She Codes AI & Games. Here's How She Defines Creativity | Himashi Naurunna

Engineering without creativity shows up in the product. Every time. Himashi Naurunna has been inside enough products to know — and in this episode she explains exactly what that means.

📥 Get the Sri Lanka Podcast Tour Magazine — free download:
https://stan.store/TheCreativeOdysseyPodcast/p/get-inside-the-creative-odyssey-magazine?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

Himashi Naurunna is an Associate Tech Lead in AI/ML at Gapstars, a former game developer at Rivertune Games, and a First Class Honours graduate in Computer Software Engineering. She's based in Nugegoda, Sri Lanka, and she has one of the clearest creative philosophies of any guest this show has had — she just doesn't frame it that way, because she doesn't need to.

In this episode, recorded at Hatch.lk startup hub in Sri Lanka, Himashi and Sheran cover:

- The game that sparked everything — Ori and the Blind Forest — and the moment she thought "if they can do it, I can do it too"
- How gaming became the gateway from finger painting into coding and eventually into machine learning
- What creativity actually means inside a world of logic, code, and algorithms
- Why AI is built from human creativity — and why that makes it a creative tool rather than a threat
- Building Yokai L — the mobile game where every micro-decision from jump height to damage buffers was a creative act
- The line that landed hardest: when you engineer without creativity you can see it in the product
- Engineers and burnout — why they're married to each other, and what gets you through the 3AM bug spiral
- The blob tracking algorithm she posted on Instagram that inspired people she never expected
- AGI — what it is, what it isn't, and why the dream isn't just intelligence but creative intelligence
- Why humans are, structurally, already a form of AI — and what that reframe does to how you think about what we're building
- How Sri Lankans respond to AI engineers — and what Himashi says back
- Why Hatch.lk is the Silicon Valley of Sri Lanka and why building around builders is the only proper way to do it

This episode is part of The Creative Odyssey Podcast Sri Lanka Series, recorded live at Hatch.lk startup hub, Colombo, Sri Lanka.

─────────────────────────────
GUEST
─────────────────────────────
Himashi Naurunna
Associate Tech Lead, AI/ML — Gapstars
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hansa-naurunna-013324197
Instagram: @lia.likescookies

─────────────────────────────
FIND THE SHOW
─────────────────────────────
🎧 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/12SGsSsLz4DqlLFwxigjXX
🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/pl/podcast/the-creative-odyssey-podcast/id1750306317
🌐 Buzzsprout: https://thecreativeodysseypodcast.buzzsprout.com
📩 Email: thecreativeodysseypodcast@gmail.com
📥 Sri Lanka Magazine: https://stan.store/TheCreativeOdysseyPodcast/p/get-inside-the-creative-odyssey-magazine?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

─────────────────────────────
PRODUCED BY
─────────────────────────────
Odyssey House Media
Recorded at Hatch.lk startup hub, Sri Lanka

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I think the earliest memory of like loving something that another person's made is like Ori and the Blind Forest. That's like one of the games that I played early on that was like really awesome. I was like, hey, I wanna make games too. As an engineer, I have spent so many nights at 3 a.m. just looking at code, being like, why did I pick this career? And then for that AGI to be able to be creative by itself. I know it sounds like lunacy, but like imagine this AI, right? That is literally we we are AI. If you think about it.

SPEAKER_02 0:35

Explain. Describe. I wanna hear it.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Right. So if you think about it, we we live in this like little computer, right? But that we call the world. It's built up from like molecules and atoms and all sorts of things, right? Building like the most awesome shit. And that's awesome. Just being around that, right? And talking to them and you know, like getting their input and their ideas, and you're building with them, right? Like you're at your desk, you're building, they're building, and you know, you're all building towards like a thing, right? And you just share ideas, and it's just amazing. I would I'd say like that's the only proper way to build around cool people building.

SPEAKER_03 1:27

I just got done recording two days of my podcast, the Creative Artists Podcast, here at Hatch.lk, one of the leading startup hubs in Sri Lanka, because my goal was to be able to tell stories of unique creatives here who are crazy enough to think that they can actually solve problems. To be here at Hatch and be inspired in what I'm doing, and to be able to tell these stories and have this uh studio and opportunity. I'm super grateful to Hatch. I feel affirmed in my mission to highlight creatives, and when I saw individuals from startups like inviting their own friends to be on here, so I can highlight their stories in their unique way of thinking, every single one of them has so much uh insight to provide to anybody who's watching, who's anybody who's thinking that they're not good enough to do what they're doing. Seeing stories from doctors who have changed uh careers into running startups to journalists to doing this kind of things, like it gives me so much hope to be able to share this to others to say that, like, wherever you are at, if you're not passionate about what you're doing and you're stuck in your own uh bubble or whatever, find communities like Hatch because it is gonna be the best thing that you do for yourself because the community is absolutely amazing. Hatch, thank you so much for the support you provided. I can't wait to show you the amazing stories and the insights your own people are going to share with the world. Hi, welcome to the Creative Odyssey Podcast. My name is Sharan, and today we're recording at Hatch.lk, one of the leading startups, uh hubs in Sri Lanka where entrepreneurship and creativity collide and immerse together. When you think about creativity, usually you don't think about AI models and especially using it to create games and all the other kinds of things that comes along with it. So I have a special guest, um Himashi. Um I'm super excited to kind of hear um what she's uh doing and how she uses creativity. So, starting off, what sparked your uh love for building things and creating things?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

So I think what made me want to build things is seeing what other people have kind of made. So I think I think the earliest memory of like loving something that another person's made is like Ori and the Blind Forest. That's like one of the games that I played early on that was like really awesome. I was like, hey, I want to make games too. Yeah, so and then I was like, okay, so these people will be they can make something this cool. Hey, I can do that too, right? If other people can do it, I can do it too. So that's kind of what sparked that little spark to kind of want to make things. So that's kind of what got me into gaming and actually like creating games and um wanting to make things.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:21

So when you look at your creative journey, were you always creative? Like how what kind of things you were into when you were a kid?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

I mean, things kids are into, like finger painting and so gaming is the main thing that kind of like sparks. I think gaming's like the thing that kind of got me into tech and coding and things like that. Because like when you start making games, you kind of start realizing, hey, you can't just um like draw a little doodle and then tell it to you know jump, right? Right. You gotta code it to actually jump. You yeah. So that's kind of what got me into coding.

SPEAKER_03 5:00

So how do you define creativity in a world of logic, code, and algorithms?

SPEAKER_01 5:06

So I think anything can be creative, right? If you think about it, like the idea of creativity is like originality and just having ideas and having those ideas kind of come together in a cohesive way that you know inspires other people to be more creative, right? I think that's also kind of a a roundabout explanation where it kind of depends on itself, but yeah, that's why I think like creativity kind of is.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

Yeah, and you you when I when I was kind of talking to you earlier, I I I heard you being super passionate about like using AI in the creative space. So talking through then how you see that.

SPEAKER_01 5:47

You know, I think AI can be used in the creative space because um it accelerates you know the creative process. Um, if you think about it, a lot of what AI is is taking other people's creativity and like things that people have done, right? That is creativity, right? People what people have done, and just condensing it into this like algorithmic form which you can utilize, right? So that being like you can use it to take inspiration, to create your own thing, or you know, like the world's your oyster, you can just do anything with it, you know. We have given you like as ML engineers, we give you this, you know, algorithm which has the hundreds of millions of data points, and you can do anything with it. You know, it's Pandora's box.

SPEAKER_03 6:38

Right. Yeah, right. So shoot. I lost my thought of uh train of thought. Was there a moment? Can you share a moment when you were deep in the engineering work, right? And it felt like you were creating something artistic in that moment.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Well, engineering itself, the the actual process of coming up with solutions is creative, but the actual like engineering when it comes down to it, it can be quite tedious. And I think most art is kind of you know tedious when it comes down to the process and to technique and things like that. I feel like I lost the question.

SPEAKER_03 7:13

So in in those moments of creating in your in the engineering uh mindset, like was there any moment it felt like actually no, I'm creating something here?

SPEAKER_01 7:23

I mean, throughout the entire process, right? Um so I've let me like take an example, right? Yeah. So we made a a mobile game, right? It's called Yokai Bill. So that the the entire game was about like this person, like this main protagonist, like progressing through training and this thing and that thing, and then like becoming a soldier, right? Like the entire process was creative from the start to the finish, right? We came up with a story, right? We designed the characters. When we were coding it, we were like, you know, how high should this guy jump? You know, he's he's a superhero, you know, super soldier, whatever. Let's make him like jump yay high. Right. Let's make him run yay fast. He should be able to crouch, he should take damage, but not too much damage. And you know, the entire process was creative, right? And then the types of guns he used, you know, how do we spawn in the bullets? How do we make him, you know, so epic that people want to play this game, right? So when he's close to dying, we don't want him to just die, right? We we have this buffer period. I think a lot of games do this, where when you're close to dying, it just kind of stops you.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

And then we're like, hey, you're kind of a badass, you kind of just survived this entire thing, and you get to continue playing, you know. I think there's a specific term for it, I can't really remember, but Fortnite does it. Um, a lot of games do it. It's it is all creative. It's like these tiny little decisions you make in engineering and while you're coding, that does kind of you know impact the overall like creativity. Um, when you do engineer without creativity, you can see it in the product. You can see it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:09

I never thought about it. That's pretty cool. So I'm on this mission through the podcast to change the narrative of how people see creativity. Yeah, right. Because normally when you say creatives, especially when I was growing up, it was all about the artistic side of it only. And I am realizing and that that everybody's creative. So, how do you see creativity and how do you see that narrative changing? Like, how do you see how do you define creativity in other words?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

How do I define creativity? So, in terms of like what is creative, as I mentioned, like it is just the amalgamation of ideas, right? And that can be words, that can be pictures, any way to kind of express to the human mind a sort of you know, abstract feeling, slash sensation, slash idea, right? If you think about it, everything is just you know, an idea, right? It's it's us hallucinating this entire world, if you think about it. Yes, and we're trying to give each other these different little hallucinations. So I I describe dog, you think about a dog, I basically that's a creative idea, you know, dog on a ball, that's a creative idea. I just made you hallucinate a dog on a ball.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

Right. I like the word dream better than hallucinate, but you get the point. Dream. Envision. There we go. Envision.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah. Communicating ideas. Exactly, exactly. We're so excited to share with you all the episodes that we filmed in Sri Lanka. We know a lot of you have been waiting, but we wanted to make sure that we did this really meaningfully because it really was an exciting time. When Sharon first came to me and said he was gonna take the podcast to Sri Lanka, I honestly thought he was crazy.

SPEAKER_03 10:54

And so did I. I was like, is there any possibility we can fit this in? I want to try to bring the podcast in, get to know people, and interview creatives.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

So we expected to have just a few conversations, maybe a little sparks of inspiration here and there, but what happened was so much deeper than that. We met so many people that not only we you got to interview, but that also like came alongside us to help make these conversations happen.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

The crazy thing was this daring idea of going to a country, even though I'm from Sri Lanka. I hadn't been back for like seven years, and all I knew was some people from school that I went to and some on social media that I've been following, but didn't really have a concrete plan to make it happen. And some days we had six, seven episodes back-to-back recorded because people were waiting and you were kind of facilitating that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah, so it felt really significant because not only was it that we were having like these raw and authentic conversations, but a lot of their stories resonated with Geron's, and so it just was really fascinating to see them speaking the same language and to see like just this commonality of creativity and identity and purpose coming out as the themes of these conversations.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

You must be wondering when this trip happened. It happened in September, and uh the goal was to get these episodes out by December or last year. Well, a lot of things happened, and I didn't want to diminish the work we put in and again the amazing gifts that we had. So we decided to do something really cool, and we're gonna post however many we can a week.

SPEAKER_00 12:27

So, LinkedIn, every single episode, you'll find a free PDF. It's actually a magazine that we developed. You can kind of think of it like if you go to a concert and you get like the souvenir of what happened behind the scenes and just about the different artists and all those things. We wanted to share with you not only about Tron's journey, but then help you connect with some of the guests that we interview in Sri Lanka and then invite you on your own creative Odyssey.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

Yes, there's so much more that goes into or that fuels this podcast, which is this mission to inspire people to create so that they can get to know themselves and connect with their inner child. So to see that we could bring that story out of Sri Lanka creatives, a wide diverse range of creatives was definitely a highlight.

SPEAKER_00 13:13

Our hope is that whether you're living in the States, you're living in Sri Lanka, or somewhere else around the world, you'll connect with someone's story within Sri Lanka and it might inspire you to continue on your own creative godyssey.

SPEAKER_03 13:23

The link to the PDF for the magazine is in the description, and please check it out. They're doing really cool things that I really think you should be checking out to see their journeys. So without further ado, let's get to the episode. You mentioned also like getting into the gaming industry. It's a bit hard, right? It's a lot of like uh hard and also very like tough work. So burn out burnout is kind of part of the process. Oh so how do you balance this in this industry and kind of talk me through that and what keeps you going?

SPEAKER_01 13:59

Burnout. I I I think engineers and burnout, they go, they're married to each other.

SPEAKER_03 14:08

So how how do you overcome that? Because the burnout is not a good place to be.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Yeah, I know it's not a good place to be, but I feel like that's like a place that I find myself often. It's a personal battle, right? From like individual to individual, like how you want to manage burnout and you know, things like that. As an engineer, I have spent so many nights at 3 a.m. just looking at code, being like, why did I pick this career? Why did I pick this career? Yeah. That is just looking at like one bug that you just cannot fix, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

But when you do fix it, you're like, I picked this career.

SPEAKER_03 14:47

So so it's just like this relentless, like this need to just kind of fix it, right? That's the driving force.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

I think as a human being, I am like sort of a person who wants to fix and solve problems, and that's what kind of bought me to be an engineer in the first place. You know, like as a kid, I'd see like a little table that's like a little like wobbly. I'd be like, tell me how to fix this. Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, solutions.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

Right. So how do you, um, as a young person, how do you encourage other young people or even older folks, yeah, to kind of be this inquisitive curiosity kind of uh mindset? Because I I the thing is this, right? My my job or my passion is to inspire other people to be creative. So I ask this question, everybody, like who, especially when I meet creatives like yourself who's super passionate about what you do.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

How do you inspire other people? Right. So I think the way I could inspire another person is like doing cool shit and then it being so cool that someone is like, hey, that's super cool, I want to do that.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

So do you let your actual work of art?

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Yeah, I mean, it's supposed to be, I mean, you can go to every person and be like, hey, you wanna try AI and like kind of show them and like trying to like feed it down their throat, right? But I think the better way of kind of inspiring people is to do something so cool and for people to see it and for them to be like, hey, this is super awesome. I want to do something like that, right? Um, I can remember um I posted something about uh like a blob tracking algorithm, right? Okay, and I posted that on Instagram and people were like, that's so cool, I wanna redo that. And then people were asking for the for my code and stuff like that. I was like, hey, like I never in a ne in a million years would never have imagined people would be you know inspired by a blob tracking algorithm, right? That's super weird, but you know, people people get inspired by the the most interesting things, like how I was inspired by like Ori and the Blind Forest. That game was so cool.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

Yeah, yeah, clearly that inspired you. What's a crazy uh and even maybe um uh impossible sounding idea, uh project that you'd love to create one day?

SPEAKER_01 17:12

Okay, so as an AI engineer, I feel like this is every AI engineer's dream at the end of the day, but it's AGI, you know?

SPEAKER_02 17:23

Explain what AGI is.

SPEAKER_01 17:24

So AGI is artificial general intelligence. Okay. I think San Alt Sam Altman has, you know, kind of popularized the word, you know, as kind of a buzzword, and everyone is like AGI, AGI, AGI, right? But artificial general intelligence is just as intelligence that you know can think like you or I, right? Has its own sentience of sorts, right? It can to be honest, it's a very general term that hasn't been defined yet very well, because it can mean a lot of things, right? It could mean sentience, it could mean you know, super intelligence. I feel like in terms of super intelligence, we're kind of going there where you know, like GBD models, they can you can ask them anything, they'll like answer it and they'll know everything. Like we already have PhD level intelligence, right? But AGI would be it's sentient, you know, it thinks like you or I.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

And that bribes you.

unknown 18:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

I mean, I think that's one of the things, you know, and then for that AGI to be able to be creative by itself.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

I know I it sounds like lunacy, but like imagine this AI, right? That is literally we we are AI, if you think about it.

SPEAKER_02 18:41

Explain, describe, I want to hear more.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Right? So if you think about it, we we live in this like little computer, right? But that we call the world. It's built up from like molecules and atoms and all sorts of things, right? And the way these atoms like interact, we've been programmed to kind of propagate and just the only thing that comes out of evolution is propagation, right? That's the only function that we're trying to optimize. I feel like I lost I've lost the plot.

SPEAKER_03 19:13

AGIs and AGI saying that humans are pretty much AGIs. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Humans are pretty much AI, right? If you think about it, right? So we just arose out of like randomness, right? And if you think about it, AI is kind of the same thing. You put a bunch of zeros and ones and whatever in this like little soup, right? And then you just give it one goal. You give it one goal, and then you just let it propagate. Our goal was to survive, and in terms of like LLMs, it was next token prediction, right? So in that entire mess, this is what it created to optimize for that function, you know, optimize for that problem. The to optimize for survival, we just we came about, you know. Right. We get we have a flight or flight response, we you know, eat for energy, we reproduce to propagate. We literally AI, if you think about it. I mean, not the word not the word artificial, but like we're intelligence bought about by you know, all this.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Right, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Just like how we bought about intelligence via computers using silicon. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:23

That's pretty smart. I like that. You're the first guest here. Yeah, how do Sri Lankan's uh society kind of see you guys and and understand?

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Oh, people who do AI. I have gotten so many comments being like, you're destroying nature, you're you know, hurting the the economy, late stage capitalism, you know, all sorts of stuff like that, right? And for the most part, like kind of okay. But I think it's a necessary evil. I mean, it's not even evil, right? We like how I think of it is like we're freeing up people so they can do better things with their time, right? Do you really want to be taking McDonald's orders at the drive-thru? No, really, you don't want to be flipping burgers. Yes, you're out of a job, but you know, find better things to do.

SPEAKER_03 21:12

Yeah. So finally, like being at hatch, like what excites you being here and being part of this kind of movement.

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Being at hatch. I think it's the people. Like being at hatch is I'm I'm I'm gonna say something that's gonna like seem a bit outlandish, but I feel like this is the Silicon Valley of Sri Lanka.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

So we're literally here in Silicon Valley, and you meet all sorts of cool people building like the most awesome shit. And that's awesome. Just being around that, right? And talking to them and you know, um, like getting their input and their ideas, and you're building with them, right? Like you're at your desk, you're building, they're building, and you know, you're All building towards like a thing, right? And you just share ideas and it's just amazing. I would I'd say like that's the only proper way to build around cool people building.

SPEAKER_03 22:10

100% agree. Uh Himashi, thank you so much for being on the pod. Uh I'm super inspired by kind of how you see AI and like how bold you are in this kind of journey that you're on, regardless of what's what's happening around you and how people misunderstand you and things like that. I have so much respect for you. Thank you for being on the pod. Um, until next time, see you later.