How often do you find yourself doing this? Start with a vague app idea, ask AI to start it, and suddenly you have a bunch of code scaffolded out. At the same time, product decisions show up. Some you realized existed, but didn’t realize they needed so much thought. Others you didn’t realize even existed at all before you started building.
Just me? Maybe it’s my ADD. Maybe I’ve just had too much of the AI Kool-Aid. But I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one running into this. If it is, bear with me anyway. I have a point to make.
So now I’ve done all the code generation, and I have a half-finished thing with either way too much scope or way too little. Either way, I’ve lost the motivation to continue. I’m churning out code so much more than I was able to before, but that’s burning me out.
AI has greatly increased the sheer amount of output I can accomplish in a day. Notice I didn’t say work. Just because I’m producing more output, doesn’t mean I’m doing better work. Sometimes, it doesn’t even mean I’m doing any meaningful work at all! More output often just means more things I have to review, validate, reshape, or throw out entirely. But, I’m either not finishing the projects or I get stuck because I started a project with only a half finished thought and am over-reliant on AI to finish that thought for me.
I watched a video [1] by Dan Koe this morning that resonated with me and prompted me [2] to write this article. I’ve been feeling like this for a while, but haven’t had the time to sit, think about, and put into words. Creativity doesn’t show up on command, so when we try to use LLMs to be creative, we’re just going to burn out pulling the levers on the AI slot machine. The problem is not that AI is useless creatively. The problem is that I keep asking it to finish thoughts I haven’t actually finished myself.
Human experience can’t be replicated in AI; even with the vast amounts of knowledge LLMs contain, it still can’t contain my experience, my thoughts, my ideas, my memories. When we just sit and chat with ChatGPT, Claude, etc, looking for the creative spark, we’re not going to find it. We have to step away and experience life for the reality that it is.
The issue is that [AI] can mimic what looks like real thinking without requiring any cognitive effort from either the creator or consumer. - Dan Koe
All in all, I think slowing down to contemplate is more important than crafting another prompt for another project I don’t need to implement. Sometimes the idea isn’t ready for execution yet; it needs more brain cycles, not more AI cycles.
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“I’m begging you to start writing essays (even if you hate writing)” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rNqNvwNcrM↩︎
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“Prompt” in the traditional sense of the word. I didn’t use AI to write this article. I did have it copy edit for me and suggest things, but you can tell it didn’t write this because an AI would have had the sense to cut a few of these sentences and this piece would sound less like someone speaking out loud into a markdown file.↩︎