I use AI a lot.
A great deal, in fact.
For my website. For code. For stories. To think along with me about photography, logistics, a camper that does not exist yet, and apparently now also about a green Rolls-Royce Ghost I do not own.
That last one may be the best example.
I said: Ghost.
We talked for a while.
In my head it acquired the right shade of green. Black accents. Nothing excessive. Suddenly I knew how it drove. Quietly, as if the outside world first had to ask permission before it was allowed in.
Other people would drive it to Monaco.
I would go by way of Allingawier.
And ten minutes later, there was a story.
Not because AI decided I wanted a Rolls-Royce.
I already knew that.
Not because AI decided I would rather drive through Allingawier than take the motorway.
That is me.
Nor because a computer suddenly understands why a road that gets nowhere quickly can sometimes be more interesting than the shortest route.
But AI did do something else.
It kept the thought from being left behind.
And that, to me, is where its value lies.
My head produces rather a lot of side roads. A single word can be enough. A photograph. Something somebody says. A schoolbook with negative stock. A car. A duck. A message I read somewhere.
Before you know it, my irrassociation radar switches on and one thing connects to another.
In the past, many of those thoughts disappeared again.
Not because they were not good enough, but because something stood between a thought and making it real.
Time.
Technology.
An empty document.
A website that needed changing.
Or simply life carrying on in the meantime.
AI has made that distance smaller.
I can put down a thought while it is still warm.
Talk about it.
Turn it around.
Laugh at it.
Discover there is nothing in it and throw it away after all.
Or suddenly notice:
Hey, there is a story in this.
That does not mean AI thinks for me.
Quite the opposite.
I do not want a computer deciding what I should find interesting, what is beautiful or what has meaning.
That remains human work.
AI may search. Organise. Think along. Write code. Contradict me. Hold on to a sentence while I am already three turns farther down the road.
But I decide where we are going.
Perhaps that is also why I enjoy using Codex so much.
Not because I want to become a programmer.
I want to make things.
If I decide in the evening that something on my website should be different, I do not want to spend three weeks learning a programming language first. I want to say what I can see in my mind and then work out together how to get there.
That lets the technology fade a little into the background.
And it gives my curiosity more room.
That may be what I like most about AI.
Not that it writes faster.
Not that it is supposedly smarter.
Not that it knows everything.
But this:
AI does not take over my thoughts.
It means I no longer have to leave them lying around.
Some become a story.
Some become a website.
Some become a completely ridiculous idea.
And some simply remain dreams.
Like that green Ghost.
Though by now I have driven a fair number of miles in it.
And yes, Sam.
Curiosity uses credits.
Sorry.
Well.
A little. ☕️
Read the Dutch story where this side road began: Mijn Ghost.