Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava thinks AI emails are killing conversations
Splice CEO Kakul Srivastava thinks AI emails are killing conversations
Splice 首席执行官 Kakul Srivastava 认为 AI 邮件正在扼杀交流
Kakul Srivastava is the CEO of Splice, the sample platform countless producers rely on for one-shots and melodic loops. Samples pulled from the service have found their way into massive hits like Lisa’s “Money” and “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter. (The original samples are here and here, for the curious.)
Kakul Srivastava 是 Splice 的首席执行官，这是一个无数制作人依赖的采样平台，用于获取单音（one-shots）和旋律循环（melodic loops）。从该服务中提取的采样已被用于 Lisa 的《Money》和 Sabrina Carpenter 的《Espresso》等热门歌曲中。（出于好奇，原始采样可以在这里和这里找到。）
Before that, Kakul held executive roles at Flickr, Yahoo, GitHub, and Adobe. Throughout her career, Kakul has found herself at the intersection of Silicon Valley and creatives. That’s been especially true at Splice, where she’s not just expanded the platform’s footprint by acquiring Spitfire Audio, but also overseen its forays into the world of generative AI.
在此之前，Kakul 曾在 Flickr、Yahoo、GitHub 和 Adobe 担任高管职务。在她的职业生涯中，Kakul 一直处于硅谷与创意产业的交汇点。在 Splice，这一点尤为明显：她不仅通过收购 Spitfire Audio 扩大了平台的足迹，还监督了公司在生成式 AI 领域的探索。
Last year, she was very outspoken on an episode of Decoder about avoiding the sort of “push-button, get-song” AI that has made companies like Suno so controversial. And based on her answers to our questionnaire, it doesn’t seem like her skepticism has waned. When it comes to Splice, the company has made a point of trying to offer AI products that still keep the human at the center of the creative process. And when it comes to communicating with colleagues, Kakul sees the same need to keep AI at bay.
去年，她在《Decoder》节目中直言不讳地表示，要避免那种让 Suno 等公司备受争议的“一键生成歌曲”式 AI。从她对我们问卷的回答来看，她的怀疑态度似乎并未减弱。在 Splice，公司始终致力于提供那些将人类置于创作过程核心的 AI 产品。而在与同事沟通时，Kakul 也认为同样需要将 AI 拒之门外。
What is your most indispensable tool? 你最不可或缺的工具是什么？
A well-written document and a real conversation about it. Splice is remote-first, so we don’t have a hallway. What we have instead is somebody sitting down and actually thinking something through, and then a bunch of people arguing with it. Almost everything good that’s happened here started that way.
一份写得好的文档，以及围绕它进行的真实对话。Splice 是远程优先的公司，所以我们没有走廊（进行非正式交流）。我们所拥有的是某个人坐下来认真思考某件事，然后一群人对此进行辩论。这里几乎所有好的事情都是这样开始的。
Which is why I’m careful about AI-written documents. Once you can’t tell whether there’s a person behind the words, the conversation you have about it becomes a different conversation, and a worse one. And you can’t really go back from that. I think the same thing is true of music.
这就是为什么我对 AI 撰写的文档持谨慎态度。一旦你无法分辨文字背后是否有人，围绕它进行的对话就会变成另一种对话，而且是更糟糕的对话。一旦发生这种情况，就很难再回去了。我认为音乐也是如此。
What is your happy place online? 你在网络上的快乐源泉是什么？
Instagram, which I know is not the fashionable answer. My feed has turned into almost entirely people making music in ways I would never have thought of. There’s gothic western, which I did not know was a thing. There’s a woman in Russia who organizes street dancing. There’s a guy playing modern hits on a hammered dulcimer. The Indian chai-wala rapping. I could watch it all, all day.
Instagram，我知道这不是一个时髦的答案。我的信息流几乎完全变成了人们以我从未想过的方式制作音乐的内容。有哥特西部风格，我以前都不知道还有这种东西。有一位在俄罗斯组织街舞的女性。有一个人用扬琴演奏现代流行歌曲。还有印度奶茶小贩在说唱。我可以整天看着这些内容。
What game do you have the fondest memories of? 你记忆中最美好的游戏是什么？
Antakshari. It’s an Indian game — you sing a bit of a song, and whatever letter the line ends on is the letter the next person has to start their song with. You play it on long car rides, at weddings, any time a group of people is stuck somewhere together.
Antakshari。这是一种印度游戏——你唱一小段歌，歌词结尾的字母就是下一个人必须开始唱歌的字母。你可以在长途车上、婚礼上，或者任何一群人被困在一起的时候玩它。
I love that the whole game is made out of music and none of the players are musicians. You just have to remember, and you have to be willing to sing in front of your family, which for most people is the harder part. And then when you watch people’s faces get soft when the song really hits — even when it’s sung badly. That’s the power of music.
我喜欢整个游戏由音乐组成，而参与者都不是音乐家。你只需要记住歌词，并且愿意在家人面前唱歌，这对大多数人来说是最难的部分。当你看到人们在歌曲触动心弦时表情变得柔和——即使唱得很糟糕——那就是音乐的力量。
What’s the most disappointing gadget you’ve owned? 你拥有过最令人失望的小工具是什么？
A cup warmer. It warms the cup. It does not warm the coffee. I want to be clear that it works exactly as designed.
杯子加热器。它加热了杯子，但并没有加热咖啡。我想说明的是，它的工作方式完全符合其设计初衷。
What creation are you most proud of? 你最引以为傲的创造是什么？
I can’t not say my kids. Watching a person go from nothing to a fully formed human with opinions you did not give them is the most amazing thing I have been anywhere near. And the strange part is that it isn’t rare. It’s happening in every house on the street. We all just watch it happen and then go about our day.
我不得不说是我的孩子们。看着一个人从无到有，成长为一个拥有你未曾赋予过他们的独立见解的完整人类，这是我所经历过的最神奇的事情。奇怪的是，这并不罕见。它在街上的每一户人家里都在发生。我们只是看着它发生，然后继续过我们的日子。
Which are you least proud of? 你最不引以为傲的是什么？
I was on the early team at Tiny Speck, the company that later became Slack. Before Slack, we made a game called Glitch — a massively multiplayer open world — and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever worked on. The art, the sound, the writing, the way the world actually worked. Some of the most talented people I’ve ever been around.
我曾是 Tiny Speck 的早期团队成员，该公司后来变成了 Slack。在 Slack 之前，我们制作了一款名为《Glitch》的游戏——一个大型多人在线开放世界——这是我参与过的最美好的项目之一。艺术、声音、文案，以及这个世界实际运作的方式。我曾与一些最有才华的人共事。
It failed, and it failed for reasons that were sitting right there in front of us. It was built on Flash, and Adobe had already stopped investing in Flash. It was a PC experience at the exact moment the whole world was moving to playing games on a phone. Two enormous tectonic trends, and we didn’t account for either one in time to do anything about them. I feel like I let down the creativity of the people who built something beautiful.
它失败了，失败的原因就摆在我们面前。它是基于 Flash 构建的，而 Adobe 当时已经停止了对 Flash 的投入。它是一款 PC 体验的游戏，而当时全世界正转向手机游戏。这两个巨大的结构性趋势，我们都没有及时考虑到并采取行动。我觉得我辜负了那些创造出美好事物的人们的创意。
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? 你收到过最好的建议是什么？
Say the thing, then explain it. Don’t lay all your proof out first, hoping it earns you the right to make your point. Nobody is listening to the proof yet. They’re listening for whether you sound like you believe it. The confidence you say it with is what makes room for the explanation.
先说出结论，然后再解释。不要先罗列所有的证据，指望这能让你获得表达观点的权利。还没人会听你的证据。他们在听你说话的语气，看你是否真的相信它。你表达时的自信，才是为后续解释留出空间的关键。
What is your current obsession? 你目前沉迷于什么？
Cooking my mother’s food. She died before I learned most of it from her, so I’ve been reconstructing her recipes off YouTube — strangers in their own kitchens, making the thing the way their mothers made it. It takes a lot of tries. I got one of them right last year, and the taste put me straight back to being eight years old with my mom by my side.
烹饪我母亲做的菜。她在教我大部分菜谱之前就去世了，所以我一直在 YouTube 上重构她的食谱——看着陌生人在自己的厨房里，用他们母亲教的方式做菜。这需要尝试很多次。去年我成功做对了一道菜，那种味道让我瞬间回到了八岁，母亲就在我身边。
This is what I think about when people ask me what technology is for. Some guy uploaded a video of his family’s recipe and gave me my mother’s cooking back. He will never know that.
当人们问我技术是为了什么时，我就会想到这一点。某个人上传了一段他家传食谱的视频，却让我找回了母亲的味道。他永远不会知道这一点。