Rick Rubin on AI, Creativity, and The Way of Code
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So many people I know who use AI ask it questions and think that the results that they get back is the answer. And it seems like people are more interested in getting an answer that can allow them to stop thinking about the question than really finding out what the real answer is. I'm so interested in what AI really can know based on what is and not what we tell it we think it is.
For our summer replay series, we're bringing back one of our favorite conversations from the past year. As AI becomes part of more creative work, one question keeps resurfacing. What still belongs uniquely to humans? Few people have spent more time thinking about creativity than legendary music producer Rick Rubin. In this conversation, Rick joins Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Anjini Midha, and me to discuss the way of code, AI as a creative tool, vibe coding, and why technology may change how we create without changing where great ideas come. The discussion ranges from music and entrepreneur
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We are here today to discuss Rick's new album, the way of code. Rick, what is the way of code?
The way of code is a book about vibe coding. And it's a book about vibe coding by way of a 3,000 year old spiritual text called the Tao De Jing written by Lao Tzu. It's interesting. The idea of a 3,000 year old wisdom teaching combined with cutting edge technology. That's what The Way of Code is. And the subtitle is The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding. And I like the idea of The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding, considering the term vibe coding is maybe ten weeks old. I felt we now have the timeless art of something ten weeks old is interesting to me.
It's weird to hear you call it a book because when you first sent me the link and I started reading it, it felt like I was using software. So why do you call it a book versus a website or an app or the many other things you could have described it as?
Well, I wrote it as a book. It started as a book And then I invited Jack Clark onto the Tetragrammaton podcast. And I had just finished the book. And after the podcast, said, I wrote this book. Do you wanna check it out? And he looked at it and he said, I feel like there's a way we could do something with this, build it into a website, and have a way to demonstrate vibe coding within the website. So that's how the website came about.
Ah, gotcha. Well, it it feels kind of poetic for it to be vibe coding and have built in vibe coding with each verse.
The idea of originally, the Anthropic people said, could you give us a list of prompts to create the art? And I said, I think the art would be best created using the text of the book to create the art. And then we can give it mods to modify the art. And we'll suggest some mods, but you can also make up your own mods. So you can say, I want it to look like it was painted by Cezanne, or I want it to look like it's melting, or I want it to look like what's the Nordic version look like? And it'll do those things. Or what's the Technicolor version, or make it spin fast or make it spin slow. You can
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