AI criticism goes in cycles, where the same people repeat the same arguments like they thought of them. You know, like it's organized. (But we know better, right?)
The latest one goes something like, "If you could do it yourself... you wouldn't need AI, would you?"
But then I sat and thought about what’s actually being said here, and how it squares with the reality I see on the ground.
There are certain things all human beings would have trouble doing.
In visual art there are things that an AI can calculate out that your brain would instinctively overcorrect for.
Even with years of training, it would be difficult for a human to render some of the perspective effects that are easily achievable with diffusion processes.
So, yes? Let’s keep going.
For writing, you can brainstorm ideas and move through plotlines or concepts much more quickly with AI than you could by hand.
As an artist of any kind, you can’t see outside your own focus or experience without help.
Scale for independent builders
For coding activities, AI gives you something more interesting: Scale.
Today, if you’re either:
A) an affluent engineer,
or
B) a reasonably hardcore hacker with expensive equipment,
you can execute your production processes at a level that genuinely feels like a redistribution of the means of production.
What AI does here is superhuman. It can track every piece of every project you work on, giving you a level of productivity that was previously available only to midsized enterprise coding teams.
Obviously, we still have work to do on model efficiency and access. We need to make models stronger and lighter so anyone can run them locally and get the same kinds of results.
But we’re getting closer with every DeepSeek paper. And the technology is moving fast enough that I think personal access to this level of capability is going to become dramatically broader before the end of the decade, assuming unreasonable regulation doesn’t stand in the way.
Beyond compute alone
We are entering a period in history where the functional difference between what a single individual can build and what organizations have historically been capable of is starting to collapse.
And people keep handwaving this away by saying:
“Yes, but actually, the difference is compute! More compute means more productivity!”
I don’t think that explains what we’re seeing. If it did, the distribution would be much more uniform than it is. All developers would be empowered in roughly the same way.
There would be no such thing as distinct AI art styles. The world would already be descending into a giant pile of gray goo.
But that isn’t happening.
I said the other day that I don’t think taste is the deciding factor here. What I actually think it comes down to is something different:
Your thought processes. How ambitious you are. Your personal limitations, and how far your imagination goes.
Why do it?
I don’t know.
Open the windows of your mind, and tell me.