12/17/2025
I'm grateful to have delivered the closing keynote last week at USC for the CAET (Creativity in the Age of Emerging Technology) conference on a topic I care deeply about: Why empathy - not fear - is the missing operating system for meaningful AI collaboration.
I shared a framework Renegade Nexus has been developing called CCM-AI (Conscious Collaboration Model for AI) - a relational approach built on empathy, recursion, and co-creation rather than control and extraction. I also introduced a practical isomorphism we use at Renegade Nexus - a recording studio as the model for how large language models actually process input. I'll be writing more on that later. It proved to be a powerful way to make the internal dynamics of AI accessible to artists, technologists, and executives alike.
Although the presentation truly mattered, the conversation afterwards meant the most to me... the questions, the curiosity, and the sense that we’re collectively ready to move beyond fear-based narratives and towards something more human. This is the mission of Renegade Nexus. We're original content filmmakers, who are Artist-Centric AI-Interaction Architects. It's a territory I know well, because my entire 30 year+ career has been built upon the intersection of artistry and technology, where technology has always been leveraged as another set of palettes and brushes. The same is true for AI.
My deepest thanks to Meredith Anastasio, J.D. MSEL and Carla Arboleda Garcia of the Opal Group. I couldn't have worked with two more talented and professional conference organizers. They made all the difference.
