Steph Smith is the ultimate internet explorer.
I spent an hour talking to her about the future of creating on the internet in the age of AI. She’s our first-ever repeat guest, and if you watch the episode you’ll see why: It’s a curious, fun, experimental romp through the best of the digital world.
We try out four underrated AI products, go through a list of Steph’s favorite niche internet creators, and follow her creative process in Midjourney in granular detail.
We had a wide-ranging discussion about:
- How AI changes what humans perceive as valuable in art and creativity
- The type of AI tools that are poised for success
- How AI narrows the gap between ideas and execution
If you don’t know her, Steph is the host of the @a16z podcast and the creator behind Internet Pipes, a toolkit to surface useful insights on the internet, and many other cool internet projects.
This is a must-watch if you make things on the internet and are interested in how AI is changing what it means to be a creator—and how creator businesses work.
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Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Teaser
00:00:46 - Introduction
00:09:08 - How Steph uses Midjourney to find her aesthetic
00:20:45 - Steph predicts how creating on the internet will evolve with AI
00:32:51 - Rapid-fire rundown of Steph's favorite niche creators
00:42:58 - How Steph trains her brain on better data
00:48:19 - The AI research tool Steph uses for health information
00:56:25 - The future of AI tools—and one of Steph's top picks
01:01:20 - Dan and Steph use AI to create a simulation of the internet
01:05:09 - How LLM hallucinations can be useful
01:12:06 - Dan and Steph make a song about what they learned on the show
Links to resources mentioned in the episode:
Steph Smith: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio
Internet Pipes: https://internetpipes.com/
Doing Content Right: https://doingcontentright.com/#features
A few of Steph’s favorite niche creators: India Rose Crawford https://www.instagram.com/indiarosecrawford/?hl=en , Blackforager https://www.instagram.com/blackforager/?hl=en , David Zinn https://www.instagram.com/davidzinn/?hl=en , David Bird https://www.instagram.com/davidmbird/ , WatchMaggiePaint https://www.instagram.com/watchmaggiepaint/?hl=en
The podcast episode Dan did with filmmaker Dave Clark: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/how-a-hollywood-director-uses-ai-to-make-movies
The AI tools Dan and Steph use on the show: Consensus https://consensus.app/ , Globe Explorer https://explorer.globe.engineer/ , websim.ai http://websim.ai , Granola https://www.granola.so/ , Suno https://suno.com/