It’s a very modern conjurer’s trick: Create a SXSW talk out of thin air, with the help of generative AI. That’s what whurley did this year in Austin.
It took nine weeks for whurley — a staple of the Austin tech scene — to create and prepare for a keynote at SXSW 2018, where he would debut Strangeworks, a quantum computing startup he co-founded and runs. Five years later, generative AI would complete the task in just a few hours.
And it was actually pretty good. The 45-minute speech was comprehensive, interesting and struck a whurley-like tone. There was one swear word (fuck) and a few jokes (including two lawyer ones) that the audience laughed at. It seemed that the trickiest part, at least while he was on stage, was reading the script the AI had provided off of his tablet. (Whurley is known for his free-wheeling style on the SXSW stage, where he is a regular.)
