<\/p>\n
\ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \uc5d0 \uc624\uc2e0 \uac83\uc744 \ud658\uc601\ud569\ub2c8\ub2e4. \ucf5c\ub4dc\ucf5c<\/em>, the podcast where we dive deep into the groundbreaking ideas behind Harvard Business School case studies. Artificial intelligence is no longer just helping people create. It\u2019s beginning to replicate some of the most valuable forms of human expertise. As AI systems become capable of reproducing our voices, faces, writing, and even professional judgment, a new set of questions comes into focus. Who owns the digital version of you? If your experience and talent can be transformed into data, who should control it, profit from it, or decide how it\u2019s used? Today\u2019s conversation explores the intersection of technology, economics, labor markets, and intellectual property through the lens of one company working at the forefront of AI-generated media. We\u2019ll examine why Hollywood may offer an unexpected blueprint for the future of work and what that could mean for every profession.<\/p>\n \uc624\ub298\uc740 \ucf5c\ub4dc\ucf5c<\/em>, we\u2019ll discuss the case, \u201cMetaphysic AI: Rethinking the Value of Human Expertise,\u201d with Professor Zoe Cullen. I\u2019m your host, Brian Kenny, and you\u2019re listening to \ucf5c\ub4dc\ucf5c<\/em> on the HBR Podcast Network. Zoe Cullen studies the design of labor markets and the choices of employers and labor platforms that affect matters of public interest. That sounds like a perfect range of things for this conversation. Zoe, welcome.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Thank you for having me.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: You\u2019re a first-time visitor to \ucf5c\ub4dc\ucf5c<\/em>, but given the kind of work that you\u2019re doing at the School, I suspect we\u2019ll try to get you back on the podcast at sometime soon. So I think this will be a super interesting conversation because most people saw\u2026 The video that it opens up with, that the case opens up with, was really the first taste that a lot of people had about AI image generation and just how realistic it could be. And I think it was both thrilling, but also a little scary for people to see that because the implications are big and this case touches on so many of those. What drew you to the story? I\u2019m wondering why you decided to write a case about Metaphysic and what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Well, I\u2019m so happy you started with that clip because that clip tells the whole story. That clip shows how AI deepfakes don\u2019t really require the consent of the creator, especially for someone like Tom Hanks, who has a huge amount of public footage out there. So Metaphysic is this AI deepfake platform that operates within the norms and contracts of Hollywood and created a movie, \u201cHere,\u201d which did actually also use Tom Hanks, but used it with his full consent and that came at a very high price. So I wanted to understand why is a company doing this? How is it good for business and how does it reflect on the contracts that Hollywood has put in place over the last 100 years?<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Okay. But what\u2019s your cold call when you start the discussion? I\u2019m curious.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: The class actually starts with Suno AI, the music industry.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Oh, yeah.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So students will produce a clip, usually about one minute long of their original music creation having explored Suno, the website that produces AI generated music.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: It\u2019s amazing actually. I\u2019ve spent some time on Suno. It\u2019s really cool.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So the class starts where students play their clips and they play their clips and everyone in the class has a chance to appreciate just what an amazing musician they\u2019ve become in the last six months. And the reason why we start with the music industry and their clips is because they can see just how easy it was to expropriate the talent of many, many musicians in a 30-second clip. And not only can they expropriate it, but they have a way of commercializing it. And it\u2019s very hard for them to see how or even creatively come up with a way for the original musicians in that piece to be paid for that work.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: And they also, in the context of Suno, they try hard, many of them initially, to replicate the voice of a particular musician that they appreciate. So they\u2019ll go in and try to do in the style of Taylor Swift, write me a song about my own dog. And that process highlights for them that Taylor Swift is not consenting to this process. And the app will absolutely not have the intellectual property rights to create something in Taylor Swift\u2019s song. Now that\u2019s in sharp contrast to what Metaphysic is able to do, which is to bring in the very top talent and attract them towards creating high production films. And it\u2019s the difference between the contracts these two industries have in place that leads to a situation where you have access to the very best talent-<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: And a way of paying the very best talent.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: And I think that becomes super relevant. So in the case of Suno, most of us are like, \u201cOh, write a song for my partner or for my child or whatever.\u201d You\u2019re going to use it that way. It\u2019s going to be a very personal use. But when you actually take that and try to commercialize it, it becomes a whole different set of issues.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: That\u2019s right. That\u2019s right. That\u2019s right. But cleverly, Suno has been able to allow people who are casual users of the app who pay a subscription fee-<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: To try to commercialize that. And the next lesson that students learn is they think of ways that they can actually bring in money for that new song that they made. And they come up with all sorts of platforms that they can host it on. They can host it on Spotify. They can host it on Instagram. They can share it with their communities. And then someone eventually in the classroom will recognize that if they were to be a hit, someone would copy them just the way they copied others.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Yes. Yeah.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: And thus, the whole pyramid structure falls.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: It opens up such a big set of issues. So one of the things that you do well in the case, I think most people, when they think about AI, the first thing they think about is, oh, it\u2019s a technology or it\u2019s a technology platform of some sort. But you\u2019ve actually framed it up more as a story about the value of human expertise. And this is exactly what you\u2019re talking about in the case of Suno. Why is this distinction so important between the technology and the value of human expertise?<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: In this case, many agree that the quality and the value of the technology hinges on the quality of the human data used in the training of that technology. And so the link between the human expertise and the success of the AI innovation is very tight behind the scenes. But many people are, at this moment in time, still unaware of the connection between, say, the surveillance that they have in their job and how that data stream is so pivotal for the ability to replicate some of what they\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: It\u2019s interesting that Hollywood becomes kind of ground zero for the argument that you\u2019re making in the case. Why does Hollywood make such an effective platform to talk about these kinds of issues?<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: It all starts in the 1930s.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Ah.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So Hollywood in particular, let me focus on the Screen Writer\u2019s Guild for start. The screenwriters have always had their labor developed in the form of a physical asset in the sense that a good screenplay or even a mediocre screenplay takes the form of something that can be copied, modified, scaled. And so early on, they realized that if they were to pass off their screenplay to say the executive producer, they\u2019ve lost control in some important ways. And there were lots of stories of people higher up in the chain for the production to just rename who wrote that script, make a few modifications. Sometimes they would give credit to their wives.<\/p>\n And through this process, screenwriters grappled with some of the issues that AI has extended as an issue to many more professions, which is what do you do when your labor can be a physical form? And that means that you could potentially be, your very expertise, your ideas, can be disembodied. And that\u2019s why Hollywood is such a nice place to turn to because it\u2019s a profession that grappled with that issue 100 years ago. And I can go into lots of detail about what I think they did in those early days that led to a company like Metaphysic operating so ethically within the norms and confines of this industry.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. So let\u2019s go back to Metaphysic for a second. What are they doing? How are they approaching this differently than some of the other AI technology platforms that are out there? The case talks about the fact that they\u2019re really building their model around consent, ownership, and compensation. Are they sort of breaking new ground with this? Are they kind of setting a new bar?<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Yes. Imagine an AI deepfake platform that\u2019s trying to itself go and copyright and get protection for those deepfakes, for the individuals who are creating those deepfakes. And so sorry, I\u2019m sort of abusing the word deepfake. So let me use a different phrase here. So this is a company whose technology could be used to warp reality in many different ways.<\/p>\n And therefore, it\u2019s very easy from the perspective of the technology to imagine obscuring the creators behind the film. And that is what many other AI companies have taken advantage of, that you can combine many different small pieces of human expertise to create something for which finding the origin is challenging and therefore probably many little micropayments are not either necessary or going to happen. So Metaphysic went ahead in the other direction, which was to say we really want to make sure that the creators behind the film have their intellectual property, both protected, preserved, and they are going to provide kind of the legal support for that themselves.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \uc88b\uc544\uc694.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: They show up in Washington and try to copyright the likeness of individuals who are using their technology.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: So when you say the people, the creators behind the film, how does that play out in the case of Tom Hanks, which you mentioned before? Does Tom Hanks in any way benefit from this or is it just the folks at Metaphysic who are creating that content?<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So Metaphysic could have made a movie about Tom Hanks without Tom Hanks, technically speaking. And they could have made a movie about Tom Hanks with just Tom Hanks and no one else. But instead what they did was they really involved the creators at many levels. So it was not just Tom Hanks who ended up getting paid and fully onboarded to this process of creation, but also the studios that were involved in the early footage of Tom Hanks.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Ah.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So Gracie Studios who created Big<\/em> also was at the negotiation table when it came time to make the most contemporary film Here<\/em> using Tom Hanks\u2019 likeness to track him between ages 18 and 80.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Right. So they basically created a film that built on the likeness of him in other films that he had been in throughout his long, decades long career, right?<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Exactly. Exactly. But the technology technically could take old footage or even public footage and project it onto a face that just had similarities to Tom Hanks\u2019 facial structure.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: And even of course, like Tom Hanks\u2019 face is particular to a time and place. And so the footage that they\u2019re projecting to de-age him and all these things is already manipulating exactly what he looks like.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: It\u2019s incredibly complicated, right? It sounds like it could get very messy very fast.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Oh, you mean the technology of doing something like this?<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Well, the technology, but also what Metaphysic is trying to do in terms of bringing all of the interested parties together so that people are properly compensated for whatever role they might have played over an extended period of time. It just sounds like almost impossible.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Okay. But this gets back to what happens in the 1930s.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So the very first thing that writers pushed for and other guilds within Hollywood also understood to be critical is credit attribution, meaning that there\u2019d be a documentation of who contributed what that could be preserved over time.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \uc88b\uc544\uc694.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: And you could always go back into what, it could open up the black box of a project and see who contributed what.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Is this the concept of separate rights? Separated rights. I\u2019m sorry. That\u2019s one of the concepts that comes up in the case. Is this what you\u2019re kind of getting at?<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So separated rights is built on top of a credit attribution system.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \uc88b\uc544\uc694.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So imagine you have a dozen different versions of the script that went into making The Hulk.<\/em> Now there\u2019s a peer review process which was negotiated by the Guild. So when the Guild formed, they took over the process of allocating credit. Through that peer review process, the person who came up with the word \u201cHulk\u201d has assigned to them their share of the production process. And all of those data go into an archive. There\u2019s actually an amazing archive that the Hollywood Guild still preserves. In that archive, someone who wanted to reuse material from The Hulk<\/em> because a new technology came out or they have a new audience that they have in mind, they are going to be able to find the original creators and understand who contributed what. Now I said separated rights sits on top of that credit attribution system.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So let me just be really clear about that. So when the original creators of the screenplay for The Hulk<\/em> were paid for the movie or the initial version of The Hulk<\/em>, they were contracting over something very specific. It was well specified what would be the product and they could have in their mind an expectation about the revenue it would produce.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \uc88b\uc544\uc694.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Now in this interaction, that well-defined labor exchange allows for all other things to be rights that are returned back to the original creator. So any other use outside of that direct contract is a set of, it\u2019s elegant in how abstract it is. All other uses of the material, those rights go back to the original creator. That means that suppose down the road somebody like Metaphysic want to make a deepfake of the voice actor from The Hulk<\/em>, they will have now a new contract for new uses of the same data.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: And those are rights that have returned back to the original voice actor.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Okay. Okay. So I\u2019m starting to see why Hollywood and Metaphysic made this such a perfect case for you to write, to explain these pretty complicated topics. And it does go back to the \u201930s. So that\u2019s interesting. Hollywood had built a system that in some ways lends itself to what Metaphysic is trying to do. Are there other industries that you think could be facing similar sets of challenges and issues that maybe they\u2019re not as well-equipped? Maybe they don\u2019t have the same foundation that Hollywood has put in place.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Well, so the music industry is what we turn to in the context of class, but I actually want to broaden the scope because with the technologies that we have today, many new forms of tacit expertise are going to be in this physical form. And that means that say a doctor who has a particular way of diagnosing cardiac arrest, that way that they put together the little pieces of what the patient describes or presents, that pattern that allows them to diagnose, it can be now a physical asset that\u2019s been mimicked by say AI technology. And now they have a contract potentially with a hospital to be paid for this work that they\u2019re producing. Now suppose the hospital want to take that data, the disembodied form, and sell it more broadly, repackage it and sell it to say an umbrella system. So that hospital now didn\u2019t actually include anything about this in the initial contract they drafted with the doctor-<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \uadf8\ub807\uc8e0.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Presumably, because the technology didn\u2019t exist to do it. And the medical system doesn\u2019t have in place the separated rights that Hollywood did. But you could imagine moving towards a world where we do have separated rights so that the physician who entered the contract not knowing how their data were going to be used can be included in the next iteration of negotiations for the use, the new uses of their data. Does that make sense?<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: It does. And so now I\u2019m thinking this could actually apply to almost any field.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Exactly.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Right. And I\u2019m thinking about your field, academia. I mean, part of what you do is create knowledge. And that knowledge belongs to you. You\u2019ve created it, but it also belongs in some ways to Harvard Business School, right? Because you\u2019ve got a compact with the school, but nothing\u2019s been negotiated beyond that.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: That\u2019s right. And also the kind of expertise that I do, much of it comes in the form of something codified. So in the context of a peer-reviewed article. And previously those articles might have been challenging to apply to say a consulting setting. So like a setting where maybe, in my case, an HR expert wants to understand how to roll out pay transparency. But now for a variety of reasons, the tools might be able to take my articles and my way of thinking about the world and commercialize it in new ways and say, serve HR professionals through using my research on the topic.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So in some ways that\u2019s my broader market for my expertise. And you mentioned Harvard Business School. Yes, absolutely. I upload all the videos of my classes. Potentially Harvard Business School can recombine my videos with Clay Christensen, make something even better than what I could do by my own\u2026 And sell it in new varieties of ways that I couldn\u2019t possibly have foreseen when I first signed my contract with HBS.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: One of the things that you talk about in the case is the shadow workforce. And I think this is the idea of just average ordinary people being on the internet and generating data from their activity on the internet that could potentially be used in some sort of a commercial way without their knowledge or consent. Can you talk a little about that?<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Yes. My collaborator, Danielle Lee, on the research that we\u2019re doing together, the two of us actually have started to refer to this shadow workforce as the scab farms. Because of course in any context, in any workplace context, it might be possible to, once you see the link between your data stream and how it\u2019s used to replicate what you do, you can play an active role in mediating how much that data contains, how it\u2019s transferred. You could imagine that in the context of any firm, there\u2019s some agency. However, if companies were to just be able to turn to the global talent market and hire per hour to data label something similar to what you\u2019re doing, this means that there\u2019s a huge pool of substitutes for either your employer or a third party to hire in order to replicate some of the things you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: And that of course means that your ability to control your asset, the data about your labor and to sell it for something reasonably lucrative is mediated by how many substitutes there are.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Yes. Okay. And I guess that extends into the workforce, too because we\u2019re spending a lot of time trying to get our whole staff here upskilled on how to use Claude and ChatGPT and other things. They\u2019re creating custom chats that might make their job easier by automating certain functions of their work. I would imagine that\u2019s also susceptible to being commercialized in some way without their knowledge.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: The nice part about teaching this particular context is that it really proves that collectively there are reasonable and feasible actions to take so that the people who are contributing to the AI innovation are rewarded for it.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: I know that it feels far from the professional context for many today, but in the 1930s, the idea of peer reviewed credit attribution for screenplays must have felt wildly fanciful.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: And then now it\u2019s the basis for how the whole industry operates. And so I think this opens up the imagination for what kind of institutions make sense now that much of labor can be codified.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. So if you were advising a CEO, not in the entertainment industry, but just any other sector, what would you tell them that they need to be thinking about with regard to this?<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: So in the context of knowledge work in industry, I think CEOs have a huge opportunity in learning from this case because you can see how someone, a superstar like Tom Hanks, is proactively getting involved in AI footage. And the reason for that is because incentives are aligned. And I think many employers that I\u2019ve worked with, they kind of just at the point where they\u2019re trying to encourage employees to train their co-workers and to be really participatory in AI innovation, they\u2019re finding progress is stalled. And one explanation and an explanation that could really lead to fruitful innovation is the contracts are not in place to the incentive alignments that have been created in Hollywood into say the context of a consulting firm is to say, \u201cOkay, I understand that I\u2019m asking from my workforce for them to transfer their core expertise into a physical asset that then I, the firm might own.\u201d And that\u2019s very exciting, lots of potential use cases. Now in order for an employee to be really excited by that and motivated by that, how can I give them a stake in that physical asset rather than leave them just with the fear that that physical asset then reduces headcount or reduces their leverage in the firm?<\/p>\n And so I\u2019ve experimented with a number of different contracts that I think are really executable inside the workplace. One is just merely realizing that the co-worker is like an extension of a person so that their promotion and their career incentives are tied to how that co-worker can help others in the firm. And also finding a way for that worker to invest in the technology, knowing that they can take some part of it with them, develop their own IP as part of the process so that they want to do an excellent job in the context of one firm, knowing that even if they get fired in that role, they\u2019re going to move to another firm and have something really valuable to offer.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: That\u2019s fascinating. And what you\u2019re describing sounds like it could fundamentally change the nature of the relationship between employees and employers.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Ah, that\u2019s the hope, right? It\u2019s the hope that all your employees are now part of your R&D team.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \ub124.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: And we think about the complicated IP relationship around that appropriately and everyone\u2019s incentivized to really contribute to the innovative part of the company.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Well, Zoe, my mind is kind of blown. This has been a really amazing conversation. And when I read the case, I didn\u2019t have all this. I\u2019ve gone off script on some of these questions because I was sort of hearing things differently as we spoke about it. So thank you for that. Let me ask you just one last question, which is if you want our listeners to remember one thing about the Metaphysics case, what would it be?<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: As an AI company or the user of an AI tool, you have access to the very top talent as long as you respect what property rights are necessary for the very top talent to be fully invested.<\/p>\n BRIAN KENNY: ZOE CULLEN, thank you for joining me on \ucf5c\ub4dc\ucf5c<\/em>.<\/p>\n ZOE CULLEN: Thank you very much, Brian. It\u2019s been a pleasure.<\/p>\n \ube0c\ub77c\uc774\uc5b8 \ucf00\ub2c8: \uc990\uac70\uc6b0\uc2dc\ub2e4\uba74 \ucf5c\ub4dc\ucf5c<\/em>, \ub2e4\ub978 \ud31f\uce90\uc2a4\ud2b8\ub97c \uc88b\uc544\ud558\uc2e4 \uc218\ub3c4 \uc788\uc2b5\ub2c8\ub2e4. \uae30\ud6c4 \uc0c1\uc2b9<\/em><\/a>, \uc9c4\uc815\ud55c \ub9ac\ub354 \ucf54\uce6d<\/a><\/em>, \uc544\uc774\ub514\uc5b4 \uce90\uc2a4\ud2b8<\/a><\/em>, \ubbf8\ub798\uc758 \uc5c5\ubb34 \uad00\ub9ac<\/a><\/em>, Skydeck<\/em>,<\/em> \uadf8\ub9ac\uace0 \ud06c\uac8c \uc0dd\uac01\ud558\uace0 \uc791\uac8c \uad6c\ub9e4\ud558\uc138\uc694.<\/em> \ud31f\uce90\uc2a4\ud2b8\ub97c \ubc1b\uc744 \uc218 \uc788\ub294 \uacf3\uc774\uba74 \uc5b4\ub514\uc5d0\uc11c\ub098 \ucc3e\uc544\ubcf4\uc138\uc694.<\/p>\n