I'm watching Monarch: Legacy of Monsters on Apple TV, and I got to thinking about things that are no longer true with AI. The jury is still out on whether it's a good show, but I do enjoy Kurt Russell, and his son isn't a half-bad actor.
Like other technologies, generative AI (GenAI) has displaced the old ways. Doing math by hand or with an abacus was the way until calculators came along, and then computers. Who even uses a physical calculator anymore?
## Good Writing Is Exotic
I love writing things down, but beyond helping me remember, the value of written words has plummeted. Though I suppose pointing people to a written document is more specific than telling someone to run a prompt.
I enjoy raw, authentic prose more than I used to. It's becoming rarer, and it's blindingly obvious when words are spouted from a GPT or other large-language-model chatbot despite a clever personal voice prompt.
**Creative writing is no longer the sole domain of creatives.**
## Thinking Is Cheap
Thinking is less valuable, at least that's what Anthropic and OpenAI want everyone to believe. They're selling "thinking" machines that do it for you. **Thinking is no longer required for thousands of mundane tasks.**
I wonder if the special human type of thinking, the one that computers will never do, will skyrocket in price. Will people get paid to feed the thinking machines with new material to make them smarter, or will companies continue to ingest written work with no legal recourse? At least they can't read your mind—yet.
## Anybody Can Write Code
**It's no longer true that only professional programmers can write useful code.** It was always true that anyone could write code, but Hello World isn't very useful. But people are building websites and complicated software to do complicated things with Lovable and Replit. The price of a website template was already falling. Now you can build hundreds for nearly free.
An interesting side effect of having GenAI is a newfound ability to bulldoze tech debt. **It's no longer true that tech debt must continue to plague organizations; there is a way out.** The first big wins for users of augmented coding tools came in the form of migrating projects from dead languages to new, well-supported ones, removing bugs, and quickly adding tests.
## Artistry Is Accessible
Making a great image in Photoshop used to take hundreds of hours learning arcane menus and workflows. **Suffering is no longer a prerequisite for making digital art.** It's still difficult to create striking art, but anyone can project their artistic vision into tools that generate artwork in the form of pictures, music, and full-blown motion pictures with a complete cast and storyline.
*I composed the lyrics and the guitar track of this video, but the rest is AI.*
{{< youtube id="JCvdlBGEEJ8" >}}
## Bespoke Is Woke
I've bought hundreds of applications over the years. More often than not, the software's creator would jump the shark, and I'd end up with a useless program. **It's no longer true that you must buy software to fulfill your needs.** I can build my own bespoke applications and get my work done without relying on anyone else. I've started replacing paid software with my own apps that are easy to maintain and do a couple of small jobs very well.
## Not So Experts
I have free financial and legal advice as job perks, but I haven't used them for well over a year. **It's no longer true that you need an expert to get many things done.** I don't recommend relying on any GPT for critical medical or legal issues, but many pesky problems are easily solved by consulting several of them.
I hope I'm never in one of these rooms again.
{{< youtube id="BKorP55Aqvg" >}}
## Conclusion
It's OK that AI has changed reality; it was inevitable. Humans will *always* push the edges of reality to expand their horizons. It's in human nature to make and unmake what is. Like the horse that was displaced by the buggy, people will find new ways of living. They'll write, think, code, and create in new ways while continuing to seek experts for new purposes.
Time to play in the new frontier.
*What is no longer true for you?*
