I have a slightly different opinion. I agree that we humans have a creative spark that drives research, true art, etc. However, I am 90% seeing AI tools as a means to let me create more, and faster. I have co-pilot integrated with my Emacs and VSCode setups, and it is hard to imagine turning back time and not having co-pilot available. Yesterday I wanted a snappy title for a new open source project (inspired by last Friday’s All-In podcast) so I wrote up a three paragraph description and asked mixtral-8-7B (running locally on my Mac) as well as Anthropic’s Claude 2 and ChatGPT for project name suggestions. Lots of good ideas, I chose my favorite.

Last February I was writing a book on ‘safe AI’ and after I wrote each chapter, I had ChatGPT read it and asked for additional topics I may have neglected. It was also good for generating end of chapter summaries that I re-worded to fit my style.

For the last ten years I have tried to be on a ‘digital diet’ - limiting time on digital devices except for high productivity sprints. This includes limiting time on HN and X. It feels good to use AI tools to get more done quickly so I have more time to cook elaborate meals for my family, hike and hang out with my friends, and read.