Data Scientist Hilary Mason on AI and the Future of Fiction

0:00I think the future of entertainment looks really different and that it actually doesn't matter where the idea begins.

0:11That's Hilary Mason, the co-founder and CEO of Hidden Door. They use generative AI to turn any work of fiction into an online social role-playing game. Our Rich Lomelo talks to Mason about all that this entails, including their Pride and Prejudice adaptation and parallels to Napster.

0:35And let's kind of jump in where we are today. As I mentioned at the top, you're the CEO and the co-founder of Hidden Door. Tell us about Hidden Door. Tell us about the thought process behind starting it, what it does, and what your role is there. Yeah, so what we do at Hidden Doors, we partner with people who create worlds through movies, books, TV shows, or online communities, all of that really wonderful world building energy. And we create ways for the fans to role play in those worlds. We do use AI and machine learning to make that possible. And our fans get to come in, create their own characters, and sort of role play their own stories with a really light stat system where they get challenged, surprised.

1:23They get to be creative. And it's all within the rules of the world, the rules of VIP. And if there are characters from those worlds that appear, we enforce all the rules around how those characters ought to behave. So this is a way for fans to sort of fanfic as a game, stay excited about the thing that they love. I don't know about you, but when I finish reading a book, I usually have 20 different ideas for different plots or corners of that world I would have loved to explore. And to really do that in a way that reinforces and supports the authors and creators they admire. That's what we do at Hidden Door, but there is a long, long story about how we got here.

2:10Love to hear it. Absolutely. That was question number two I have for you. I mean, the abbreviated version is that I've been working in this area of tech that is now called generative AI and a more broad take on it for a very long time. I went to grad school for machine learning. I've been a computer science professor, realized I was very mediocre at that, but I really love building things and I love building products for people. And I ended up moving back to New York City, which is where I am right now, also where I grew up and joining a company called Bitly, which was just starting at the time.

2:48And we made short links on social media before social media was really a thing. And I had the job there of chief scientist, which by the way, is the best job title anyone can ever have because you have no real responsibilities other than to invent the future business opportunity for the company. So Bitly was just short links on social media. And my job was to figure out how to use that data set to create a business is the most fun I've ever had. But that led me to start exploring, you know, language modeling and figuring out what people were paying attention to across the social web around the world.

3:30We built a lot of cool stuff. Then I founded a company called Fast Forward Labs in 2014. And our very first project, we did our own applied AI research was on language generation. and we built a prototype that wrote real estate ads. And you would put in structured data like a two-bedroom apartment near the park, and it would write the ad where it would be like, oh, this sun-filled home near transit will be your family's escape. And that really got me thinking about the power and the, let's say, the perils of generating text and transforming text. And I'll skip a bunch of stuff that happened in the middle.

4:12But Cloudera acquired Fast Forward. We built a bunch of scaled enterprise applications using embeddings and text modeling that is essentially computable ways to understand and model information. And the whole time I was thinking, you know, all of the things that are limitations in doing this in an enterprise environment with, you know, standards for facts and things like that are assets. If we think about storytelling, if we think about creating a palette of options and letting people pick the ones or rewrite them or sort of continue gaming adventures. And so I started Hidden Door with my co-founder, Matt Brandwein, five years ago with the idea that we were just at the beginning of the technical window.

5:05And this was well before ChatGPT, where we might be able to build a product like this. And let's see where we can go with it. And now here we are five years later. We have a product in early access. If anyone wants to play it, go to hiddendoor.co and sign up for the wait list. We'll get you on in. and it's been really incredible to see it all come together. So let's say I finished reading a book and I think, oh man, I would love to kind of take this to the next level. And I kind of contact you folks at Hidden Door. Do I come to you with the idea and we kind of figure out how to do things or do we get in touch with the author or the show creator?

5:42We work with the author and the creators and we have signed agreements with them to build games in their world. So we really want to do this from a place of respect and essentially building more value for them, helping them encourage their communities and fans to stay involved in the world. And so that's the strategy we've decided on. And so for any world where we have that kind of partnership, you can come in as a player and start to make your own characters and tell your own stories, which you can then share and other people can build on as well. Okay. So it's almost like from the perspective of the author or the creator, this is a chance to engage directly with fans and a way to also presumably another revenue stream for them.

6:32Exactly. That's the sales pitch. Keep your fans active. We respect all the rules of the world. This is not just an LLM wrapper. And it gives the fans a way to engage that is sort of blessed. It's real. And where they also have the ability to be creative and have their own adventures. Support for the show comes from Fundrise. For the past 70 years, there's been a room in finance most people couldn't enter. a room where you could have invested in some of the biggest names in tech, companies like Airbnb and Uber before their multi-billion dollar IPOs. I'm talking about venture capital. Fundrise recently took a sledgehammer to those closed doors by launching a venture capital product that's available to anyone.

7:17Their mission is to give everyone the chance to invest in the best tech and AI companies before they go public. You can visit fundrise.com slash fool to check out Fundrise's venture portfolio and get in early today. All investments involve risk, including the potential loss of principle. Past performance is not indicative of future results. This is a paid advertisement. So obviously Hidden Door is bringing together storytelling, authors, creators, as well as, you know, kind of through the lens of AI. Yes. It hasn't always been the case that those two domains are seen as complementary. So what's, what is the, I mean, it sounds like we kind of know what the pitch to the authors is, but do you ever get pushback?

7:55Like, oh, no, I don't want my baby presented in that way. Well, not that. Not that thing. But we do get, I talk to skeptical people all the time. And the skepticism is right. So if you look at the market and you look at what most people are running around excited about, they're saying things like, oh, we don't need authors anymore. I'm just going to, like, ask ChatGPT or I'm going to ask Claude and they're going to write the next novel for me. And that's not true. And it's not what any of us, I think any of us want. It's not what matters. But yes, I talk to skeptics all the time. And if we really think about where that comes from, it comes from the fact that many of these large language models have been built off of these, the author's work without their permission or even their knowledge in many cases.

8:47Like I've written a book or two that they're in there too. I don't mind in the sense that it's not how I make my living. But if you have written, if you've written anything on fool.com, it's probably in there as well. Right. And that is not necessarily right. And so there is a real ethical and principled reason for authors to be skeptical. And it is because of the actual behavior of many of the companies in the market, how a lot of the tech is built. And I have to say here, not ours at hidden door, but many of the people in the market are doing that. And how would they know the difference unless they talk to us?

9:30And I think it's one of the most important questions of the moment is sort of separating out the technology itself and then thinking about sort of the socio-technical way that we relate to the technology, thinking about what our values are and how do we build tech and businesses that align with our values and, you know, sort of are honest about where the data comes from, what we're using it for, what transformations happen. And so you could also say that I myself am a skeptic of a lot of the generative AI market. If that's not obvious, I'll just say it out loud and clearly, because I think it's gone in a less than ideal direction.

10:13But I'm trying very much through our work at Hidden Door and our work with authors and creators to show a way that it could be done that is respectful and is values aligned and is revenue aligned as well. Because, you know, values are one thing, but it's important to put your money where your values are. Yeah. And this isn't a perfect analogy, but as I kind of read about Hidden Door, I almost thought this almost brings me back, you know, call it 25 or so years to when Napster came on the scene. And, oh, it's this great chance to create community and we can all access the music with one big flaw.

10:45The musicians got nothing for it. You know, I got to build up my music list, my music catalog or library, whatever you want to call it. But, you know, the Doobie Brothers don't profit from that. You've kind of taken that model and said, hey, we can get you compensated also. Well, and I would say that that is a good analogy. But then you think about like, I remember Napster. It was awesome from a customer point of view, like any song you wanted was there. And there were, you know, sort of recordings of live shows you couldn't get any other way. And we have nothing like that today. And also musicians don't make enough money for their music.

11:21I think this is an example of how not to sort of architect an industry around a technical change. And hopefully we can do better this time. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It seems like you guys have figured out a way to take that great idea and figure out a way to make the creator a beneficiary. We're trying. And I think it is the right way, whether we figure it out or someone else does. I think we need people out in the market building businesses and trying to create examples of that. They say leadership isn't just about where you're going. It's about the conviction it takes to get there. For those who demand the world and possess the drive to claim it, there's a vehicle of equal distinction.

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12:43Command attention and experience ultimate luxury in motion. Exclusive offers are available now. Explore further at RangeRover.com. What's the most kind of surprising thing that you found about building a company around, you know, kind of generative storytelling? I would say the most surprising thing is more around what stories matter to our players in that I think, you know, I spend a bunch of time in the gaming industry and there's this thread where people are like, oh, you know, generative AI and AI tech lets us have infinite games. And we've discovered through our own testing, nobody actually wants that.

13:20The things people want are their character, their adventure, and then they want moments that are the same as what everyone else is experiencing. So they have something to talk about. And our players, I should say, they're not usually people who would say, oh, I'm a gamer. But they are people who read and they're people who watch TV and they're people for whom media is a big part of their social life. and I'm one of these people too. Like I talked to my friends about books. That's how I find out what I should be reading. And for this group of people, at least having infinite stories that are experienced alone is not that interesting, but having a shared point in time or a shared story or the ability to share it and say like, Hey, how did you meet, you know, Mr.

14:10Darcy and Pride and prejudice or like I got him to be a vampire. Like, did you get that? Those are the things that are actually meaningful. And so that was one that, um, it did surprise me because there is a lot of energy going into like, you know, infinite game worlds. And like, actually that, that isn't what matters. What matters are the moments that are shared between our experiences. Cause it gives us something to talk about and relate to each other about. Sure. And do you find yourself, How has Hidden Doors kind of realized, is it more books or shows or movies that are generating the most interest, the most engagement?

14:50So for us, it's both. We were really fortunate to do an adaptation of The Crow based on the graphic novel, but it was around the time the movie came out last summer. And that was really popular and remains super popular. We also have, you know, a Pride and Prejudice adaptation, which, again, it's a 200-year-old novel, but we all still love it, right? And it's something that we share culturally. So I can't say it's one or the other. And I actually think that one of the most interesting places this tech will be influential in entertainment is in breaking down the differences between, say, the publishing industry, the gaming industry, the movie industry.

15:33Because each of those industries is still architected around what it took to produce the artifacts. Like film is financed. Careers are built. Roles, job titles exist because of what it takes to make a film. And then you have publishing, which is really different than the film industry. Video games, different yet again. TV is a little bit of a mix between film and books. But like, I think we will see a slow transformation in entertainment broadly, because what this tech is really great at is adapting information in one format to another, in one place to another. It's not creative. It doesn't come up with good stuff.

16:19But given somebody's direction and sort of an original world to start with, it can do something interesting. interesting. And so I know you didn't ask me for like a big long-term hot take, but I gave you one anyway. I think fundamentally it doesn't matter where the creativity starts. And I think there are a lot of people out there with world building talent who have not written that book yet, or who are building online communities around their, their worlds, who will be able to find an audience and build that audience because of this tech and this change. So I think the future of entertainment looks really different and that it actually doesn't matter where the idea begins.

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