Art, Autism, and Wacky AI with Schuyler Dragoo

Welcome back to Autistic Techie.

Today's guest is none other than Schuyler Dragoo an experimental artist, master of fine arts, currently the head of marketing and creative strategy at Kingo AI, and as far as

LinkedIn tells me, a goose enthusiast.

Schuyler is also a passionate neurodiversity advocate, much like myself.

We had many discussions on the subject of gearing up tasks, trying to get your brain to do the thing that it had to do.

Just before we hopped on, I realized I filled up my water bottle for this interview, for this conversation, and I left the water bottle upstairs after I filled it up.

It's like the task was done, I did everything that I had to do, and everything that happened next was like, nah, whatever.

I'm really thrilled to dive into executive functioning and focusing in today's interview with Schuyler.

Thank you for joining Autistic Techie.

super excited to be here and very excited to be joined by your cat as well.

yes, this is actually the first interview I've had where one of my cats has really come on to the conversation.

If they're gonna be like my co-host for today, they'll be in all of the social media for this too.

Talk to us about your background in experimental art.

How did your interest in that come to be?

I think for- so the running joke when I was in school, in like elementary through high school was that, yeah, Schuyler in another life she would go to art school and would do

something like that.

I was a very academic person so I never really took that seriously, um as I think many undiagnosed ADHD people will-

understand I had a very difficult time focusing in lot of my classes, so I would create these really gigantic doodles that would like take up like multiple notebook pages.

And it's sort of...

it became this project that I didn't realize I was making until I had all of these pages and pages of things that I was hacking together and ended up being part of my college

application.

was this giant doodle monstrosity that I made.

And so I like to joke that my doodles got me into college.

And then from there, was a realization that that was where...

art making being that was where I felt like I could engage my brain in a different way than pretty much anything else, maybe the only other thing being violin or fiddle, because

it felt like I was using all the parts of my brain and I could have like a podcast that I'm watching or listening to or a show I'm watching and then doing something else art

related and really playing and a space to play.

So then as I began to take my artistic practice more seriously, realized, wow, I would hate myself if I never

went to art school and never had that kind of structure to really play with my ideas in a meaningful way and take myself seriously.

So then ended up at art school, ended up going in a much sillier direction than I thought.

now I'm here where my day job is one in which I feel like I can explore more of my research interests and then have my artistic practice be like a place to play with those

research interests.

curious in the moment you mentioned it, how did you attach like a doodle to your common app essay?

How did that work?

So it wasn't the Common App one, it was for the University of Chicago.

They have these supplemental weird essay questions and they're really famous for like, what is X want with Y?

Or something like that.

And I don't remember what the prompt was, but somehow I was like, well, I bet I could turn this into some gigantic doodle piece.

So that's how that happened.

And what are your research interests?

You mentioned that you wanted to find a career or something that aligned with the subjects you were interested in.

What exactly is it that really gets you going?

It's taken me a while to get to this point and find this thread.

I think it's a lot of different things that have made me realize this being.

It's how people make decisions, how people interact with technology, essentially the different tools around them and how those tools become an augmentation of them.

how, yeah, so how people make decisions, how people.

come to those decisions, how I as a translator can translate really dense scientific ideas into digestible concepts so people can make better decisions and then to create

essentially like spaces where play is okay and you can engage in really serious dialogue in a very playful way.

So thinking about...

my artistic practice as sort of a site for that in the sense that I've been asking a lot of questions around AI and I have a lot of concerns.

I have a lot of strong feelings on both sides of many of the issues around AI, but thinking about how can I break it?

How can I push it in ways that are unexpected and sort of expose the underlying pieces of it and asking questions like what would happen if I turned into a goose and then would the

government make me pay

taxes if I were human consciousness in a goose's body or like if I if you were to make music you being AI as a goose what would that sound like and so yeah using my day job

where I'm working in marketing and creative strategy as a place to to play with some of those I some of the more psychology decision-making aspects of that

I've seen so much about AI right now, especially around like the ethics of AI generated anything, and AI generated music, and AI generated art.

Like, I will admit that, unfortunately, like my Spotify playlists are becoming filled more more with not only AI generated stuff, but like people taking over old artists profiles

and submitting AI music under their name.

And like, I don't want to unfollow those favorite artists just in case they put out something new after like five years, but also this AI stuff is just taking advantage of

Yeah.

who don't know any better or just like completely walked away from music in this case.

But it applies to art too.

I had a phase where I admit I did a lot of like AI art for D &D.

I've stopped doing that recently.

I've tried really hard to go back to not using any of that having learned a lot about AI art actually works.

It's interesting because like I do sometimes find that I use AI to help me with D &D planning, but not necessarily for writing.

I'll help it for analysis.

For instance, I have all of my D &D session notes from a campaign that I write in a Google Notebook LLM, which is great for analyzing things and asking you questions, but I'm not

asking it to generate new things.

I'm helping it understand stuff that already exists, which I think it's really good at and what I like using it for.

And I think you really hit on a good point for using technology to help people make sense of what's in front of them, to help them connect with it more.

In this case, generative AI is radically transforming that landscape.

How do you think generative of AI is helping people make sense of what's in front of them?

I think it's a double edged sword.

think that in a lot of ways it is helping people make sense of what's in front of them.

I think there needs to be more focus on asking the right questions because if people ask questions where they don't actually want...

where they don't actually want an answer or they want a specific answer, it's gonna give you that.

A lot of what I don't think people understand about AI is that it gives you what it thinks you want to hear.

And if you set up a question in a way in which the right answer is you're right, you're wonderful, and you are God, it will tell you that.

And I think there's a lot of danger in that, in that people trying to make sense of the world

without much thought into how they're doing it can come out worse than where they started if they're using AI in a way to just confirm their beliefs.

I do think though there is a lot of potential, and I use it sometimes, and this is actually how I started using it and started working it into my artistic practice, where

there are like social situations, and it's something where it's like, clearly something went wrong here because there is a very unexpected outcome, but I don't know what

happened.

So then

breaking down that social situation and saying, okay, here are all the factors that I'm aware of.

Here's exactly what happened step by step to the best of my recollection.

And then asking AI to be like a skeptical thought partner and walk me through what I could be missing here.

Like what kinds of other factors could have led to the unexpected outcome or something like that.

I think the real good thing I've seen is engaging with it as that and asking it to be a like skeptical thought partner.

I've heard of lots of neurodivergent people using AI as just what you described, using it as like a sounding board or reflection piece being like, that I actually screw up here or

are they in the wrong?

It's like the subreddit, like, am I the a-hole?

It's like that, but a lot nicer sometimes.

And we're not using a curse word on this podcast.

But I think you brought up a really good point as far as like helping it make sense emotionally is what I heard.

unpacking something that could be an emotional concept like a social situation or helping you look at information or data or even something that's abstract or artistic in a

completely new and interesting way.

will say though I am very very cautious when it comes to some of the emotional stuff here in the sense that I have seen people trying to like outsource a lot of emotional

processing and emotional work and saying like what am I feeling?

Tell me what I'm feeling or things like that where they're just looking for an answer and not necessarily to have a tool that's engaging with them to ask themselves better

questions and I see yeah I see a lot of danger in the quick answers piece of this.

and the illusion that that can create.

I mean, people use it as a therapist, but it's not a therapist.

Like I see a therapist normally.

And them and I have talked a lot about like AI and therapy and stuff like that.

I think it's one thing if you don't have that equitable access to a professional that you need and it's something, but also it can be strange people developing these, I think the

word I heard was like parasocial relationships with AI because they feel like it's somebody who is actually like agreeable.

Cause you're probably a good point as well.

Like, yes, you're right.

You're God.

You're so agreeable.

Yes, you are right about everything.

Well, and that's the, it's also really interesting for me too because part of my research into creating my artistic pieces was around philosophy, around conceptions of AI and

thinking about basically like how it works and how...

we how we use it how it works and the history of it as a technology and I think something important to think about here is like Searle's Chinese Room Thought Experiment where it's

basically saying if there's a guy who's in a room he doesn't speak and like Mandarin or like Chinese or another language but he has this little decoder ring and it says here's

the English word here's the other language word and outside the box you push in the other language and he puts out the English symbol that matches up with it in the box does he

actually understand the other language he doesn't

He's just matching symbols and I think that's the people don't understand that that's essentially what AI is doing It's it's matching things based on probabilities and mapping

out like what actually or what it thinks you want to hear It doesn't it's not a person.

It's not an entity Yeah

It doesn't understand.

It doesn't comprehend.

It attempts to, I think you said the probability, like it's guessing what you actually want to accomplish.

And I've run into that a lot where I'll put something into an AI and it'll completely wrong, completely off guard.

I'm like, no, that is not what I want to do.

do what I have to be like extra super crystal clear about what I actually want them to do.

But on rare occasions, it just completely.

Pull something out of its magic hat that does not match at all when I want it.

And I think that it's, I don't know, it's been really interesting as somebody who is on the autism spectrum.

I feel like I've had a kind of a dis- unfair like advantage in trying to get AI to do what I want because I've been thinking about it in like a, okay, how would I explain this to

myself or like a social situation where I don't understand any of it?

And then like what kinds of variables would I want to know?

What kinds of things would I want to know?

And sort of treating AI as like...

an autistic collaborator where it's like, how would I break this down for somebody who might not understand the inner workings of this thing?

Because a lot of what I was doing growing up was trying to understand things like, think about in my head how I would explain this to like an alien civilization so I could like

figure out what kinds of questions to ask or figure out like the inner workings of something.

And then thinking about using AI sort of in that same way, like breaking it down way more than.

That's such a good analogy.

Like it really is.

I think about people in the workplace who really need explicit, clear, direct instructions.

And then when I think about it with AI, I'm like, wow, yeah, that's so right.

Like you have very clear, very abundantly obvious and direct with what you want it to do.

And that does it.

But if you leave any gray room or any room for probability to come into play, then it has potential to just completely miss the mark and screw up.

you brought up something else in my mind.

I saw a comic the other day which was like, try explaining why humans need to sleep to an alien.

Like how do you express that?

How do you articulate that?

Because it just seems like a weird thing.

It's like, oh, like every day, my battery just goes to zero percent and I need to like turn my brain off completely for it to recharge.

Like try explaining that to somebody why the biochemical process behind that because I certainly can't.

well, I'm just thinking about that in terms of like, what kinds of assumptions are we making when we're talking to other people?

And what kinds of assumptions are we making when we're talking to a machine?

And then looking for the parallels there.

And what kinds of assumptions would be relevant?

Because that's also something I've just been thinking about in terms of like,

mimicry and assumptions, and in my artistic practice, me mimicking geese to try and better understand them, and then asking AI to mimic me and seeing what happens there, and what

kinds of assumptions carry over in each of those mimicry pieces, and then how that plays into how I work with AI and trying to understand basically its baseline assumptions so

that I can...

Yeah, both figure out how it's working and get it to do what I would like in certain contexts.

What's the piece you're working on recently that you think is an approach talking about AI or trying to intrigue into it?

Any cool project you've done recently that you're willing to share?

that would be Simulacra Goose, which is the piece I was just talking about.

Which, it is a long word.

It was, I will fully admit, born out of a need to have a title for a show I was doing when I was in grad school around my work and I was like, well, shoot, I need to come up with a

name for this.

And I think the idea of Simulacra and Simulacrum really encapsulated what I was doing really well in the sense of like simulating

and mimicking different things that we can't fully understand.

And so the concept was that, or the backstory is that I was living in Boston from the Fenway Gardens near Fenway Park and running into geese pretty much every day and seeing

how the urban geese were holding up traffic.

They were interacting with the city in a lot of ways.

They really had dominion in ways that I wasn't expecting.

And then me as an outsider

Trying to understand, okay, in what ways are they actually interacting with the city, interacting with people?

How can I be part of that interaction?

Trying to honk at them and get them to talk back to me and trying to like move with move like them and understand how they move through the world and then realizing there's a lot

of overlap between that kind of mimicry and the mimicry I do every day to make make it so I can navigate through the world and interact with people in in ways that

better align with their lived experience and then thinking about AI as also something I was using to better mimic people and something that's mimicking me.

And then it turned into this like weird experimental piece where I took videos of myself on top of like a table pretending to be a goose and then combined it with some original

fiddle tunes I've been working on, some videos I've taken of geese, and then also some archival goose noises and AI generated footage.

where I asked it to try to take the stills of the ends of my performance and then turn that into a goose, and then other pieces that were where I asked AI to make music as if it

were a goose.

Basically this giant mishmash of things thinking about mimicry and how different umwelts or like lived experiences don't necessarily translate, but we can use mimicry as like a

jumping off point and noticing it can be like almost a form of speculative empathy.

All I'm hearing right now is like the Angry Goose Game.

That's one of my favorite games ever and that's all I'm hearing.

Cause you mentioned something important like how do geese interact with the world?

Do they?

They seem to just kind of like ignore everybody else and do their own thing and yet the world can revolve around them even when it's crossing the street or trying to like steal

some food.

Yeah.

But they're not conscious of the traffic.

They're just trying to cross the street.

Like they will cross the street.

That's also not completely true.

They have some awareness of the cars crossing the street because they won't walk out of the cars in front of them.

But they might not see it if it's down the street a little bit.

They might get hit.

So they're not completely that far away.

And they seem to tend to use the crosswalks, which is really interesting.

um Because I would see, I think it was something where they were seeing, and I'm just guessing at this, I think they saw people walking across at certain points and were like,

yes, that is the point where the flow of traffic from this side happens.

um

Like, that's literally the whole like, make way for duckling statue.

Like, right there, summed up.

Make way for ducks.

They're in the crosswalk.

I actually love those places where they have, like an overpass or an underpass, which only let, wildlife and nature walk on top of underneath.

That way they can get over like, busy six or eight lane highways.

Because otherwise they'll never get across, they'll get hit.

But I love...

I love it all those they have those webcams you can see like here the bears that come across here's the deer here would be like a raccoon in their family.

It's kind of cool to watch that whole like procession of wildlife come across.

Well, and I appreciate in that sense it's not perfect, but it is like a consideration for how our environmental impact interacts with the more than human world, rather than just

saying, well, guess they're gonna get hit.

And I, yeah, I wish there were more ways, I'm sure there are, but I hope that there are more ways in which that will become more commonplace, especially as I think that...

AI does have the potential to help us imagine and really flesh out and make more tangible those types of futures or like imagine futures where that could be possible and make it so

that people can have something to react to because I think it's much harder to prototype and iterate when there's not necessarily something as tangible.

Do you find that your neurodiversity gives you a unique angle or approach to what tangible looks like?

Something that you would want to hold on to?

I it's...

I don't know, I...

I feel like I usually need to...

to see something or to really explore something from all different angles and really understand how something works, like, inside and out before I fully understand it.

Whereas I think other people can more easily grasp really abstract concepts.

So I think that, Yeah, tangibility for me is...

is...

more when I understand, yeah, the inner workings and I feel like I could explain it inside and out.

That's really powerful.

I feel like this, I sometimes feel the same way as far as just trying to like open up the hood and be like, how did it come to this fall process?

And I'm like, wait, actually, no, that makes sense because you said it really well.

You had to explain something to AI as if it is autistic.

And then you turn it back around.

was like, like I see why it hallucinated that or why it had a high probability that this was the answer.

your.

unique perspective has your autistic perspective like ever like really surprised you or shocked you in your work in your study or any or any other ways.

I

I'm probably more interested in the more than human world because I'm autistic.

Because I think there's...

There's a lot that I don't understand about the human world and that can be easier to...

The human world.

Is this a little mermaid?

I feel like it's harder for me to understand the human world, so therefore sometimes I gravitate toward to the more than human world, or like the non-human world as in like

animals and plants and those types of things to try to understand and like then bring back concepts.

And I think that like my fascination with the geese, or like other animals, definitely stems from that.

And I think that that type of...

thought process might not necessarily have happened outside of my autistic perspective.

also though, think there's, there's, and I've noticed this among other autistic friends and colleagues, a way of noticing and really like deep observation that does seem to come

with autism in the sense of like...

noticing not just things that other people wouldn't understand, drawing connections and picking up on things that other people wouldn't understand- wouldn't necessarily pick up

on as readily.

And I definitely- I think that on a macro scale with my study of people and people's behaviors to try to make it so that I don't commit as many social faux pas and so can

actually understand people and get along and-

well, and just because I find people fascinating.

But that, in a macro sense, has been really helpful for working in marketing and working in essentially macro-level decision making.

As you were talking about like going out and observing the human world, all I thought of was Steve Irwin like on a safari being like, we're going to go now to observe humans in a

natural habitat.

And it's an office cubicle farm or something.

And I would so do that.

It's like you're in like your khaki camo outfit.

You've got a net, you're waiting to catch one right by the water cooler or something silly like that.

That will probably be me in another life.

fully admit, when I was single I did treat some of my dates as like, here's my little experiment, we're gonna try this thing and see what happens and see how people either

react to this or like see how it plays out and basically like take different factors of this interaction and slightly shift them to see what changes or if the date was going

badly test out my stand-up routine on them but...

done almost the same thing as far as dates.

Not that I have like experiments on dates, but use them as opportunities to learn about other people and understand like reactions to things that I'm saying.

And that's another really interesting takeaway.

Like dates as not experiments that feels like cool and unusual, but like learning opportunities, especially for autistic people.

Because it's a low stakes learning opportunity.

Like, all things considered, especially if you're in a big city, you probably won't see this person again.

You can...

And I think there's a lot of room, especially for people in the autism spectrum who might not have as much comfort in being themselves, in using those types of opportunities to be

more yourself and see what happens.

yeah, having a low stakes space, I mean, even though it can feel much higher stakes when it's like, this is someone I might be romantically interested in, but low stakes in the

sense of you probably won't see them again, you probably won't run into them again.

Yeah, it can be a really freeing feeling.

That's, you described like the first year of me dating before I met my wife as far as how I interacted with people who I knew.

Like I may see this person once and never again.

So I might as well like try something.

I might as well be a little bit bold and maybe outgoing or maybe risky.

And the worst thing that can happen is I never see them again.

And hopefully they don't feel threatened or at risk of anything that I'm seeing or doing, but like.

Best case scenario, it goes well, but worst case scenario, I shot my shot and I learned that it didn't go so well, but at least I noted they didn't like that.

I went on one date actually, now you're making me think about this, I went on one date, I was in this moment where you talk about the standup in a comedy and like I went over the

same vase, I was like making little jokes and they were like, do you like making people laugh?

And I'm like, yeah, I guess so.

I didn't really have an answer because I wasn't prepared for that question.

I only saw them once, so that did not work out.

but that really resonated with me in that moment.

Like what has your neurodivergent dating experience been like?

Well, okay, definitely hit or miss.

And found a long-term partner now that I am very happy with, so it has worked out for the best.

But I think there's definitely something to that, making people laugh.

I find a lot of comfort in that, because to make somebody laugh, you have to have at least some sense of like a shared reality.

And once somebody's laughing at something I'm saying, it's like, we've connected on something, and now I have a jumping off point.

And I think there's...

There's both that aspect and then also the, it's really hard to date as a neurodivergent person and feel like you can put enough of yourself forward in a really authentic way, but

also adhere to enough social norms so you don't get rejected immediately off the bat.

And finding a really good balance of presenting yourself in a way that's...

not alienating to anyone and that is true to yourself.

And that can be really scary, especially when you get a lot of rejection initially because of that.

and also being really careful not to...

Because I know I'm a bubbly personality who can come off as a little bit eccentric and can come off as like manic pixie dream girl.

And that's not who I am, but that can be appealing to people who want that type of thing and that does not work out, because that's just...

not how that works.

But yeah, I think there are lot of unique challenges in the sense of presentation, being authentic, and finding somebody who is not just enamored with the eccentricities but

really wants to get to know you as a person.

That's a really interesting observation.

I've felt the same way with my wife right now.

She doesn't just care about me and the aesthetics.

She wants to know me and my personality and my interests and my hobbies.

And she's willing to work with me when maybe I need a little bit more support from her or when I need a little bit more help.

And we help and support each other.

But I've been on dates before it was mostly about the looks.

And those did not go well and they went kind of quickly.

But I...

I'm listening a lot with those experiences too.

Any green flags about your current part that you really like?

I have many, but I will say too, the navigating accessibility things really early and like seeing how people react or just having this be a factor in terms of like, hey, this space

is too loud.

I might just need to step out.

Can we maybe take this somewhere else on seeing how that goes or the...

not everyone is okay if even if there's there are things that don't affect them like I have very small noise filtering earplugs that you can't see but some people get really

weirded out by that and just seeing the I've had a couple of it was it very strange and I was like okay this doesn't affect you I don't see why this is a problem but like yeah but

but seeing really early on just that that can be a factor and it was very interesting

My wife asked me last night, I have to sleep to like a white noise machine.

It's just the way that I've grown up and I can't not do it.

And I would like to, but I can't.

And last night she asked me about it.

She's like, can we maybe like try it without the white noise one night?

And I'm like, I would like to, but I can't.

But I did see the other day an advertisement for like an eye mask, which has a noise machine built into it.

So I could still have it and not disrupt her sleep.

So I might look into that.

you, my partner does have heat, well, I say partner just because it sounds like, especially in the corporate world, like sounds better than my boyfriend.

But my boyfriend has a, it's like a headband that you can wear to go to sleep that's really comfy that has like headphones in it.

And similar to what you're describing, but because he needs noise or like something to go to sleep with.

And I need to not hear that.

So it's, but he's found that really helpful.

you a link afterwards if you might want to check that out.

I would be curious, and I did get a link for someone else to look into it too, so I might get them both and compare.

Because I would be curious.

crowdsourcing.

uh

I'll put a touch for the rest of the world too.

And I'll put links to whatever we find in the show notes for this as well.

yeah, I'm happy to send you.

If anyone is interested, and I will send you a bunch of links of things that I find helpful because I think one of the biggest things that I think, especially over the last

two or three years, I found exceptionally helpful in terms of accessibility stuff has been creating a neurodiversity council of my friends and using community as a resource in that

sense and crowdsourcing and really embracing that aspect of it and seeing what works, what doesn't work.

And yeah, I think the community aspect is really valuable.

I completely agree.

have like, I would not call it a council.

have a, it's a, a, the Jedi council, the council of the nerds, the, for me, it's a group chat.

I call it the group chat.

And why I've noticed where I talk about when I say like the group chat, there's only one of them.

I have multiple, but there's only one of the group chats.

Schuyler, this has been an incredible conversation.

Before Bailey and I send you off, how can people find you on the web and they want to connect with you?

So I have my website, is schuylerdragoo.com so it's my first name and my last name.

I also have an Instagram, which is paintedgoose.

No surprise that it is goose themed.

So that is at painted.goose.

And then also if you want to email me or get in touch with anything like that, it is schuylerdragoo.com.

So pretty consistent across the board.

I will make sure to have links to all the definitions in addition to the mask and headband thing that we just discussed.

I'm going to have Bailey help us sign us off, but thank you so much for an incredible conversation and thank you for being on Autistic Techie.

Thank you for having me.