Three Examples of Creative Acceleration via Generative AI
Evidence of an Emerging Digital Ice Age
By Moses Ma
There's a rule of thumb in the entrepreneurial business called the order of magnitude transformation requirement. Things need to be 10x better, faster or cheaper to succeed. Here are three solid examples for how generative AI is making people 10x better, faster and cheaper as creative resources.
First, to make it really clear what's happening, watch this video:
The original commercial required 30 people and took about a month to produce, whereas the AI-driven remake was accomplished by one individual in less than a day! This is about 500x faster with roughly the same quality.
Second, I decided to try making an e-book about qigong, which is my hobby. (I teach qigong on the side.) Using Google Gemini’s brilliant “megaprompt” capability, I was able to generate the text for a 3000 word, 25 page ebook about how to learn and refine a rare qigong practice I teach… in under 60 seconds. Yes, that’s right. It took less than a minute to write something that would have taken 3-5 days.
FYI, I used MidJourney to whip up a cover, and a free MS-Word template to lay it out. The total elapsed time for the process was 30 minutes, so this was about 50x faster and easier, but admittedly the generated ebook suffered from a number of “hallucinations” that required a few hours to edit. Plus, I needed a few more graphics and illustrations, so it’s maybe only 10x faster. But it eliminates writer’s block, by activating your internal critic that is unable to resist editing it. If you’d like to take a look at the ebook, you can download it HERE.
And third, I decided to have a little fun and write a song. So I used www.sonu.ai to write and produce a song for me about an e-learning class I’m producing, called the AI Mastermind (see www.aimastermind.team). This sonu app is prompt-to-song, using ChatGPT to write the lyrics. I am not a musician, so it would have taken me forever to do this… whereas Suno pulled off a very cute ditty, perfect for social marketing, in less than 10 minutes. So the impact was, frankly, infinity X. But I think any musician will say that this technology is replete with potential. Anyway, check out my first try which took only a few minutes and no advanced prompting:
And here’s the amazing thing… yes, that was a cute little ditty, but what I wanted was something that was more emotionally compelling. Basically, my goal is to turn a “product” into a “movement”, so that the concept of accelerated AI skills learning could grow virally through open collaboration and peer coaching. So I asked the AI to do something with more emotional oomph. Here’s what it produced:
The AI totally nailed the money note with the lyric “in a world of digital creation.” Remember this was created automagically, with only a little prompting to improve the lyrics, and a few regenerates to iterate toward what I really wanted. Also, it’s important to remember that this is the developer’s first try at generative songwriting. Within a decade, I believe every serious musician will be using an AI assistant to kickstart ideas and clean up lyrics.
Now about that rule of thumb I mentioned, the order of magnitude requirement... in general, things need to be 10x better, faster or cheaper to succeed. If these tests were any indication, the future of generative AI is likely to bring a 100x improvement, over time, to the human task of creative endeavor. This is going to be big, just as soon as mainstream users grok it. (haha)
But at the same time, there are a number of tech analysts who disagree with such a rosy view of the future, and predict that generative AI has been overhyped, and is set for a correction in 2024. These naysayers predict that the speculative bubble will burst. They say that output is still too unreliable for many tasks. That training ever-larger models requires exponentially more data and computing power, raising questions about scalability. And when hype meets reality, valuations of generative startups will fall dramatically. Funding could dry up overnight, once the sector has lost its novelty.
But all of these naysayer arguments vanish, evaporating like smoke, once you see something with your own eyes. This Pika video is the equivalent of Orville Wright completing the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, 119 years ago. That flight lasted just 12 seconds, traveled only 120 feet, and reached a top speed of merely six miles per hour… but to those who realized what it meant, it was earthshattering. It meant that human flight was possible. These three AI examples are like watching the Wright Flyer take off for the first time.
What AI is doing is making some people 10x better at their jobs, which will inevitably cause other people who refuse to keep up to lose their jobs. A recent report from Goldman Sachs estimates around 300 million jobs could be affected by generative AI! This is leading to a digital ice age, where your willingness to understand and harness the equivalent of fire will make all the difference for you, in terms of your ability to survive this coming digital ice age.
Therefore, it is now time to think hard about your future, and decide whether this next digital age is something you want to worry about. If it is, what are you going to do about it? What AI skills do you want to learn in a hurry? How do you learn them? Is there a tribe heading to warmer climates you can join? Think hard about your future now.
The only good news is that it’s incredibly fun to use this stuff, as it is creatively empowering. So maybe don’t worry so much about getting laid off like some AI Luddite. Instead, chill and jump in and focus on fun… the water’s just fine!
