Gavin Miller: Adobe Research | Lex Fridman Podcast #23

The following is a conversation with Gavin Miller. He's the head of Adobe Research. Adobe has empowered artists, designers, and creative minds from all professions, working in the digital medium for over 30 years with software such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, After Effects, InDesign, Audition, software that work with images, video, and audio. Adobe Research is working to define the future evolution of these products in a way that makes the life of creatives easier, automates the tedious tasks, and gives more and more time to operate in the idea space instead of pixel space. This is where the cutting edge, deep learning methods of the past decade can really shine more than perhaps any other application. Gavin is the embodiment of combining tech and creativity. Outside of Adobe Research, he writes poetry and builds robots, both things that are near and dear to my heart as well. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, iTunes, or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Fridman, spelled F-R-I-D. And now, here's my conversation with Gavin Miller. You're head of Adobe Research, leading a lot of innovative efforts in applications of AI, creating images, video, audio, language, but you're also yourself an artist, a poet, a writer, and even a roboticist. So while I promise to everyone listening that I will not spend the entire time we have together reading your poetry, which I love-

Oh. (laughs)

... I have to sprinkle it in at least a little bit. So some of them are pretty deep and profound, and some are light and silly. Let's start with a few lines from the, uh, the silly variety. You write, uh, in, uh, Je ne regrette rien, a poem that beautifully parodies both, uh, Edith Piaf's Je Ne Regrette Rien and My Way by Frank Sinatra. So it opens with, "And now dessert is near. It's time to pay the final total. I've tried to slim all year, but my diets have been anecdotal." So where does that love for poetry come from for you? And if we dissect your mind-

Mm-hmm.

... how does it all fit together in the bigger puzzle of Dr. Gavin Miller?

Oh. Well, interesting you chose that one. That was a poem I wrote when I'd been to my doctor and he said, "You really need to lose some weight" and, "Go on a diet."

(laughs)

And whilst the rational part of my brain wanted to do that, uh, the irrational part of my brain was protesting and sort of embraced the opposite idea.

I regret nothing, hence...

Yes, exactly. Taken to an extreme, I thought it would be funny. Obviously, it's a serious topic for so- some people, but, um, uh... I think for me, I've always been interested in writing since I was in high school, as well as doing technology and invention. And sometimes the parallel strands in your life that carry on and, you know, one is more about your private life and one's more about your technological, um, career, and then at sort of happy moments along the way, sometimes the two things touch, one idea informs the other, and, um, we can talk about that, uh, as we go.