers in the world who do incredible work, but the bigger change, to be honest, has been the camera phone. That’s what led people to stop buying cameras specifically for photography, because the best camera is the one you have with you. We started to approach photography differently with Instagram and camera phones. For a lot of people, that changed things, and I can’t say whether it’s better or worse as a result. But changes have happened.
There’s one view of human creativity that says it’s essentially a connection of dots in the subconscious, based on what you’ve seen or experienced in your life and your sensory inputs. From that input, you connect the dots and extrapolate a perspective on things the world maybe hasn’t seen before. Do you agree with this view of creativity, and is it different from what AI actually does? Again, I want to return to the uniqueness of humans in the age of AI.
One thing that happens with people is that they’re always looking for novelty. Our reward function is different from AI’s, and so is our loss function. If I opened this bottle of water and splashed it on you, you’d get mad at me if I did it again. With AI, with reinforcement learning, you’d need to repeat it many times. You don’t do that. Robot, stop digging me.
Maybe that will change over time with new architectures, but in general, the brain is different from the modern systems we’ve created with AI. I think it’s unknown; we don’t know much about neuroscience in general. I’d love to get to a point where we all know more about neuroscience, but something is fundamentally different when it comes to creativity.
I also think design is different from creativity. It’s not just creativity; it’s also problem-solving, as I mentioned earlier. The combination of those 2 aspects is fascinating, because you have a user whose needs you’re trying to meet in a creative way that connects with them. You also need to connect to broader systems—marketing and branding, culture, business issues, and so on. Keeping all of that in your head at different levels of abstraction, then trying to create a screen or a flow in a search space that can be a combinatorial explosion, is pretty cool.
This is quite fascinating. I’m personally very passionate about rethinking existing art forms and media, where artificial intelligence can enable more dynamic generation. The creator takes it to a new level and sets a bunch of parameters, but doesn’t necessarily render the final product. The final product, like in a video game, is rendered on the fly, with the user in front of it. The creative team behind a video game creates the whole thing: they build a storyline and a narrative flow. The implementation is much more dynamic, but I feel like it will find its way into many other forms of media.
We have products for that. In Figma Design, you can have generative tools and shaders where you can do a lot of that. We also have a product called Weave. Weave is essentially a node-based system. You can connect model outputs to other inputs, and so on. The whole idea is that generating with AI is fine, but you need a way to process that clay. You need a way to shape it. With Weave, people make the most amazing videos and photo works, and the results you can achieve with it are incredible.
If you have the intention, if you really want to do the work, you can always achieve a better result. New models appear, and people get this kind of AI psychosis for a few days. It’s like with algorithmic feeds: the best results rise to the top, and everyone says, “This model is everything.” Then, a few days later, it’s, “Okay, okay, I know the basic tropes of the model.”
And you adapt quickly. The novelty wears off. It’s no longer something that rewards you or triggers your dopamine system. Instead, you think, “Okay, it always does that. How do I overcome this?” This seems to be the continuous cycle we find ourselves in.
That’s quite exciting, because models are getting so good in these formal areas—mathematics and cybersecurity. IQ scores just keep piling up. For creativity and design, though, progress is very gradual. Maybe that will change someday, but I think the fact that these are untested areas has something to do with it. Maybe that’s the human role in the AI toolbox: to conceive, create, and design, and let AI do more of the work, while giving you the ability to do much more.
Is there any art or media that you’re particularly interested in that’s emerging right now?
I find it fascinating when people do new experiments with AI, especially in media. A designer-artist recently created a webpage that was like a letter to Figma. That caught my attention because I was seeing the Figma thing in my algorithmic feed. Every time you walked away from it and came back, it had degraded a little. That was, in fact, commentary on attention, and I thought it was really cool.
Oh, cool.
It was a work of art.
I thought so.
It was a webpage.
Yes.
The technique and the way they did it were really neat. It’s not something many others have done. I’ve seen a few other things like this, but overall, I thought it was a really cool way to do it.
That was also a very well-written letter.
I liked the letter too. I see things like that, and I remember people making AI art with NFTs back when NFTs were hot, around 2019 or so. The work was sometimes truly remarkable. Holly Herndon took her voice and made it so people could use it almost open source. That was pretty incredible and ahead of its time.
I think it’s a fascinating game between what is me, what is collective, and what is unique and worthy of ownership versus what is not. I’ve always been fascinated by this intersection.
4. Human agency, AI’s promise, and what comes next
Yes, that’s cool. A lot of the negative comments about AI are that it deprives humans of freedom of action and limits human potential. Could you talk a little bit about your thoughts on every human being’s potential to be creative, to be a designer, and how AI can perhaps augment every human being—not just “creators” in some elite class of artists in a special building, but every human being’s ability to create, design, and produce things in the world? Where are you at with that right now?
I think it’s even broader. As a human being, before AI and after AI, you have a choice. Do you want to create as a consumer? Do you want to take the easy way out, or do you want to climb a mountain, for example? What I see a lot now is people letting AI think for them. Less on Figma, but more in my interactions with the world—I see a lot of that now.
That’s one path you can take. Another is to use AI to deepen your understanding of the world, to teach, and to do things you would never have dared to do before because they would take so long or be so hard. You can really expand the potential ways you can live as a human being.
For me, this last one is the most interesting.
Yes. Why should I want someone else to think for me? My whole life has been about figuring out how to think. I just hope people will use AI to create good and be a force for good, rather than just joining the collective mind.
Everyone can be a creator. Everyone can do both. The main thing is willpower and curiosity. If you’re interested and willing to do the work, I believe in your truth.
Yes, that’s right.
And then I think you can do incredible things. We’re probably going to see a very different situation in the future, where things we can’t imagine will become possible, and things we take for granted will no longer be things people do every day. What exactly that will look like, I don’t think any of us can say.
But this is a moment when we’re both on the verge of major changes, and nothing struck me more than yesterday’s drop of math papers from OpenAI, with over 700 papers on all sorts of very well-known problems. It was a demonstration of something. I had a lot of emotions. I don’t know how to process them. I thought it was the greatest day of discovery in the history of mankind.
Oh, I mean, actually, yes. Something about it was brilliant and exciting, and something about it was a little sad.
Yes. I don’t know how to express my sadness, but it felt like we lost something and gained something at the same time.
I know. I raise my head, look at the next frontier, and think that these frontiers are brighter, wider, and more accessible than ever. So I’m very excited.
Oh, I’m excited too. I think the world is going to look amazing, and I’m an optimist. There will be many challenges, and we’ll figure them out.
Yes. Exactly how, and what these challenges will be in full, remains to be seen. But mathematics has a quality of mystery, like an unsolved problem. Is this hypothesis true or false? Why? Uncovering this secret is something special. I’m simultaneously excited about progress and everything it will make possible. I also don’t think it’s wrong to mourn the loss of a little secret.
Right. Right.
Dylan, that was a great conversation. Maybe we can have another drink?
Sounds good. Let’s do this. Thanks, dude.
Thank you. I’m going full steam ahead. I’m going full steam ahead.