#7: AI Creates Returns to Taste - by John Loeber
Many contemporary thinkers are pointing out that advances in AI are giving creators more leverage. This is true for broad definitions of “creators”: there are Figma plugins that will let designers prototype faster, VSCode plugins that will let engineers auto-complete bigger chunks of code, generators for marketing copytext, and so forth. In aggregate, these generative AI tools let founders build startups faster while limiting the degrees of freedom that they have to engage with. 1
In creative fields, there’s a tendency for quantity to beat quality. Broad experimentation, curation of the best results, and then rapid iteration tends to beat single-minded perfectionism. 2 And that is what these generative tools facilitate:
They shorten the creative cycle. Instead of spending days drafting a design or waiting on someone to make it, you can spend just a few minutes writing prompts, get instant output, and then iterate on what’s directionally correct.
They compress the administrative chain. Traditionally, many people are required to complete all the tasks that constitute a large creative project. Those people communicate, and that slow game of telephone may dilute the original creative vision. By giving each person more creative leverage, generative models allow smaller teams to be just as effective, thereby speeding up the process and providing the creator with more direct control of the implementation.
