This AI Tool Creates Audio From Your Interests — Without You Prompting

Today we're joined by Raisa Martin. She helped build and shape NotebookLM at Google, one of the most interesting AI products to come out in the past year. Now she's working on Hux, a bold push towards true personal AI. You know, most people still use AI like a static tool, but she's aiming for the next real breakthrough, which I'm excited about. A personalized AI that actually knows you and helps you in your daily lives. So let's just jump right in. In my conversation with Rise of Marketing, Cutting your sales cycle in half sounds pretty impossible, but that's exactly what Sandler training did with HubSpot. They used Breeze, HubSpot's AI tools to tailor every customer interaction without losing their personal touch. And the results were incredible. Click through. Rates jumped 25%, qualified leads quadrupled, and people spent three times longer on their landing pages. Go to HubSpot.com to see how Breeze can help your business grow. Ryza, thank you for coming on the X wave.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's great to finally kind of virtually meet you. We've been talking on X, I think, for a long time now. I'm trying to remember how I first got connected to you. I feel like it was maybe Logan Kilpatrick at Google had shared something about NotebookLM with me and I started checking it out. I was like, hounding you, trying to get you on the podcast, because NotebookLM was like, one of the coolest things I'd ever seen. But, yeah, now you're doing a startup called Hux. So I guess I'm just curious, you know, what's that journey been like? And, like, how did you go from doing NotebookLM at Google and to now you're doing this new startup?

Yeah. Such a great question. Thank you for asking. I do think we did get connected right after Notebook LM kind of blew up, you know, towards the end of last year. And coincidentally that was around the same time that me and my co founders, we were like, hey, we've done it. This thing's gone big. After working on it for about two and a half years. And we were like, what do we want to do? And I think a lot of folks honestly were like, well, duh, right? Stay at Google, your careers are going to take off. It was the common sense thing to do. But what was funny was I kept waking up in the middle of the night and I was like, darn, I really want to do something else. I feel like if there was ever a time to do a startup, it would Be now.

Yeah, totally.

For obviously so many interesting reasons. And it's so funny because people are always like, wow, you must have had such a great idea to quit your job. But I'm like, I don't know who you think I am, but you're just.

Like, I want to start something. Now's the time.

Yeah. I was like, you don't need an idea. You could just go do anything.

Let me teach you something. How it works in Silicon Valley is later, you rewrite this story and you had a perfect. Everything was figured out, you knew what you were doing and 100% love being a genius.

So.

Yes.

But no. I mean, honestly, we were just like, wow. If we could ever feel that there was a time to do anything new, to do anything interesting, and to just have the courage to do it, it was then. And so we quit. And we actually spent a month, honestly, just brainstorming, hanging out at my house and just, like, drawing on pieces of paper that we would just pass around to each other. And it was just, like, a lot of fun. And so where we eventually ended up is actually not too different, I would say, from what helped NotebookLM take off. But we knew there was something interesting in the audio space, and hence Hux was born.

Cool. And your co founder, did he work with you at Google or.

Oh, yeah. So my two co founders, Jason and Steven. Jason was a sole designer on NotebookLM. Steven was one of the tech leads on NotebookLM. We've worked together, the three of us, for years. And so we already had just, like, really, really good, kind of like a working relationship. And, you know, they're my friends. And so it was actually really easy. The day that I was like, wow, I really would like to do this. I was actually at breakfast with Stephen. We usually got breakfast together. I was like, hey, Stephen, do you want to do a startup? And he was like. He saw it for a second. He was like, okay, that was kind of it. And I think people also ask about that. They're like, oh, how did you pitch your co founders? And I'm like, wait till you hear it.

Yeah, we had breakfast, went to coffee and said, hey, what do you think? Let's just quit Google and go do something.

Yeah, that was pretty much it. And I think that was the best way to do it, because we were like, all right, we'll figure it out later.

Yeah. So have you figured it out? I looked at your website a little bit. You know, hux H U X E dot com, if you're anyone listening. And because when I heard Notebook LLM. And for anyone who's not familiar, you know, you can throw a bunch of text or documents, whatever, into, you know, an LLM, and it generates podcast episodes, basically, where you actually hear two hosts talking to one another. And it is amazing tech demo. Like, when I heard it, I was like, this is crazy. But I was also like, is Google ever actually going to figure out how to make this go mainstream? I don't think so. And so when I look at your website, I'm like, okay, maybe that's what she's trying to do. Like, she's trying to find the right angle to actually make something like that go mainstream. What's the inspiration for it?

So I think it's close. I think we are still, I think, collectively as people, software builders, people who are interested in products of which I think there are, like, lots of these people now, especially with AI, I think we are still collectively kind of like, feeling at the edges of what actually is sort of the killer use case for AI. And there's certainly a lot of these, right? Like, coding is a really big one. ChatGPT, as your friend, is like a huge one. But I think we're still trying to find, like, more of these mainstream use cases, and I think there are many, but it requires a lot more product work. And so for something like hax, our actual sort of initial nugget that we led with was this just, like, a really simple idea, which is like, how come you always have to go first, right? Like, how come the AI doesn't go first? And it's such a simple provocation, but it's actually hard to sort of bring it to life. And so when we walk through the different ways we might do it, audio was just one of the most straightforward, most fun ways to do it, where I always tell people about this analogy of, like, growing up, one of my favorite things to do is I would wake up and I would turn the radio on, like, first thing in the morning, right? And I would just listen to the broadcast. Mostly I just cared if school was canceled, but then if it wasn't, it was fine. I would listen to, like, whatever else I was saying, and I was like, what is the analog to life today? Right? And like, with AI, you can do something interesting, which is, like, personalized radio.

Yeah.

A broadcast that's made just for you. And so then we just started riffing on it, and it's actually caught on and become quite interesting.

Yeah, that makes me think of that feature that ChatGPT rolled out. What's it? Pulse? I Think Pulse, which is cool. I've been seeing it. I was like, you know, because I talked to ChatGPT, like, daily, like, about my business I'm building, you know, lore.com right now in all these crazy meetings, trying to keep track of all of it and what's going on and what I'm learning. And Pulse has been, like, really, really useful recently, but I still haven't gotten in the habit of checking it. And, like, I definitely could see that audio could be great for that. Where literally, like, in the morning when I do my morning walks instead of listening to someone else's podcast, you know, if I had something that was, like, relevant to, like, what I'm actually currently thinking about or doing would be awesome.

Yeah. When we talked to our users, you know, we had this sort of insight in the beginning. We put it out there, and ultimately we were like, people will tell us, right? Like, what's good about this or what's not good about this, and we'll see if there's actual legs to it. I think one of the most fascinating things is once we started talking to the people that are users of Hux, every person would start their stories with like, oh, yeah, I love to use it when I'm driving. Oh, I love to use it when I'm brushing my teeth. Actually, one time, I think I talked to nine people in a row that mentioned they use it while they're brushing their teeth. And I was like, whoa. It's like, am I being pranked? It's like, where did all these people come from? Why did they tell me they were brushing their teeth? But it really sort of illuminated to me that there is something interesting today. When you're building products, you could start from a technology perspective and say, okay, whatever, this technology is cool. I'm going to go build something around it. Or you could just build around what people are already doing or their habits and try to hook into it. And so for us, that's largely the morning routine. People want things in the morning that help them feel like, all right, this is helping me start my day. And it's really interesting you brought up Pulse because we were like, okay, right? What is good about Pulse? What is good about Hux? Like, what are the things these products have in common that we can ultimately learn from? And it really is just kind of like an idea of an AI that knows you.

Right? So it seems like you guys are taking more like a human centric approach to AI design, which I love, because, like, a lot of the AI tools, they're Great. They work. It's really mechanical. Does it feel very human? Does it, you know, fit seamlessly into my life? So anything that just like seamlessly fits into your life, I love that. I'm curious, like, how do you get data into Hux? Like how do you learn about some? That's. That would be a big question I have.

Yeah. So there's a couple of ways that we do it. During onboarding. You can connect your email or you could connect your calendar, you could do both. You could connect multiple emails, which was a really big feature request for a while. I've actually found this has been super helpful for me, just listening to my work and personal email while I am brushing my teeth. Super useful. And we also have an interest picker. Just super simple, just like tell us what you're interested in or just type it out. And the collection of kind of like the onboarding signals along with like the things that you do listen to and engage within the app, is what populates it going forward. And so one of the things that we actually have started doing for people is when you listen to something on Hux, like in the app, when you open the app again, it generates a totally new episode of that show. Right. So today, like I was listening to one that was like interesting history, particularly with food. And I was like, episode two, here's another food. I was like, oh, this is pretty great. And so I think it's the same feeling you kind of get when you're on Wikipedia and you're like clicking around the links and you're like, wow, I'm getting smarter. It's like creative and it's like for very little work.

I feel like I was listening to something. I'd want some way to signal to the AI what part of what I listened to was actually interesting to me. Is there any way to do that yet? Or like, are you guys still figuring that out?

I guess, or not yet. We don't know the best way to do this because a lot of our users are listening when they're doing something.

Can'T survey them or whatever. Like, hey, stop brushing your teeth.

And like take your phone out of your pocket. Yeah, just like tap it or something. And I think there's a little bit of signal we're able to capture when people interrupt. Because the shows are fully interactive, you can interrupt anytime, you can ask follow up questions. So we get a little bit of signal there. But we think there's probably better ways. There's kind of like generically we can identify themes that you like adjacent Interests and things like that. And so we'll probably start there first.

Yeah. I wonder if there's any way to get data out of ChatGPT and put it into this.

I think that's the holy grail.

But if you could figure out some way to get that data just right in, that would be phenomenal. To figure that out.

That is huge. I think there's a lot of things like it, you know, between your browsing data, your maps data, your slack, we think about these as kind of very interesting data stores that some of it, I think is more directly related. Right. So, for example, with ChatGPT, like, if I was asking about some issue persistently, maybe, like, I don't know, I'm dealing with like this medical thing, like, that's probably something that you can create content out of. But then one of the things we actually talk about really frequently is the stuff you shouldn't make content out of, either because it's not interesting or it's like, not appropriate. The user doesn't want to be reminded of it. And so we think about that equally as much. Right.

Where I'm like, having some super personal conversation, pursuing someone. You get some family drama, and it's like, here's a podcast about your argument yesterday. You want to relive that? Like, oh, crap.

Exactly. Exactly. And so I think that's why these data stores are super interesting. And I'll say on a final note, there. There is so much to like when you get a good picture of a person's life where you can connect the dots for them. Right. Like, maybe you don't think the things you think about at work or in your personal life or in your hobbies. Right. Are connected. But actually, when we've looked at, for example, like, my data, when we started studying it with Hux, we were like, well, actually, it turns out that all of your interests kind of can be hoovered up together as history, science, technology. And that's kind of it.

Yeah.

And it's really interesting where you're like, oh, these are kind of like the different poles that make the person.

Right. All right, You've heard how powerful NoteBookLM is, but that's just scratching the surface. We created a complete guide showing you how to use NotebookLM and Gemini to to do 10 hours of research in 20 minutes. Whether you're analyzing competitors, developing content strategies, or learning a new market, this guide is gold. Scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, let's get back to the show. Where do you see that going long Term. And is this all about somebody exploring their interests and learning more, or is there something else that after you have that data, you can help them do? Or like, how are you thinking about that if you are?

So the way that we've thought about this is that we don't really know of anybody else that's really studying sort of like proactive AI in the sense that it is actually really hard for the machine to go first. Right. You do need a little bit of knowledge about the user and then you have to sort of figure out how can I create a title so interesting that they would click on it, which is like the first layer, and the second layer is then getting them to listen to the whole thing. So we think about it as kind of like a funnel of passive content is like a gateway to a totally different type of AI interaction that I don't think we've had much of an opportunity to learn about yet, because everything we are learning about with these AI tools is very much dependent on the user's intention. For example, like when I go to Claude code, like I'm not randomly in Claude code, like, I'm trying to get a job done when I'm in chatgpt, I'm asking this question and it's very much like I'm trying to pull value out of the tool versus I'm here to be delighted, or I'm trying to get ready for the day, which is a much more broad goal. And so I think that what we'll probably learn is that users will probably want to take this one of two ways. We think it's either the content direction, which is fully, like entertainment focused. Right. Kind of like TikTok, Netflix, whatever. Like, I just want a personal kind of content style space. Or it will go in the direction of assistance, which is, hey, this is like next generation assistance, which is passive content. That is proactive is the first layer of it. And so I think we're slowly discovering it's probably more likely the second one.

Yeah, makes sense. Especially if, you know, like what I'm working on or what I care about. If you can start proactively suggesting things to me that I could be doing, whether it's learning something I need to learn or something I should be doing. And especially if you could help me in some way with that would be awesome.

Yeah. And it's interesting too, because we talk a lot about stuff that AI can do and we talk a lot about automation, but I think that in real life, what most people find helpful is not really AI doing stuff for you yet? Right? It's actually interesting. We see a lot more of summarization catching up. Explaining something to me like, we're still there and I think we still have a lot of opportunity to get that right and honestly just earn people's trust. Because I think if you can get these tasks to a place where it's like everybody is doing it and it's very normal to listen to your AI assistant summarize your emails for you, it becomes a lot easier for the next step, which is like, okay, respond to this guy or pay that bill.

Yeah, trust is gonna be so important, right? Because there's a fine line there, right? Are you manipulating me? This thing that's helping run my life, is it helping me? Or are you manipulating me to extract more value out of me?

Yeah, exactly. And I think helpfulness here is really interesting because, for example, whenever you make a suggestion to a user, I think it's interesting to think about whether or not that user would have done that anyway if you hadn't made the suggestion. So that's the type of thing that we think about, which is like, hey, before we step in that territory of making suggestions, let's just help with these really basic kind of passive content tasks.

Where are you guys at with Hux right now? Is it private? Is it launched? And do you have a demo or anything you could share?

Oh, yeah. I mean, right now anybody can download the app. It's available ON Android and iOS. You can go to hux.com we do tell people it's super early and every version of the app that we launch actually changes the app. I'll show you a quick demo on my phone. Yes, here we go. We just launched a new version. We shipped the shows and episodes that I was telling you about earlier. But you can see here at the top you have. It's called the Daily Brief. And when you play the Daily Brave, it'll just go through your emails, your calendar, and it goes through all the topics that you're interested in. But then it also shows you. You can see here there's like a feed of interesting shows that it thinks you'll be interested in. So in this case, it's actually, it's a funny title, but it's so niche and it's something that I actually really care about, which is basically what's the effect of ultra processed foods on your body? That's just like one of those things where you're like, I don't know if I would have sought this out, but it actually is like a Digest of the report on how ultra processed foods affects your body. And I was like, wow, this is super interesting.

And it primarily knows that from your emails, or it knows that from things you've told it or things you've listened to before.

So at this point, it's things I've listened to before. Things like my news, for example, that's very much informed by my emails. And it knows I'm a startup founder, it knows I'm into AI. But you can see that pretty much all of this is AI news that I could listen to. And you can kind of see there's like more here. And then every single one of these has like a show associated with it.

I wonder if this is one of those companies where it could be smart to like, highly target a specific first ideal user or something. Right. Like, if it feels like this is one of those startups where it's almost like, you know, superhuman, where they targeted VCs.

Yeah.

And that helped them raise tons of money. You know, I can imagine this being super useful for VCs because, like, they email a lot and then you can easily identify what companies they're looking to fund or interested in or categories, stages. And you could, like, give them a podcast of like, who raised money for these kind of companies this last week. That way they know to ping those people to at least initiate a conversation and a relationship. Right. Which is what all the best VCs do is like monitor that and then try to reach out to people. Yeah, that could be interesting if you could like target someone, like, make it work, they all use it, and then you expand to other kinds of people. But start with like, I don't know, just an idea.

Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that we actually, at this current stage, we're starting to see these cohorts emerge organically too, which is, you know, what kind of person wants to listen to a personalized radio show in the morning?

Right, right.

And it is like a specific sort of people. But I think that it's right. I think they are largely early adopters, but I think that they reflect like a broader user base for sure.

So, you know, let's say Hux is super successful. You know, you've nailed personalized AI and you're one of the leaders of personalized AI. Like, where do you see the future of the product? I know there's a lot of different ways it could go, but like, 10 years from now, Hux is huge. It's helping a lot of people.

I mean, 10's kind of far.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. A month is far right now, right?

A month is far right now. I mean, honestly, like, I think a lot. I actually go back to a lot of like, sci fi. I mean, I love a lot of, like, science fiction, like Star Trek, read a lot of books, watched like every sci fi movie. Right. And I think about how so much of what we've watched in these movies like, that are actually, like, really positive sort of technological experiences are still not here today. Right. Even though we are kind of talking to our phones, we're kind of talking to our computers. AI is like the farthest we've ever gotten in terms of this whole talking and audio thing. It still is not quite there. And so if this goes well, what I kind of imagine is like a broader shift in how we use our devices. Right. Because today we are largely like, on our screens and tapping on our keyboards. And that's how it's been forever. Like, it just hasn't really changed. But I imagine that what will actually be monumental and very, very interesting is when we actually make the shift from typing away at our computers to actually talking and listening. And that will just be a very, very different kind of like, human computer interaction.

Yeah. I'm hoping that's where things go and then we have more in the physical world. Like, I don't, you know, people already know, like, are we going into the Matrix? You know, And I'm like, I don't, you know, some people might, but hopefully not everyone. Like, hopefully we, you know, actually AI enables us to actually go out and live our lives and helps me solve a lot of the tedious work I don't really want to deal with and helps me learn things I want to learn, meet new people, do new things. That's what I'm hoping for.

I actually largely agree, and I think we are correctly in that timeline, right. Where it's. The more that I think about it, the I sort of observed for myself. I really like it when I'm in the real world. I like talking to people. I like taking a walk, I like hiking, I like driving. I like playing music and doing my chores in the kitchen. This is sort of what I think gives a lot of people joy. But we are still largely living our lives on screens for one reason or another. So I think technology that sort of helps us embrace both, which is like, look, maybe the feeling is that I can't walk away from this work or I want to be productive. Something that sort of satisfies both of those, I think, is an interesting thing. To pursue. And I feel like audio actually is one of the right solutions for that.

Yeah, it makes sense. We'll be right back to the show, but first, I want to tell you about another podcast you're going to love. It's called My First Million, hosted by Sam Parr and Sean Puri, and it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. My First Million is one of my favorite podcasts. I listen to it almost every week. They have some of the best business stories, startup stories, and really, if you want to learn more about business or starting a company, it's the best podcast to listen to. And recently they've been talking a little bit more about AI, so I highly suggest you check it out. Listen to My First Million wherever you get your podcasts. Where do you think AI is at right now today? Like, you know, there's a lot of people who think that we're in some kind of bubble right now. Some people say progress is stalled, which I haven't seen. But what is your take on, like, AI overall right now and outside of Fox?

I mean, I think it's interesting because I feel like if you based it off of what the people are saying on X, Right, or on Twitter, you would think that, like, we're on this, like, sort of constant, like, roller coaster of, like, we're on top of the world or the cycle is ending. No, we're on top of the world. Nvidia crashed again, and it crashed again. But I think that in real life, for most people, it's probably, like, a little more stable than that, to the extent that the products that you're using out there as an everyday person is still just chatgpt, you know, And I think about that a lot because when I think about the emergence of things like Instagram, right, Facebook, Google, these were the apps that started to take up space on my phone. And so when I think about the cohort of AI apps that are going to take up space. Space on somebody's phone, to me it's like there's just one. It's just still chatgpt. So what's number two? What's number three? What's number four?

Right.

What does it do for the everyday person? And so the utility has to be so generalized that you can think about every kind of person consuming it. And so, to me, I think we're still very, very early. I do think we're probably in some kind of bubble, but hopefully it's the kind of bubble that just leads a lot of, like, infrastructure building that Helps support, you know, apps number two and three and four and so on.

Yeah, makes sense. I think when people hear a bubble, they think like there's no substance behind it. Like there's definitely substance behind everything in AI. So if people get carried away and like there's some over investment, that's just part of the process, in my opinion.

Yeah, yeah. I mean it's just exuberance, right? I think rightfully so many of us are excited and I think just with anything that's new, like, there's just a lot of fumbling. There's a lot of fumbling around. As much as like we want to sound confident and say we know where we're going, I think the truth about exploration is that we're going to make mistakes. Some of us are going to get lost, but it's going to be okay in the long run.

Right. You're talking about how everyone just uses ChatGPT, which is totally true. I've tried to be a person on X before where I'm like, oh, I'm trying these new things. But the reality is right now I literally use ChatGPT and the main way I use AI and then for coding, I primarily use Factory. I also use cloud code. Both great. And that's mainly it. Occasionally perplexity. And that's mainly it. I do worry a little bit about that, especially now that chat PT's memory is so good. Google just had their new Gemini 3 Pro come out and it's awesome. It's really good. It doesn't have my memory and so I just haven't used it besides testing it after it was shared with me. I'm using the model in Factory now for coding. I had to update my website 100% which I thought was just was mind blowing to me because usually AI has been so horrible at design. I asked it, hey, what do you think about my website? Are there any ways you could improve it? And here are three brands I like, you know, for me, like Palantir and Smothers. Right. Like here's. And like they just did like a facelift on my website. I'm like, what?

Yeah, I think it's a good design. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's crazy.

Yeah. But I'm still not using Gemini as my main AI app. So I do wonder, like, how, you know, is everything going to be chatgpt? Hopefully there's going to be things like Hux and all these other apps and ChatGPT doesn't just eat everything, you know?

Well, yeah, I mean, I think it's also because, like, there's just such a limited amount of time in my day. Right. And even though all of these products have come out, it's not like my days changed.

Right.

And so I think that the apps still have to map really closely to the thing that I am doing or the thing that I am trying to do. And I'm sure some of these things will change, but until that time, until the solution sort of squarely slots into something that majorly takes up my life or my day, it's probably just not going to happen. Yesterday, actually, the team and I were talking about how good Gemini 3 is. We're like, wow, this is pretty impressive. It's really cool. We played around with it and then we were like, how many of us are going to use Gemini, like, Gemini the app? And we had a funny little debate where we were like, why don't we like, does anybody know? And Jason, my co founder, who's a designer, he was like, because the background isn't black. And I was like, what? And we all opened it and we had this, like, funny realization that it's like an off blue, black background. I was like, that's so interesting. Is that it?

Oh, I noticed that immediately.

Oh, did you?

Okay.

One of the things I tell people all the time is like, I'm like, worthless at, you know, at this time.

I'm somebody who's like, kind of okay at design, kind of okay at coding, hopefully good at business. But, you know, I like. So I have experience in a bunch of fields. But yeah, the first time I looked at, I was like, I should tell Logan like this. I don't know. You need to change it.

There is something to it. But I think we were. We were saying, like, we're not going to switch.

Yeah. But I do wonder also if that's a perception thing. I do wonder if it's because Chatbot was the first one that people used. So it's anchored in people's mind that that's what AI looks like.

Yeah.

So anything that's not that is non standard.

I think that's true. I think there's a lot to it. I do think that even though ChatGPT is largely the same since it launched. Right. It's just like a text box that I press enter on hasn't changed very much. It has a very, very high level of polish on the app. Right. It's like it never bungles when I press enter. The answer always renders correctly. And so I think that there is a certain level of polish on the App that I'm just like, I don't really want to try another thing because it's not going to be this.

Yeah, totally. Like, even like, you know, Grok is getting pretty good. And I've tried the app though. I'm like, just like in a daily usage, the UI as well as the memory features lacking is just like. No, I'm just. ChatGPT is my default still.

I have an opinion that I feel like is very unscientific, but I swear that it's also the personalities of the models because I use ChatGPT for my personal mobile use case. But Claude is kind of like my work friend.

Interesting, right?

And it's like, you know, I feel like we would normally never say these things about the AI apps, but I do really feel like I appreciate the way Claude answers my questions. And how else would you describe it except friendly?

It's like a personality, a nice guy. It's like a thing in the name. Right.

It's like a nice coworker. Yeah. So I appreciate it.

Yeah, that is interesting. Yeah. Maybe the future. That's what it is. Like Gemini needs like a personality. What is Gemini? It's almost like it's like it implies two personalities too with the name. Right. It's like maybe they need like a different brand too.

Yeah.

Because Claude, I can imagine, like, oh, that's like a friendly dude or something. Like, you know, not intimidating guy, just like easy to talk to person.

You know, I genuinely like, I feel like if you're like, all right, what does each of these, you know, apps look like as like a person? I think, like, it wouldn't be hard. I feel like it's a good litmus test. It wouldn't be hard for people to describe them, you know, like when you just said that, like I didn't even realize it, but I'm like, oh yeah, Claude for sure has a beanie, wears glasses.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, so it's not hard and I think that that definitely plays into it.

Yeah. I've actually kind of slightly. This is my personal life. I've kind of slightly made fun of Claude for that reason in the past, but I do still like it in like certain contexts. Like you just said, like just like casual conversations about things. Yeah, yeah, it's like a great friend there.

Exactly.

Yeah. Cool. One thing I like to ask a lot of guests, I have a 12 year old son and I always think about what should I be teaching him right now? What would you be teaching a child right now to like help Them because it feels like things are changing so fast and it's really hard to know what to teach a child to help them be more successful in the future. Yeah, because like, maybe coding for logic. But are they actually going to be coding? You know, and. Yeah, so maybe they need more like interpersonal skills to talk to people and do business deals and like, I don't know. What are your thoughts on that?

Oh, my gosh. This is a great question. I just tweeted about this, like last week, and it was because Alexander Wang was on tvpn, right? And he had said something like, here's the advice I would give every 13 year old. And he said, learn vibe coding. And I remember I was watching it and I was like, huh, I don't know. I don't know if I agree with it. I probably don't. And I had tweeted about it and I would say, like, 90% of the people who reacted to my tweet were like, pretty supportive. They were like, oh, I agree with you. I'll tell you my answer in like a second. But then like 10% of people were like, you're gonna be poor. Like, the advice you're giving to people is going to land them into, you know, poverty. And what I had said was, and I still believe this, and I do also have a 14 year old. The thing that I would encourage, like every person in that age is to sort of study and absorb the things that I think make us uniquely human. And I had to really think about this about, like, hey, what is it? Right? Especially as we start to see these models become better and better at coding. And even think about the example we just gave about Gemini 3 making suggestions, tasteful ones to your landing page that you kind of imagine is like, whoa, that was tasteful. That could have been uniquely human, except now it's doing it. And so the thing that I had said was like, go watch movies, play sports, learn musical instruments, go look at art and see if you feel anything, read.

That's what I told my son too. I was like, as long as you do it in moderation, it's actually good to play games in, watch movies. As long as you're not doing it all the time exclusively, just like culturally, take this in. And there's also little lessons. In a lot of kind of movies, there's little lessons.

Well, I think it's a good kind of foil, right? Because it sort of challenges you to feel one way or another. And I think the reason why I would encourage this is like, you also learn A lot about yourself.

Right.

Like, for example, I hate the Little Mermaid, but I don't think I could have learned it if I didn't watch it. And there's a kind of like a weird reason why I don't like it. But I love, like all these other movies, right, that I watched when I was a kid.

That's one of my favorites when I was a kid.

Are you serious?

We gotta end this, bro.

I was like, yo, how did you leave your family for some dude like, you were looking at from, like, down here? Like, that makes no sense, you know.

I was in love with Ariel and I never understood why I was in love with her. I was like, this is weird, you know, but whatever.

Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. Imagine if kids didn't watch Little Mermaid. They couldn't have this fight, right? Like 10 years from now. So I think, like, doing the things that make you uniquely like a person person and gives you these opportunities to connect with other people. If all we did was vibe code when we were kids, what are we going to talk about? How was your vibe coding when you were 13? It's just very one dimensional. And I understand that a lot of the people in the comments were that's one of the ways to elevate your status in society and make money is get a job. And so I definitely understand that. But I think that's more than anything what will set you apart is who you are as a person. So just like, invest in that.

Yeah, totally. I'm in Japan right now, probably moving back to California, but I've been out here for about three years. And, you know, that's one thing about the schooling and stuff here is like, people just push their kids to constantly be studying. And it's like, how do you have time to find out who you are? Yeah, and that's really important versus just like rote memorization of things that I can do.

Yeah.

And my son obviously wants to, like, spend more time, like, doing new things. You know, I've tried vibe coding stuff with him just to like, so he was aware of it existing. So like, we've tried Replit, we've tried Factory and some other stuff and. And he thought it was so cool to see that. But, you know, now he's like wanting to make, you know, like a Roblox game and things like that.

Exactly, yeah.

And I was like, okay, but first, like, you know, and I'm not great at coding, but I know enough that I can teach him some basics. And so I'm like, okay, first I think they use like Lua for scripting or something. So like, let's look the basics of Lua and like look up, you know, how do you make a basic script? And then later if you use, you know, some kind of tool to help you, you know. Sure, that's cool, but like learn the basics, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No fun. Don't use AI for everything. For sure.

And I actually think, you know, this is, I think the difference between like studying just like coding or vibe coding versus like, hey, take the time to understand like computer science. Right?

Yeah.

How do these things work? Where do they come from? How should I think about building applications? Because even today, like, you know, we talk about this all the time. AI coding is like a really great capability of these models, but it still requires like a person to put these things together.

Yeah.

Particularly for complicated things. And the real boost here is that we can build more and more complicated things that do more sophisticated tasks, you know, but it's like humans and AI together.

Yeah. I think even if kids end up using AI for everything for coding in the future, it's really good for them to have some understanding of like what's actually going on under the hood, even if they don't understand all of it. But my son actually started with like explaining to him CPUs and RAM and things like this and also showing him the command line too. And he was like, what? That's like, you could actually move around the folders and you can change stuff and it's amazing. Just like a graphical interface on top of that kind of. And it's like, you know, he was mind blown to like learn that, you know.

Yeah, yeah. And so that's, that's probably what I would tell every 13 year old is like, go do things that are fun, follow your curiosity and you know, take CS50 at the end. At the end.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. One last fun question I like to ask people. So, you know, so you're in San Francisco, you get into a time machine. Maybe it's like a Bill and Ted kind of time machine, like a, you know, phone booth or something. You get in, you get out, you're in San Francisco, it's 2050. Like what does it look like? Are things dramatically different? Is all waymos and robots or is it, you know, the skyline looks different or is it all mostly the same?

Oh, I love this question. I just watched the Matrix where I was like, oh, I hope it's not that, you know, I don't know if.

You know, actually Crazy story. But, like, I actually partnered with the producer of the Matrix, How Laura got started, Barry Osborne. We were business partners for a year and a half, and we tried to do a crazy studio together. Didn't work out. Covid and other things and movies are very hard. But, yeah. Anyways, I have a crazy connection to the Matrix.

That's crazy. Well, it's one of my favorite movies. I haven't seen it in a while, so I was rewatching it and I was like, you know, easily. Right. It could be this.

Right.

Just thinking about it and, like, kind of thinking that far ahead. But then I thought about one of my other favorite movies, which is Big Hero 6. And I don't know if you've seen it.

Yes.

But Big Hero 6 is so cool because it's like, it's easy. You have young people able to, like, go to schools that are dedicated to building cool technology that they're interested in. You build machines that are just, like, super helpful. And, you know, you just watch Big Hero 6 and you feel great. And I kind of imagine, not that literally, but just, like, how it feels. Right. Which is like, this is how I think it's supposed to feel, which is. It's exciting, it's optimistic.

It's a great movie.

Yeah. Everybody, for the most part, is, like, really helpful and collaborative towards each other. And you can tell, like, the fictional city they live in is called San Fransokyo. I think.

Yeah. That's why I've actually shown it to my son of a bunch of. Because, like, he grew up in San Francisco, but then he's been back and forth to Japan. Yeah. Most of his life. So, like, he loves it. It's like, it's a mixture of his two worlds, you know, and it's a. It's a great movie. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think that to me, if I could be in a time machine and that's what I stepped out of, I'd be perfectly happy.

Yeah, totally. Me too. Well, Risa, this has been a great conversation. Appreciate you coming on. Where should people find you online? And. And also if you want to. I mean, obviously they should go to Hux, you know, hu.xe.com and check it out. But where can they find you online and if there's anything else you want to tell the audience as well. Free offer.

Yeah. I mean, I would love it. If folks want to try hux.com, we also have a Discord server. It's got, I think, 6,000 people in it now, but it's pretty active and people are so helpful. Like, I love. I always tell the people that we have five folks on our team and an extended crew of 6,000 more.

Yeah. That's amazing. That's a great community. 6,000.

It's really great. It's super cool. And on X, where I primarily say random things, it's Rise of Martin. Yeah.

Cool.

If you want my advice for 13 year olds, that's where you can find it.

Yeah. Awesome. All right. That's been awesome. And thank you so much for coming on, Nathan.

Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Yeah.