May 27, 2026 · 1 hr 26 min · 10 segments
In this episode of The Parlor Room Presents: Hello AI, host and Harvard Business School Online Creative Director Chris Linnane speaks with HBS Professor Christina Wallace about how AI is transforming…
Christina WallaceGuestChris LinnaneHost"What's my special ability that I was born with or developed for now?"
It's a great question because I see-- I have such a wide range of creative friends, um, and their views on AI.
Mm-hmm.
I'm not engaging with that entire world [laughs] because it's fake, and what I do is real, and what the other creatives do is real.
And the second I engage with that, it, it will use my work and build the algorithms off of that, and at some point, it will replace me." And then I have on the other extreme creatives that are saying, "This is just another tool," right? GarageBand was a tool that made you able to make an entire song and produce things without having to have, you know, four people and, and a studio and all of-
Mm-hmm
Mm-hmm
... um, maybe to an, uh, an extreme that I wouldn't have access to or, um, coming up with entirely different modes of expression that are gonna be native to this era, right? So I have friends across the whole spectrum.
Mm-hmm
... of, um, I can see the fear, and I-- It's valid, right? As you think about the last big, um, uh, strike in Hollywood, one of the big sticking points was whether studios would be able to use AI-generated extras.
Because up to this point, that was one of the ways you got your leg in in the, that world as an actor, right? As you're trying to network your way around, you're trying to get an agent, you're working on your, your craft, getting that day rate of a couple hundred bucks to be a stand-in in the back of some big studio film was how you paid your rent.
It might be how you end up at the craft table with, you know, someone important, and you start up a conversation, and it gives you, it gets you in the room, right? So it is both a sustainable piece, and it gives you some sort of access.
It's never a guarantee that anything is gonna come, but at least it creates the possibility for luck.
And the second you recreate all of those extras with AI, because there's no great artistic intent required in having a background of a crowd, then you've cut out that entry point, in the same way that we're seeing some fear for even our MBA students who have historically been really valued by management consulting, by investment banking as that first layer of work.
That work, a lot of that work can now be done by both co-pilots and agents.
So how do they get in and get trained, get apprenticed for the second layer and the third layer, which is where the human judgment comes in? So I think part of this is, is not the fear of the technology itself.
It's the fear of an already very fragile creative world is going to compress even further such that only people who haveIndependent wealth who already have connections, who can sustain that long period it takes to get established and build a career, only they will be able to pursue this life, right? So there's, there's that piece, and I fully recognize it.
There's the other piece, and this is particularly within generative AI, which says everything it makes is just a remix of everything that has come before it, right? By definition-
"What's my special ability that I was born with or developed for now?"
It's a great question because I see-- I have such a wide range of creative friends, um, and their views on AI.
Mm-hmm.
I'm not engaging with that entire world [laughs] because it's fake, and what I do is real, and what the other creatives do is real.
And the second I engage with that, it, it will use my work and build the algorithms off of that, and at some point, it will replace me." And then I have on the other extreme creatives that are saying, "This is just another tool," right? GarageBand was a tool that made you able to make an entire song and produce things without having to have, you know, four people and, and a studio and all of-
Mm-hmm
Mm-hmm
... um, maybe to an, uh, an extreme that I wouldn't have access to or, um, coming up with entirely different modes of expression that are gonna be native to this era, right? So I have friends across the whole spectrum.
Mm-hmm
... of, um, I can see the fear, and I-- It's valid, right? As you think about the last big, um, uh, strike in Hollywood, one of the big sticking points was whether studios would be able to use AI-generated extras.
Because up to this point, that was one of the ways you got your leg in in the, that world as an actor, right? As you're trying to network your way around, you're trying to get an agent, you're working on your, your craft, getting that day rate of a couple hundred bucks to be a stand-in in the back of some big studio film was how you paid your rent.
It might be how you end up at the craft table with, you know, someone important, and you start up a conversation, and it gives you, it gets you in the room, right? So it is both a sustainable piece, and it gives you some sort of access.
It's never a guarantee that anything is gonna come, but at least it creates the possibility for luck.
And the second you recreate all of those extras with AI, because there's no great artistic intent required in having a background of a crowd, then you've cut out that entry point, in the same way that we're seeing some fear for even our MBA students who have historically been really valued by management consulting, by investment banking as that first layer of work.
That work, a lot of that work can now be done by both co-pilots and agents.
So how do they get in and get trained, get apprenticed for the second layer and the third layer, which is where the human judgment comes in? So I think part of this is, is not the fear of the technology itself.
It's the fear of an already very fragile creative world is going to compress even further such that only people who haveIndependent wealth who already have connections, who can sustain that long period it takes to get established and build a career, only they will be able to pursue this life, right? So there's, there's that piece, and I fully recognize it.
There's the other piece, and this is particularly within generative AI, which says everything it makes is just a remix of everything that has come before it, right? By definition-
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