Staying Creative Through Changes

Stay Open To Opportunities

Some forced changes because of my work schedule have caused me to heave a greater reliance on AI to get things done. With two jobs my time to write is very limited. Though I have a speech-to-text app, the deep creative work of linking ideas that are loosely connected, or not obviously connected at first, needs quiet moments to just let things interplay and fall into place. Quiet moments that are not so plentiful right now.

So a few days ago I asked Chat GPT to draft a couple of new notes from two past notes that have done well after posting.

Looking over the notes and editing them for RoboPulp cohesiveness, made me ask Chat to write a short post linking them through the Ray Bradbury idea of “Don’t think.”

Bradbury wrote about not thinking deeply when it came to creativity, and reacting from instinct. You can fix it later. It’s my single biggest takeaway from his outstanding book, Zen In The Art Of Writing.

So the impulse to connect the two notes was a sudden insight, a glimpse into a word-idea permutation combo I couldn’t see yet, but I could INTUIT.

Where a slop generator would demand that Chat connect things, intuition told me to see if a link that was articulate and stood on its own could be found through the mediator of tech.

I saw a Substack note recently that said that AI slop is not a product of AI, but a reflection of the user’s intent and depth of contribution.

AI mirrors the level of thinking of the user.

And the common thinking around AI is mediocre.

It lacks effective communication because the user wants to issue commands without the context and nuance of ideas and an artistic vision. (I’ll stick to art for the purposes of this post.)

So, assuming you’re past the hump of AI being evil, if you want better results from your AI interaction, start asking better questions.

In linking all these ideas together and communicating with Chat GPT, the draft generation of the notes felt telepathic.

It felt like the old sci-fi movie Brainstorm, where thoughts and feelings could be recorded and shared just by thinking.

Christopher Walken stars in this, but if you’re a fan you might want to pass. Not very good movie. It just has an interesting gimmick that made a good point for this post so I referenced it.

You have the opportunity to do that now.

And you don’t have to wear all that bulky gear Christopher Walken had to wear to use the machine in the movie.

You just have to communicate what you would like to see.

The key word is communicate.

Not dictate.

Engage with it. Play around. Mix and match your ideas as you see new possibilities in your new results.

AI can’t imagine and make wild connections in unexpected ways.

That is still the domain of the human imagination.