“Want to keep a secret till next Tuesday and be a guest writer on what will probably be the fastest growing ASOTU publication out there?” - Kyle
“YES!!!” - Me (Ben Hadley)
So there I was, sitting in bed, completely stuck on what to write about. You know how it goes, that frustrating moment when you're trying to create something but the blank page just stares back at you. That's when my wife dropped this simple piece of advice: "Put a boundary on it. It'll make it easier to write."
And man, that hit me like a ton of bricks. Because right there, in that simple suggestion about writing constraints, I stumbled onto something bigger about how AI and humans actually work together.
Look at Stack Overflow. This website used to be a go-to spot for developers. Got a bug? Post it. Need recommendations for different languages? Ask away. But since ChatGPT showed up, their traffic has dropped like 60%. And that's when it clicked, AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude absolutely crush it when there are clear boundaries.
Think about it - in development and engineering, there are rules, there are structures, there are clear problems to solve. That's why we're probably going to see all these specialized AIs popping up. AI has already been ruling the financial world, but soon we’ll see something like HealthGPT taking over WebMD, LegalGPT helping lawyers, and so on. Anywhere there are rules, regulations, and boundaries are areas today’s AI thrives.
But here's the thing about real success - it usually comes from doing something original, something that hasn't been done before. Which is pretty ironic when you think about it, because ChatGPT isn't going to make people rich by giving them the same answers it gives everyone else. If anything, it's done the opposite - it's democratized knowledge even more than the internet did.
The internet made knowledge available, sure. But these AI tools? They've changed the game with how we absorb and synthesize that knowledge. Say you wanted to understand the political climate for women in sub-Saharan Africa. Before, you'd have to read maybe five different articles minimum to get a decent grasp. Now? AI can read twenty articles in seconds and combine all that knowledge into one easily digestible piece. It's taking instruments and turning it into a symphony everyone's ears can comprehend.
And yeah, AI is also kind of like an amplifier. If you're really smart or really good at using it, you're going to get way better results than someone who's just starting out. The lever only works as well as the person using it.
But here's where it gets really interesting - humans have this amazing ability to work without constraints, or at least we think we do. And that belief, that freedom to think we have no boundaries, that's what lets us be creative. We're out here creating new knowledge that eventually makes its way into AI systems, which then helps more people understand and build upon it.
So there's this beautiful irony in all of this. Earlier tonight, I was struggling to write because I had no boundaries. My wife suggested adding constraints, and that led me to understand why AI is so good with boundaries. But the real magic? It's in recognizing that the most valuable things we can create are the ones that break through those very same boundaries.
And maybe that's the whole point. Maybe we need both - the boundaries that make things easier and the courage to break through them when we need to create something new. Kind of like how I needed my wife's advice about boundaries to write an article about breaking them.
Funny how that works, isn't it? Sometimes you need to put a fence around your thoughts just to figure out why fences don't really matter at all.
Reply