But you probably shouldn’t.

Not if what you’re trying to do is earn a living by making things. Not if you care about the things you make.

We live in a world where anyone with a $20 account at an frontier AI company can order up a custom “site” or “app” or “game” almost on demand. When you order this… thing… your AI agent will happily reach out to the internet… and steal.

That agent will gobble up other peoples data, and it will gulp down their assets, It will digest peoples words and thoughts, and for desert it’ll gorge itself on other peoples source code. The agent will take this mountainous meal of stolen delectable delights and then will try to replace all of the people instrumental in making all of these things known and available with… whatever you asked it to create.

You might think, based on that last bit that my argument is going to be that doing this is just morally reprehensible but, while it generally is, that is not the argument that I am making. I’m arguing that it’s stupid.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you? It’s dumb to think that you’re going to have AI steal a bunch of stuff from everyone, whip up a thing in an hour (or a day, or a week), and you’re going to wire up Stripe or Paypal to it and BAM you’re financially set for life. The reason that it’s such a dumb thing to think is that you (yes you who had this AI make this thing) and everyone else like you are exactly the reason it won’t – can’t work.

Why would I pay you for this thing you wished into existence… When I can take my $20 account and wish the same thing into existence too? It’d be stupid wouldn’t it? I can have my AI steal everything your AI stole and make the thing you made… If I want it. Even better I can have my AI steal everything your AI stole and also steal whatever your AI made. Win-Win!

An AI can make you faster, sure. But if that’s all your AI lets you do then you’re, just, really bad at whatever you’re doing.

Lets say that you (the person reading this, made of meat) have a skill – lets say it’s “G” on the letter line – that you’re really good at. You’re probably also OK with “F”, and “H”, and you know a little bit about “E” and “I” but past that you’re no more knowledgeable than anyone else:

_{a b c} d … e F G H i … j _{k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z}

You can use AI to make you an speedy world class expert at “G”, really good with “F”, and “H”, decent with “E” and “I” and OK with “D”, and “J”.

_{a b} c … d e F ^G H i j … k _{l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z}

You never knew enough about “C”, or “K” to do anything special there without building up your knowledge from scratch.

So what the AI should let you do is amplify the breadth of your abilities by reaching into adjacent expertise that you have and allowing you to leverage things you know, conceptually, as if you knew them fundamentally.

You should be using AI to build great things that are greater than they otherwise could be… Not building garbage as fast as possible.

#imho #ai #greatness #speed #theft #what-is-the-legacy-you-want-to-leave-behind #dead-internet #its-bots-all-the-way-down-now #are-you-really-just-the-sum-of-what-other-people-do-and-think #be-something-of-value