Someone posted the other day that now that anybody can build anything with AI, people are going to be building works of art and there's going to be no limit to what people can do. I was thinking about that and I responded to him and I said, people have always had the ability to create works of art. Michelangelo wasn't unique in his physical abilities. He had the same two hands everyone else had, same five fingers on each hand, same chisel, same hammer. It was something other than raw capability that allowed Michelangelo to produce David and the other works of art that he did. It was something other than raw capability which allowed Leonardo to paint the Sistine Chapel.
One might say that that thing is taste. And it's true that in order to build a truly beautiful work of art, and by work of art I don't limit myself to the classical arts. I think that a piece of software can be a work of art. I think that a user experience or a user interface can be a work of art. I think that code can be a work of art. But in order to build that work of art, you have to know what beautiful it looks like. You have to be able to identify what's wrong, what's not coherent, and be able to fix it.
But again, taste is necessary but not sufficient. Think of somebody who can sing anki, who can hear music and can reproduce the tones. So they have the theoretic ability to discern those different frequencies and they can reproduce them. But there's so much more than just the ability to see the beauty or appreciate the beauty. There's also an element of resilience, of perseverance, of dedication to craft, which is what truly separates the exceptional from the everyday.
And it's this attention to craft and to detail and to process that is what's going to separate those who produce slop from those who produce beauty.
The tools of production, the AI system, the hammer and the chisel, the charcoal or the paints. The tool is almost irrelevant to the beauty that somebody produces. What's much more determinative is their attention to detail, their willingness to see beauty where others only see struggle and pain, their willingness to sit and to agonize over one comma or semicolon, to agonize over one plane on a face, to agonize over a raised pinky which activates a muscle in the forearm, their willingness to not settle for the first thing that an AI pumps out, but to use the tools to get something truly magnificent.
The age of AI is no different than any other age. For in every age, we have technological advancement, and in every age, we have artisans and craftsmen, people who use those technologies to produce the most wonderful things. AI is a letdown for most people because it holds such rich promise of a fast way to wealth, of an untold powerful ability to achieve your dreams. And those things are true if you learn the craft. But that's always been the case. Those who study, who persevere, who put in their hours, we come, artisans and craftsmen and not mere amateurs. The world has always been their oyster, and will continue to be.