West as Machine and Finite Capitalism

Remi Carlioz is a French-born creative director, writer, and cultural strategist based in New York. Founder of Studio Paname and Love Machine, he has led campaigns for Lizzo, Rihanna, and PUMA, bridging art, politics, and commerce through a humanistic lens that explores creativity, technology, and cultural transformation. He has a fantastic newsletter, La Nona Ora

So I start all my conversations with the same question, which I borrowed from a friend of mine who helps people tell their story. And it’s such a beautiful question, which is why I stole it. But it’s pretty big, so I kind of over-explain it—the way that I’m doing right now. So before I ask it, I want you to know that you’re in total control, and you can answer or not answer any way that you want to. But the question is: Where do you come from? And again, you can answer any way that you want to.

Well, that’s a loaded question. I think, look, there’s the obvious answer—the very basic one. I’m French. I live in New York City. I work globally. I’m actually not only French now—I’m also a U.S. citizen, which probably matters for our conversation.

So that’s the obvious, but it’s not very helpful. It’s interesting because people ask me, “Where is home?” and I can’t answer that question anymore.

Obviously, I’ve been in the U.S. for 15 years now. I used to answer “Paris,” but New York is not really home, and Paris is not really home anymore.

So I struggle to answer this question. I think if I were to answer—because I was thinking a lot, given the political situation in France and in the U.S., about my own situation—I come from luck.

And I’m saying I come from luck because I was reading this very interesting philosopher called Milanovic, who worked on this concept he called “citizenship premium,” which means that 50 to 60% of your total life income is just determined by where you’re born or your country of citizenship.

And I have this double advantage—being born in France, living in the U.S., and having dual citizenship—which means 60 to 70% of my life income is just determined by the pure luck of being born in France and being both a French and U.S. citizen.

Which, I guess, gives me a moral duty to think about it. I could have been born in Uganda. I could have been born in Bangladesh. And obviously, the citizenship premium for those countries is way lower.

So I come from luck. And it’s very important in my trajectory.

I also think I come—and I used to feel guilty about this, you know, 2,000 years of Judeo-Christian guilt—and I come from a bunch of contradictions. Who said that? Bob Dylan—I come from multitudes.

So I come from the collision between high and low, between theory and practice, between French rationalism and U.S. capitalism. I come from a lot of contradictions, which I feel now are part of me, and I’m fairly comfortable with.

And the American citizenship is relatively recent, is it not?

Yeah, I think I got the citizenship in June or something like that. So it’s like four or five months.

And what was that like, to become a citizen?

Yeah, I mean, you know what? For me, it’s important because I’ve been living here 15 years. But once again, I was in a room when I took the oath with, I don’t know, 100 people, and it was clear that for some people, it was way, way more important. And I’m not saying important morally, but like economically—like, as security, the ability to stay in this country, to be safe. So I had mixed feelings.

It was important to me, to my wife, to my kids. But then I realized that for me, it was less important than for some people. And we can see that if you read the press and look at the news—for some people, it’s actually a matter of life or death.

And it was not to me. But it adds a level of contradiction. To hold two passports adds a level where, when people ask you where is home, it becomes harder to answer.

I love how you said it’s not a matter of life and death, even though it was for people that you saw there. What is it a matter of for you? Why do it at all?

I did it because it made sense after 15 years. I had a green card for five or six years. My kids grew up here. It made sense. And I wanted to be involved. I wanted to have the right to vote.

I don’t know if you saw, but there were elections last November where President Trump was elected for another four years. I submitted my application literally the day after because I wanted to have the right to vote. I wanted the First Amendment and the freedom of speech. And I wanted to be free.

But also, you know, this country gave me a lot—a lot of opportunities, to me, to my kids. And I wanted, in a way, to give back. And it just made sense.

When I say life and death, I’ve worked a lot recently on this notion of border and this notion of frontier. You know, American people love this notion of frontier, and they hate borders, which is interesting because in French, it’s the same word. We don’t have two words. It’s “frontière,” and it means both border and frontier.

In English, you have two words. But I realized that for me, and for people in my situation, I can cross borders. I can use whatever passport I need so easily. I just jump on a plane. I go for the weekend to Paris or for work. I come back. I go to Mexico City. For me, borders are not an issue. It’s immaterial.

Whereas for 90% of the population, a border is literally a wall. So it was interesting for me to think about what “border” means for me, and what this notion of frontier means as well.

Yeah, that’s amazing. The language part of that—I remember that you’ve written. I want to go back. Do you remember as a child what you wanted to be when you grew up—young Remy in France?

Yeah. I wanted first—I was fascinated by the ocean. It didn’t last very long, but I wanted to be—I don’t know the word in English. In France, it’s “océanographe.” Sorry, the guy who goes—like...

It lasted like two years, but I was absolutely captivated by the ocean. I don’t know why.

And then quite early, I think I was involved in politics. Quite early—at 13 or 14. And then I wanted to be a diplomat. My dream was to be an ambassador.

And then I met someone who was fairly high up in the French government who told me, “You need three criteria to be a diplomat, and you have none of them.” The criteria being: coming from money—I don’t. Coming from a noble family in France—I don’t. And having done one of the elite schools in France called L’ENA, which is the equivalent of Harvard or Yale—and I hadn’t.

So he said, “You can try, but you’ll never be a diplomat.” Which was hard to hear, but it was a good piece of advice because at least I didn’t waste my time.

Wow. And you said you were involved in politics at 13. What was your involvement?

Well, I think—I’m sorry—I think I grew up in the ‘80s, and we had a conjunction of very interesting events. And probably the collision of all those political events was very formative to me.

So for example, I was very young, but in ’81, we got the first socialist president—knowing that in Europe, “socialist” is not an insult. It means left-wing. It means caring for a greater good or for public service.

We got the first French president elected in ’81 after 25 years of right-wing presidents—De Gaulle, etc. His name was François Mitterrand. And what he did—and for my family, it was a huge relief. It’s actually the first time—I was 10 years old, something like that—the first time that I drank champagne with my parents.

And then he abolished the death penalty. He decriminalized homosexuality. He introduced a fifth week of time off. He reduced the working week to—I can’t remember exactly, probably 45 hours a week or something like that. So at least the first two years, it was like this new utopia.

Then it became more complicated because the left converted to neoliberalism. But at least the first two years were very hopeful.

Then at the same time, there was this movement in Poland, if you remember, with Lech Wałęsa—the Solidarność movement of unions and strikes in Gdańsk. And I don’t know why—I need to do some research—but it was extremely popular in France. We were all wearing the pin. There was a great movement of solidarity.

At the same time, two or three years after, there was this anti-racist movement called SOS Racisme in France. And then what happened in ’86, the majority lost the election, and it was a right-wing government for the first time in two years—but a very bad one. That’s when the National Front started to gain ground, had members of parliament, and there was repression—very hardliners on security, and so on.

So those five years were very formative to my political and intellectual beliefs. And I guess that’s where I started to be involved in politics.

Yeah. And what are you doing now? Catch us up—sort of, where are you now, and what are you doing for work? I know it’s a big leap from there to where you are now.

Yeah, yeah. I basically sold my soul to capitalism when I came to the U.S.

So yeah, I spent 10 or 15 years in politics, and 10 or 15 years working with brands. And your question is interesting because six months ago, it would have been very easy for me to answer. For the past 10 years, I was basically a creative director in-house—mostly global creative director for Puma, then at Crocs, Hedo, then at Blue Bottle Coffee, then at Fabletics. So it was very easy to answer, “I’m a creative director.”

Since June, I took a different turn, and now I actually don’t know how to answer this question. Because I’m back to—I contain multitudes. Or I’m the b*****d child of many contradictions.

I still have my creative and brand strategy agency—that’s doing okay for some clients. I co-created with partners in France a global information warfare agency to fight disinformation in France. I spend 50% of my time heading strategy and being chairman of the advisory board of a major philanthropic fund against antisemitism here in the U.S. And then I co-created, with partners in Portland, Oregon, an AI content studio.

So I guess that’s a lot. I guess I would need to think about what’s the red thread—and talk to my shrink—but I’m comfortable with that now. I think, back to your question, I don’t know exactly where home is, but I know that I’m very good in all the spaces between things. And I feel—and I felt very guilty or unsure about that for many years. Now I’m very comfortable with it, and it’s how my brain operates. I’m very happy to be in between—in spaces in between.

Yeah. As much as this space doesn’t really have any labels or titles, when do you feel like you first discovered that it was a way you could make a living?

I think by accident. I was reflecting on this imposter syndrome that a lot of creative people say they have. And in a way, I did have it. I also think it’s kind of like false or fake modesty sometimes.

It’s very easy to say, “Oh, I have imposter syndrome,” but at the same time, I’m global creative director for a $5 billion brand.

I remember precisely—I got let go in June from my previous job. And what I would have done previously is go to LinkedIn straight away, update my resume, do some b******t post trying to sound smart, send 100 resumes, and get two answers.

But I woke up one morning and consciously decided I didn’t want to work for Corporate America—at least not in-house—because the violence of capitalism really impacted me mentally, psychologically, and my family. And I was like, I don’t have to play this game.

I still have corporate clients, but I’m on my own. I decide. I don’t have a boss. It’s not easy. It’s more challenging, but it’s also way more rewarding.

So I genuinely remember this morning when I was like, “F*** it. I’m not going back. I’m going to do my own things. Let’s see if it works.” And I was lucky enough—it works.

I’m curious about what to ask now. Maybe I’m curious about the violence of capitalism—you mentioned it. What were you thinking of when you said that? As a creative director, as somebody who works in this space?

Yeah. Look, I think—it’s a weird thing. Because obviously, coming from my position—I discussed what Milanovic called the citizenship premium—I’ve highly benefited from capitalism, or from neoliberalism. I live in a nice apartment in Brooklyn. I’m a wannabe hipster. I benefit—I highly benefit—from capitalism. My kids did, my wife did.

So it’s a bit ambivalent, the relationship I have with it. I don’t want to abolish capitalism. I don’t want that. But I think there are ways to make it more human—like in Northern Europe, like in France.

In France, when you’re fired, you have a three-month notice period. You have an adult conversation where you sit with your boss to understand the decision. Then you have some kind of unemployment wages, some kind of coaching. I’m not saying it’s perfect, but at least it’s human.

Here, after spending 10 hours a day working at a job—spending more time with your colleagues than with your family—you’re let go in 15 minutes. They basically cancel your life from their system. You lose your email access within two minutes, and your colleagues don’t call you back. Not out of malice—it’s just because they move on. Because you’re not useful anymore.

Compared to other countries in which I’ve worked, the violence of capitalism here—which, by the way, is probably very much rooted in slavery, which we don’t have in the same way in France—we had other problems. France was a very bad colonialist country. But the second you start looking at individuals like goods—where you can put a price tag on them—it has consequences on how you look at value.

That’s the first part. The second part—I think in America, there’s a tendency—do you know the McNamara fallacy? Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War. He was trained as an accountant, I think, at GM or somewhere. He didn’t mean to, but he was counting everything in the Vietnam War on a spreadsheet—the number of deaths, the body count, etc. At the same time, he was losing the war.

It became the McNamara fallacy: if you can’t count it, it doesn’t matter.

I think that became foundational to American capitalism. Everything has to be quantified. If it’s not quantified, it doesn’t have value.

Whereas—at least from my perspective—everything that matters to me is not quantifiable. Honestly, when I’m on my deathbed—not too soon, hopefully—what will matter to me is not what’s quantifiable. It’s my wife, my kids, an artwork, a landscape in Tuscany, the smile of my first child—or second child, sorry if she’s listening.

All of this—you can’t put a price tag on it. And that really matters. So yeah, the violence of capitalism really wore me down, year after year, here. France isn’t perfect. It’s just more human in how we deal with individuals.

Yeah. Yeah. That’s amazing. I really appreciate you sharing all that. And I know that—I mean, that sounds—it’s a horrible experience.

No, it’s not. Sorry to interrupt you, Peter. It’s not a horrible experience. I mean, the American Dream worked for me. But I got swallowed. I got imprisoned. I lost my freedom.

Have you been on LinkedIn recently?

Yeah.

I mean, the level of b******t on LinkedIn—the quotes, the self-congratulations—it’s like LinkedIn is probably today the epitome of what neoliberalism has become. And it’s frightening.

So when you said, “It must have been terrible”—no. I was privileged and lucky enough, and the American Dream worked for me. It’s just that at my age, after a certain time—sorry—it was not for me anymore. It was too violent.

And I was like, why do I have to put myself through this? And I can’t even imagine what it means for most people, for whom the American Dream is not working.

Yeah. I appreciate the correction very much. Tell me more about what you see. I want to hear more about your diagnosis of LinkedIn—what you see when you go there.

I mean, it’s everything I hate. It’s just purely performative. Including for myself. I realized that when I have to post—and I try to post less and less—but sometimes I have to, because it’s an important professional network. There’s nothing authentic. There’s nothing genuine.

There’s this fake vulnerability. Everyone’s fishing for compliments. Now it’s 90% AI-generated. It’s just the same quotes, the same... Yeah. “So my routine is: I wake up at 4 a.m., I’m doing 100 squats. Then I read and write my gratitude journal for two hours. Now it’s 6 a.m., I take care of my kids for two hours.” It’s just—first, it’s false. And then it’s b******t.

It’s not helpful. But also—it’s like, come on. Can’t people just be like—I was going to say “themselves,” but maybe the problem is they are themselves. I don’t know. But like—let me know the last time you saw something interesting on LinkedIn.

I mean, something that—like, “Huh. That made me think differently.” Yeah. It can be interesting from a business standpoint. “This company acquired this company.” “This company released this new ad campaign.” Okay. You look at it. So I still go on LinkedIn from time to time. But it’s some kind of b******t generator. Yes. Quotes always from the same people. It’s tiring.

Yes. I love too—you reminded me. So, my daughter goes to a Waldorf school. And so I found myself at some lecture, I think a while ago, with a woman in that community—sort of a matriarch. And you’re familiar with Waldorf and Rudolf Steiner? Do you know him?

Yep.

And so I always remember—she had this quote, which I paraphrase, but she said something to the effect that Steiner had written these observations about the West and the East. And he said about the West—that it wanted to be a machine when it grew up. That was what I took from what she said. I don’t know what she was saying about it, but I thought about that.

And I think about that a lot. As somebody who—I love talking to people. I’m a qualitative researcher. It’s a human experience to understand everything. All the value happens in these qualitative interactions. So I’m always looking to make the case for the qualitative.

And you just—I mean, you just articulated perfectly the terror of the quantification of everything. And I just want to sort of celebrate how clear you were about it, because I totally think it’s the case. And AI only seems to sort of manifest it at another level—you know what I mean? Where we still—we just have this instinct.

And maybe there’s something about the articulation—that it’s an aspiration. There’s something aspirational about this mechanization that we have in the West. What does that do? What do you make of that?

So what do you mean—when Steiner said, “building a machine”—what do you think he meant? Or what do you think your daughter meant by “a machine”? Because a machine can be very positive. It can be very negative. It can break you. So—what kind of machine?

Yeah, well—it was a woman in the community, not my daughter. It was a woman in the community who was talking at a lecture for parents. And what I took her to be saying—was that Rudolf Steiner said the West kind of wants to be a machine when it grows up. And maybe he was writing between the wars. Maybe he was—I thought about it as maybe just this industrialization of the civilization in the West.

Yeah. And maybe sometimes, unfortunately, it’s a Rube Goldberg machine. But yeah, it’s interesting. I don’t know if it answers your question, but obviously I thought a lot about this. And I read a lot about this as well. And as you know, I have my own newsletter.

I think what’s interesting in the West—or at least in this current neoliberal model—is that, and you can see it with President Trump right now—there’s a French philosopher who just wrote a book called Finitude Capitalism. So, the fact that capitalism is—do you say “finite” or “finite”? F-I-N-I-T-E.

Finite.

Finite, sorry. Capitalism is finite right now. So for the past 300 years, to use a very stereotypical analogy, we would grow the pie, with the hope that everybody could have a piece of the pie by growing it. But then what we realized, for the past 30 years, is that the pie is finite.

Whether it’s in terms of natural resources, or people, or whatever—it’s now finite. There is no new territory to explore. That’s probably why Musk wants to go to Mars. So the only way to grow the pie is not to share the common goods or the resources with your neighbor—it’s to steal it.

It’s to literally steal the pizza slice from your neighbor. Meaning, “We want to annex Greenland.” Or “Canada is going to be the 51st state.” Or “We’re going to take over the Panama Canal.” So back to violence—now that we can’t grow the pie, you have to steal the pizza slice from your neighbor. And it’s pretty brutal. Because it’s back to mercantilism and imperialism.

And that’s why some of the right-wing people admire—what was the name of that president? Edward McKinney, or whatever? At the end of the 19th century.

McKinley.

Yeah, McKinley. So I think it adds another level of violence. Rather than sharing the resources with everyone in an equal way—and once again, sorry to come back to that—this citizenship premium I benefited from is a pure accident. A pure coincidence. Pure luck.

So if you don’t realize that, why would you share common goods or resources with other people? You’re like, “I’m fine stealing the pizza slice and eating it myself.” So in a finite world, this machine that is breaking a lot of people—it completely redefines how we need to interact, in terms of sharing resources and wealth, and this notion of solidarity.

I’m looking at my notes and reminded of your—you mentioned your newsletter. What’s the—can you talk about the inspiration for the newsletter? And the name itself, I think, has a meaning.

It’s called La Nona Ora, which in Italian means “the ninth hour.” And it’s—I’m a huge fan of a contemporary artist called Maurizio Cattelan. He’s also, by the way, a creative director, a very brilliant creative director, but he’s mostly known for being a contemporary artist. Very well known. Almost as a joke, you know—he’s the guy who taped a banana at Art Basel on the wall and sold it for $300,000 or something like that.

But he did a piece where the Pope—I think it was John Paul II—is hit by a meteorite. Meteorite, meteorite. I never know how to say “I” or “E” in English. Meteorite. On the ground.

I saw this piece the first time in Italy, and then in France, and so on. And it’s basically a long story about how to question—constantly question—the seats of power and the systems of power. And so my newsletter, in a very pretentious way—but I’m French, so I’m allowed to be pretentious—is looking at, through language, through art, through economic models, through everything, at the systems of power. And how language is a power, how art or propaganda can be a power.

Because—back to your question about capitalism and a machine—what’s very specific about the U.S. compared to France is that everything is very individual in a way. In the U.S., your success is individual and your failures are individual. So if you fail in America, it’s because you didn’t work hard enough, or it’s because you’re bad, or it’s because you’re stupid. Which can be true, but it also completely cancels the system—and how people, what people place and room in these systems. And it’s not true. But it’s the same when you’re successful—it’s individual. It’s because you’re a genius, and it’s because you’re smart, and so on. Forgetting about the fact that most of the innovation and most success came from publicly funded labs and universities. And what about the roads, and what about childcare, and what about—

So there is no myth of the lone genius. As smart as people are, they are part of an ecosystem. So the fact that American capitalism individualizes failure and individualizes success made me think about the system they’re part of. Because if you don’t look at the system, I think the picture you have of society is only partial.

Yes. I mean, this makes me want to ask you about—maybe explore—the sort of nameless role that you play in between things, right? It’s sort of a banal question though, but when we think about what is the role of creativity, that you can be doing what you do in the context of antisemitism in the U.S., and that you can be doing it also about disinformation in France, that you can be doing it about coffee or sneakers—like, what are you doing? Or what’s the role of what you do in all of those contexts? What’s the role of creativity in combating antisemitism? What’s the role of creativity in fighting disinformation?

Well, if I had the answer, I would be very, very happy—and probably very rich as well. So that’s literally the question you’re asking. It’s not banal at all. It’s literally what keeps me up at night.

I want to believe that for everything you mentioned—whether it’s a brand campaign for Blue Bottle Coffee or Puma, or whether it’s fighting antisemitism, or whether it’s misinformation—I want to believe that creativity more and more, by the way, has a huge role to play. Especially because of the algorithm world we’re living in. So, you know, it’s harder and harder to cut through the noise, to rig the algorithm, to play with the algorithm. And I think one of the ways is creativity.

You constantly have to be more creative than your competitor, or your adversary, or your enemy—because you’re losing. And then the larger question is, like, what is creativity? And I have a fairly loose definition of this because, once again, I come from high and low. So creativity is not just Mark Rothko and David Hockney and, you know, Philip Roth. It’s also the memes. You know, a meme can cut through the noise, and can be viral, and can be extremely brilliant.

The problem is, when you’re fighting against antisemitism—or, as you might have understood by now, I’m fairly left-wing—is like, what kind of tools do you adopt to counter what your opponent or adversary is using? You know? And it’s hard. It’s very, very hard.

I very much admire—I think it’s Michelle Obama who said—“When they go low, we go high.” And on paper, it’s very noble. In an age of algorithm and TikTok and misinformation, does it work, really? When they go low, you go high? I don’t know. I don’t have the answer. That’s something that really, morally and in terms of efficiency, keeps me up at night. Because yes, I want to keep my moral principles, but also—will I be able to create a piece of creative that’s going to be picked up by the algorithm by, you know, “we go high”? I don’t have the answer.

But for example, when it comes to antisemitism—the Jewish population is 0.2% of the 8 billion population in the world. So Jews are outnumbered, by definition. On social media, everywhere. So if you’re not creative, you don’t have a voice. You simply don’t have a voice.

And it’s the same—I don’t want to compare antisemitism with anything that’s less serious or less important—but it’s the same when you’re a challenger brand. You know, if you’re creating a challenger DTC brand in the same space as Apple, Intel, or Nike—if you’re not creative, you have absolutely no way of cutting through the noise. So I think it’s very interesting.

My last point is, I’ve always had a very—always, I mean it’s been two years—but a complex relationship with AI. Because, you know, a lot of my peers, or including my own job and so on, are threatened with AI. But I kind of changed my mind.

It’s very dangerous in the way it is used today. And it raises a lot of ethical questions. But for me, it’s amazing. Because my entire career, people told me, “Remy, we love you, but it’s too conceptual,” or whatever. And now, with AI, the only thing that matters is to be too conceptual. Because we all have the same tools. So we can all do the same. It’s dead easy to create a 10-second video or an image that’s almost perfect and so on. So now everything comes back to creativity as a new potentiality.

Because we all have the same tools. So it’s all about storytelling, script writing, being smart, and being too conceptual. So if I were pretentious—or if I were in a session with my shrink—I won’t. Not with AI, but I won’t. Because the only thing that matters now is concept and execution.

Yeah. Can you say more about this? And you’re talking about—is it Love Machine? Is that what it is?

Yeah, it’s Love Machine. It was created by a friend of mine. Actually, his client was at Puma. He had an amazing creative studio called Juliet Zulu in Portland, working with Nike and big brands. Then we created another creative agency together during COVID called Never Concept. And then we reunited this year around Love Machine.

It’s just like—we’re both creative directors and brand strategists. How can we use AI in an ethical way, but as a new way to unlock creative possibilities? And it’s pretty amazing, I can tell you. What AI allows me to do personally in my work every day is to focus on things that matter.

I used to spend way too much time on paid media and creating assets for paid media. Now I can do that in one hour, because it’s dead easy and it should be systematized. And so now I can spend my brain and my time on what makes a difference. How can I fight misinformation? How can I do something cool for a brand that has not been done before?

And I don’t have any technical or budget limitations. When you can create an amazing 10-second video in five hours for $500—or zero, by the way, because it’s just our brains—the marginal cost, it’s a game changer. How can you use this power to move really in a direction that matters, whether it’s for causes absolutely paramount like antisemitism, but also for brands, or for nation branding, or other things, or to fight misinformation online?

Creativity is, to me at least from my vantage point, the answer to this.

And did you have a—was there a turning point for you with generative AI? Or a moment where you went from “I don’t know about this” to—? Or were you—how has your relationship with it evolved or shifted?

Oh, you know, it’s like—once again, I feel you’re measuring this morning, Peter. My dad was raised—how do you say in English—Jesuit. My dad was very—yeah, he was raised Jesuit. Being raised Jesuit, which was a key part of my childhood, means you are literally wearing the burden of 2,000 years of Judeo-Christian guilt on your shoulder. Like everything is about guilt.

You’re not allowed to be happy. You’re not allowed to be sad. It’s guilt, and guilt, and guilt, and guilt.

My dad is doing better right now because he stopped believing. But I had to deal with that. And so AI is the same thing. At the beginning, I felt very guilty.

She’s rubbish. It’s going to displace and cancel a lot of jobs—which, by the way, it’s going to. It’s going to change also the systems of power between the West and the Global South. And so it has a huge impact on the environment.

And I know all of that. But I’m not fatalist. You can either ignore AI and say, “I hate it”—but it’s kind of a losing proposal because it’s here and it’s only the beginning—or you can try to use it in purposeful ways.

I was very intrigued and very impacted by the way the internet evolved. You know, you and I, 20 years ago, the internet was still a place of freedom, and it was magical. And, you know, the HTML and the rabbit hole—and then you could still jump from one place to another. And then, you know, until 2011 with the Arab Spring, where Facebook and some social networks had a real role. And now it’s like—to quote this guy I fully admire, Yanis Varoufakis, who was a former Minister of Finance in Greece—all of this is concentrated and held by five techno-feudalists who have total monopoly on all of these social networks, AI, and so on.

But either you give up on AI and stay in your cabin somewhere in the woods, or you say, “I’m smart enough, I have enough experience to try to shape it.” I’m not pretentious enough to think I’m going to shape Anthropic or OpenAI, but at least I can use it in a moral, creative, interesting way that can move the needle.

I’m interested—we’ve got just a few minutes left—but you described that as guilt. Your reaction, the rejection or the anxiety about AI, was guilt?

Yeah. Well, it is guilt. Because if I look at my teams over the years—a lot of those jobs I had in my previous team—I had a person who was a proofreader and a copy editor. Their job is probably going to disappear very soon. Entry-level graphic designers, or people who were doing paid media assets—that’s probably going to disappear pretty soon. CRM managers. I was looking at my team—I had 12 or 15 people on my team—and I was like, s**t, probably 6 to 10 people won’t have a job. Maybe they’ll have different jobs, but it’s going to be very brutal, once again.

So I felt guilt because I won’t lose my job. I’m actually using AI to my benefit, and it makes my work better and I can work faster. And so once again, it’s about privilege. It’s not a citizenship premium anymore—it’s a skills premium, or it’s a job premium, or it’s an experience premium. So I felt guilty that I was benefiting from AI, while a lot of people on my team probably won’t have a job in a year from now. And at the same time, you have people in the Global South who are paid $1 a day to make AI function the way we use it—when we ask a question to ChatGPT.

Yeah. One last question. Maybe I’m just curious to hear you re-articulate what you already articulated about high concept. But I can’t remember how you phrased it—that because of AI, it makes the conceptual... And there’s this logic that somehow slips—it always evades me—this idea that, maybe I just didn’t study enough business, but that the new technology comes in and it eliminates all the stuff in the middle, but it creates all this opportunity either at the fringe or at the high end. You know what I mean? Can you tell me what that looks like for you?

Look, and that’s why—I come from contradiction. There is a political answer and then there is a business answer.

The political answer is always the same: people like me are going to benefit from AI. People from Wall Street benefited from the 2008 crisis—none of them went to jail, they’re doing fine. So people are—and I’m far from being part of the top 1%—but I’m part of an elite that’s going to benefit from AI, that’s going to benefit from globalization, that’s going to benefit from crossing borders.

So that’s the political answer. And I don’t have guilt anymore because I think guilt is a waste of time. I have more of a moral responsibility to act and to use it in a meaningful way.

The business answer—the creative answer—is that, yeah, it’s a complete, absolute game changer. All the limits I had—budget limits to do a photo shoot at $250,000, or all the physical, financial, technical limits I had to push a concept or to bring a concept from inception to execution—I don’t have those limits anymore.

So it’s pure creativity at its core. You can do whatever you want. Like, literally, whatever you want. There are no limits anymore. And so how do you use this creativity? Yeah, to make money, to win deals, to do brand campaigns—but also to fight antisemitism, to fight disinformation.

Or, you know—that’s absolutely captivating: how you can use this tool.

Remi, I want to thank you so much for accepting my invitation. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you.