Machines of Freeing Creativity

The machines will not replace us. The machines will not befriend us. The machines will free our creativity.

It’s really only been this year — once the tools graduated from autocomplete to something you could hand a whole project to — that I’ve started to take building with AI seriously. In that time I’ve built a dozen or so personal projects that had been stuck in my brain like grains of sand for over a decade with no clear way out.

They were stuck for a simple reason: building them used to require a business model. Any idea worth weeks of nights and weekends had to justify itself — an audience, a revenue story, some return on the effort. Most personal ideas can’t clear that bar, so they just sit there. Now the build costs a weekend, and the only justification an idea needs is that I want it to exist.

Some were fairly simple: “I loved Google Reader. I haven’t found a really simple RSS replacement since. Let’s build an RSS reader that lets me add feeds to a list and press J to go forward, K to go back — the same keys Reader used.” Ninety minutes later, a working tool. A week of tweaks later, something enjoyable. A couple months later, a tool that can be forked and evolve into a new (old) way to consume news on your terms.

Some were more complicated: “I live in a neighborhood with a lot of cul-de-sacs. I think it would be fun to have a phone game that lets you collect the cul-de-sacs you pass on a walk or bike ride — challenges for collecting them all, speed runs, unique patterns.” We’re still working on this one, but the machine isn’t the blocker. The human unwilling to walk the longer route in Atlanta summer heat is the problem.

The only justification an idea needs is that I want it to exist.

I understand (I guess) the desire of the big foundation model godheads to talk about the grand transformational nature of it all. Work won’t be the same! The machines have escaped! They’ll be our friends! GPUs aren’t free, and big investment requires big talk.

But if you have ideas that have been stuck in your brain like grains of sand for years, I’d encourage you to just build them. Those little grains turn into pearls at a speed and quality that will amaze you. Don’t let the big talk stop you from freeing your own creativity.