I have a bookshelf in my bedroom where I put pictures of 20 or so people I would consider my heroes. People who did something or created something that inspires me and who I wish to in some degree emulate in my own life. People like Elton John and Jim Henson and Frank Lloyd Wright and Ansel Adams and Dale Chihuly...
But the great irony in all of this is that even if there's only one face in each photo, virtually none of these people worked in isolation. Elton John would have died a casino pianist if not for Bernie Taupin's lyrics and Nigel Olsson's percussion and Gus Dudgeon's production. Jim Henson would have never pulled off The Muppet Movie if not for his puppeteering foil Frank Oz and the beautiful songs of Paul Williams. Dale Chihuly is literally blind in one eye and relies on his workshop to actually blow all the glass for him.
As much as I like to idolize and romanticize the idea of the lone genius, the greatest creators in the world only achieved that greatness because they built a strong team around them that could amplify their own abilities. Individual genius doesn't really exist; only individual credit for a genius team.
The problem is that the high majority of us will never be in a position where we can outsource important creative or strategic work in our lives to an army of people under us. Professors have grad student researchers and architects have a team of apprentices and late night hosts have a room full of joke writers. But what about the rest of us? Where is our team?
I think that's the way we need to position AI to creatives. It’s your team. It’s the way you take your own creative powers and scale them in a way that would be impossible working in isolation. It's not replacing the need for human intellect; nobody is suggesting that Frank Lloyd Wright was lazy or unintelligent just because he outsourced the heavy lifting on architectural projects to his students. But it does accelerate the speed at which you can apply that intellect by expediting as much of the grunt work as possible, and that's a win for any knowledge worker.
AI is your army of grad students and your room full of joke writers. It's your team. Use it.
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