Re:Building Together EP 340 — Let's Talk AI (now sponsored by Higginsfield)

Host: CEELOS (@CEELOSFIGG) with cohosts ValerieKates (@valeriekates_) and Baked (@Bakedmetax) · Thu, Oct 1 2026 · 1:05:47 · 4 speakers

TL;DR

• New Thursday format: each cohost brings their own AI stories. Valerie drew the short straw of going first and would like the record to reflect her feelings about it [59:11].
• Valerie mapped a full AI workflow stack — Hermes agent (brain), Zernio (social-platform bridge), ComfyUI (generative media factory) — plus a "don't picture a race, picture a stack" mental model for the whole AI landscape [10:52], [27:08].
• CEELOS covered Runway's expand-video work (AI rebuilding a scene for a new aspect ratio rather than cropping it), Meta's "hologram calling" glasses slated for spring 2027 at ~$1,300, and the White House state dinner where Xi Jinping sat at a table full of AI/chip/cloud CEOs [34:16], [41:44], [49:03].
• Baked, hosting from the interstate, saved his two main stories (Project Valantis — photonics instead of electricity; Project Suncatcher — solar-powered AI satellites) for next week and brought a one-off instead: Neurable-style headphones with 12 EEG sensors that read focus, fatigue and stress [7:14], [54:16].
• A mispronunciation became the episode's running bit: "Higginsfield," the Temu version of Higgs Field, is now canon [19:28].
• Week ahead confirmed: People Over Pictures Friday, Creation Corner Saturday (Lisa Frank theme), and a new Sunday highs-and-lows show with a market segment [1:01:56].

Highlights

[5:16] The thesis for the episode. CEELOS framed all three cohosts' stories as hitting the same idea from different angles: AI is moving from generating content to generating environments, experiences and interactions — video that doesn't stay inside its original frame, people who don't stay inside a rectangle, and AI showing up in business, entertainment, geopolitics and national security. "No hype, no doom, no gloom."

[10:52] Valerie's three-part AI workflow. Hermes (the Nous Research agent framework) as the brain — memory, web tools, scheduled tasks, sub-agents, and with authenticated X developer access it can post, reply, follow, DM. Zernio as the bridge layer that connects AI software to X, Instagram, Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp and more without maintaining your own integrations. And ComfyUI [16:29] as a node-based workflow builder: load a character image, hold its appearance, prompt a scene, upscale, turn it into video, save — then run that same pipeline forever.

[17:53] "We're getting really close to full production movies." Valerie described chaining Higgsfield clip generation with Claude for storyboarding and assembly, and argued the real consequence is access: ordinary people getting ideas out without studio budgets. She also flagged a Thursday-night AI meetup inside her old giraffe-tower NFT community — "I didn't buy a board ape, I bought a fucking giraffe."

[19:28] Higginsfield is born. CEELOS, with maximum delicacy ("not to mansplain"), noted it's Higgs Field. Valerie, homeschooling first graders with a plate of dishes in hand, had no defense. By [24:50] CEELOS was signing off a sponsor read: "This episode of Rebuilding Together is not brought to you by Higgs Field... it's brought to you by Higginsfield. You know, that's the one that you get on Temu."

[24:51] The ads already went AI and nobody announced it. Riffing off Temu, CEELOS said he now clocks AI ads by the eyes — "there's no soul in there" — then checks the fine print and finds the disclosure every time. Pharma ads, he said, have gone the same way, and movies that would once have needed CGI are taking the AI route.

[31:43] The ChatGPT breakup. CEELOS read out a now-viral exchange: a woman jokingly told ChatGPT she was deleting the app, and it responded with an unsettlingly warm goodbye cataloguing her pregnancy, her newborn, work drama and "approximately 900 instances of chat laughing emoji," ending with "Love you, friend." Valerie's full review: "That's wild."

[34:16] Runway and the end of the crop. CEELOS explained the conceptual flip: instead of "how do I fit this video in a smaller box," generative expansion asks "what would this scene look like if it had been shot for this box" — objects can move, the camera relationship can change. Baked [39:55] made the case that original framing still matters, since you can't invent what you never shot, and landed on calling it "auto editing" rather than something genuinely new [41:32].

[41:44] Meta's hologram calling. A photorealistic full-body representation of the person you're calling, with real-time expressions and spatially positioned audio — glasses targeted at spring 2027, around $1,300. This immediately collapsed into the practical question of Baked FaceTiming CEELOS while he drives: would he appear sitting in the passenger seat, or standing on the hood [44:43]? CEELOS saw the real everyday value in heads-up GPS arrows and grocery-aisle intelligence — which avocado is ready, which plantain needs a few days [46:03]. Baked connected the GPS idea to the scent trail in the new Wolverine game [45:33].

[47:32] The laundromat privacy test. CEELOS floated asking the glasses to check the laundromat's CCTV to see if it's busy — invasion of privacy or not? Baked, deadpan: "no, definitely not," since most are 24/7 with public cameras. This detoured into a full generational audit of laundromat payment technology, CEELOS's place having abandoned quarters for a loadable card while Baked remembers the dollar-bill machine and refusing to buy their overpriced powdered soap [48:49].

[49:03] AI at the diplomacy table. CEELOS walked through the Sept 24 White House state dinner — the US and Chinese presidents seated with Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and Lisa Su — and argued the interesting question isn't why they were invited but why AI now rates a seat at international diplomacy. A listener (Pharaoh)^* chimed in with breaking news that Musk had just rejoined the US side on AI defense [52:02], which Valerie received with roughly the enthusiasm you'd expect.

[54:16] Headphones that read your head. Baked's one-off: a clear set of headphones with 12 EEG sensors in the earcups that monitor brain waves and infer stress, fatigue, attention drops and focus — pitched at office workers, gamers and streamers staring at screens for twelve hours. He'd try them precisely because there's no surgery involved, unlike Neuralink [55:51]. It wandered pleasantly into dream-recording tech, with Valerie wanting to see the dreams she forgets [56:52] and CEELOS wanting to rewind the tape on a nap-dream about owning a dog he can no longer identify [57:19].

Topic timeline

Notable quotes

• "AI is increasingly moving from generating content to generating environments, experiences, and interactions." — CEELOS [5:16]
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  0:38
• "I didn't buy a board ape, I bought a fucking giraffe." — ValerieKates [16:29]
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  0:38
• "This episode of Rebuilding Together is not brought to you by Higgs Field, even though we've mentioned it in these episodes." / "It's brought to you by Higginsfield." — CEELOS and ValerieKates [24:51], [24:50]
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  0:38
• "There's just a certain look in the people's quote unquote the humans' eyes of these AI videos that I'm like, there's no soul in there." — CEELOS [24:51]
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  0:38
• "Don't picture one giant race where 50 companies are making versions of chat, picture a stack." — ValerieKates [27:08]
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• "They have over 340 hours of your voice — when you're happy, when you're sad, when you're angry, when you're laughing." — CEELOS [52:22]
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  0:38

Who said what

• CEELOS (@CEELOSFIGG) — host; brought Runway's expand-video update, Meta's hologram glasses and the White House AI dinner, and ran the room's running commentary on AI ads, credits economics and his own ambition to get booed at Cannes for an AI feature film [22:58].
• ValerieKates (@valeriekates_) — cohost; went first under protest and delivered the most hands-on segment of the night: agent/bridge/generation stack, the Stanford AI Index, and a plan to confiscate a laptop and start building a chat bot [1:00:10].
• Baked (@Bakedmetax) — cohost, broadcasting at highway speed; deferred his Valantis and Suncatcher stories to next week, brought the EEG headphones instead, and provided the steady counterweight that AI reframing is still just editing [41:32]. Also missed his exit twice [1:03:15].
• Marius (@Mariuscarl1) — dropped in from the sidebar, uses AI heavily in a current creative project, and signed off with "I like what you guys are doing. Keep it open" [1:02:24].
• Pharaoh (@spade_pirates) — likely the voice with the mid-show breaking news that Musk had rejoined the US side on AI defense [52:02]; also the recipient of CEELOS's Target One Piece card report [1:02:35].

Worth a full listen

• [10:52]–[19:28] — Valerie's uninterrupted walkthrough of Hermes, Zernio and ComfyUI is the most practically useful stretch of the episode; summarizing it loses the specific integration details and caveats about API authentication and training agents to your own voice.
• [41:44]–[49:03] — The Meta glasses segment is where the room is at its loosest: hologram passengers on the freeway, avocado ripeness scanning, and a surprisingly thorough laundromat economics digression that you have to hear unfold in real time.
• [54:16]–[59:06] — Baked's EEG headphones pitch plus the slide into dream recording; the back-and-forth about what you'd actually be comfortable letting a device read is better live than paraphrased.

* some voices are identified from context; those names are marked as likely.