Conference The Road Ahead The Road Ahead
ON SITE Meidinger-Saal Wednesday, May 06, 10:00

Why Every Tech Panic Looks the Same (And What Actually Happens Next)

Video on demand

Larry Cutler has watched the animation industry freak out over "killing jobs" technology several times in his career. Real-time rendering was going to destroy film-quality work. Procedural tools would eliminate the need for artists. Motion capture meant hand animation was dead.

Every single time, the panic was loud, the predictions were wrong, and what actually happened was something almost nobody saw coming.

Now everyone's losing their minds over AI, and Larry's seeing the exact same pattern play out again. Drawing from his front-row seat at Pixar, DreamWorks, and now as Co-Founder and CTO of 10x Emmy Award winning Baobab Studios (where he's actually built AI-driven character systems for years), he'll break down why these panics follow such a predictable script, what we're consistently wrong about, and what the pattern reveals about where things are actually headed.

Larry Cutler

Larry Cutler, CTO & Co-Founder, Baobab Studios

Larry Cutler is the Chief Technical Officer and Co-Founder of 10x Emmy-award winning and leading independent animation studio Baobab Studios, which sits at the intersection of tech, gaming, and Hollywood. Baobab is partnered with Google AI and two other top-tier tech AI firms. They've earned a reputation for having top creative talent (e.g., MADAGASCAR writer/director, MOANA producer), that leads in AI and real-time tech, architecting breakthrough applications of machine learning for storytelling and games. Larry’s AI and tech media insights have been shared as keynotes for SxSW, SIGGRAPH, GDC, and Digipro.

As CTO of Baobab Studios, he has propelled AI and UGC creator platforms (e.g,. Roblox) industries forward with expertise in Gen Z and Alpha consumer behavior. Baobab has a track record of creating value from IP transmedia (e.g., created hit Roblox games and turned the IP into series/film with Disney+, Netflix, Max series and books). They are creatively led by Eric Darnell, director of all 4 MADAGASCAR films ($3.5B box office) and Osnat Shurer, producer of MOANA (#1 streamed movie, $2.5B box office). Baobab is backed by Disney, Comcast, and Chernin.

Their projects (Disney, Netflix, Max, Roblox, VR) have attracted talent such as Oprah, John Legend, Ali Wong, Daisy Ridley, Kate Winslet, and more. Their board includes luminaries like Ed Catmull, the Pixar co-founder.

Cutler brings deep technical leadership over the past two decades in animation, machine learning AI, real-time technology, animation creation and development. He serves on the Digital Imaging Technology Subcommittee for the Oscar Technical Achievement Awards.

He was most recently the Vice President of Solutions at Metanautix, a big data, machine learning startup (acquired by Microsoft). Prior to that, Larry served as DreamWorks Animation’s Global Head of Character Technology working on films such as SHREK 2, SHREK THE THIRD, HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, and MEGAMIND. Larry began his career at Pixar Animation Studios as a Technical Director on films such as MONSTERS INC, TOY STORY 2, and A BUG’S LIFE.

Larry holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in computer science from Stanford University.