Great piece, David. I'll confess... I'm more excited about this than worried. For years, the craft of execution gatekept who got to have creative ideas taken seriously. If you couldn't design it or produce it yourself, your idea stayed on a whiteboard or less. Now the barrier between "I have an idea" and "here's what it looks like" is basically gone. That's not a loss as far as I am concerned...it's a long overdue leveling of the playing field. The compression you're describing is also expanding who gets to be creative.
Mark, I do agree—there will be much upside for many. It requires a lot of mental dexterity to think through how things can be both "good" and "not so good" at the same time. I have another friend who spent his life in the corporate world and, after a year of heavy leaning into AI, is now in the early stages of building a business. It's truly inspirational. None of this would have been possible without AI. But it's important to remember that for every example where an entrepreneur is born, there will be someone who quietly departs the corporate white-collar world altogether. Another friend of mine, who led UX teams and projects, is now doing ridesharing and deliveries to get by. We have to be honest about these as well, even though we love celebrating success stories, which often come with innovation and disruption.
I've got a friend who spends most of his spare time on Twitter making memes. Except the memes are more like Hollywood movie trailers. Except they ACTUALLY ARE Hollywood movie trailers. Except...
I could go on — and I'm going to have to keep revisiting your piece as it's really good and quite thought-provoking — but suffice it to say all of his creative energies are focused far, far away from his day job.
I think one of the points of your article might be that we're opening up a creative Pandora's box and maybe that might be a good thing? To the extent, I guess, that polymaths like my friend can tap into the creative world at very little cost; and others might be able to look at AI-driven tools as the gateway to careers that quite a few people in the late-90s looked to the World Wide Web for.
Great piece, David. I'll confess... I'm more excited about this than worried. For years, the craft of execution gatekept who got to have creative ideas taken seriously. If you couldn't design it or produce it yourself, your idea stayed on a whiteboard or less. Now the barrier between "I have an idea" and "here's what it looks like" is basically gone. That's not a loss as far as I am concerned...it's a long overdue leveling of the playing field. The compression you're describing is also expanding who gets to be creative.
Mark, I do agree—there will be much upside for many. It requires a lot of mental dexterity to think through how things can be both "good" and "not so good" at the same time. I have another friend who spent his life in the corporate world and, after a year of heavy leaning into AI, is now in the early stages of building a business. It's truly inspirational. None of this would have been possible without AI. But it's important to remember that for every example where an entrepreneur is born, there will be someone who quietly departs the corporate white-collar world altogether. Another friend of mine, who led UX teams and projects, is now doing ridesharing and deliveries to get by. We have to be honest about these as well, even though we love celebrating success stories, which often come with innovation and disruption.
Commoditization on the low end and bespoke pricing on the high end.
I've got a friend who spends most of his spare time on Twitter making memes. Except the memes are more like Hollywood movie trailers. Except they ACTUALLY ARE Hollywood movie trailers. Except...
I could go on — and I'm going to have to keep revisiting your piece as it's really good and quite thought-provoking — but suffice it to say all of his creative energies are focused far, far away from his day job.
I think one of the points of your article might be that we're opening up a creative Pandora's box and maybe that might be a good thing? To the extent, I guess, that polymaths like my friend can tap into the creative world at very little cost; and others might be able to look at AI-driven tools as the gateway to careers that quite a few people in the late-90s looked to the World Wide Web for.