Thoughts

Will Meta still fall? Muse just launched, and everyone is talking about it. The first AI that feels super accessible and you can do all online activity with it. This is the direction that internet activity is going. I could see us dropping our screen time down significantly because of it. I have not tried it yet, because a quote from Zuckerberg rings in my mind, "When asked how he managed to obtain this private data, he replied: "People just submitted it. I don't know why. They 'trust me'. Dumb f--ks." This was 2019, but it still feels like the consumer is getting unjustly slammed in privacy protection. Innovation is going much faster than privacy laws can keep up. Meta may have more years than I predicted in front of them, but it depends how long it takes for OpenAI to catch up to Muse. My thoughts, OpenAI will be able to compete with this in less than a year.

This weekend I painted over a bright red closet. Why someone would paint a closet a sloppy shade of red where I could see the brush strokes is beyond my imagination. Someone may come by and ask the same question when they see the Evergreen coating I covered the red in. My reason -- a swanky closet that looks expensive like a bar in Manhattan's coat check. Reasons don't travel as well as the results though. People that like the dark green, won't ask why, they will just enjoy the creativity. Results show more than the reasoning; does that make them more important?

I predict Meta will fall in the next 5-7 years. They've spun a web of bonds and dept to pay for their AI data centers, but we have yet to see any innovation in their AI space. From the consumer usage side it almost seems to detract from their products rather than be additive. With the rise in competition from TikTok, and the prime Instagram audience may start to age out of the platform, I'll be curious to see how they make money as their ad dollars start to diminish. I'm not putting my bets on them -- there's more social media options, and they became a place of copy-culture rather than innovation.

I saw quote from Madonna, "Algorithms and artificial intelligence are the opposite of taking risks and to me that is the opposite of making art."

It's true, if you create for the algorithm you're locked into what already exists…

But the Algorithm can also bring your art to the right people. The people that are going to love it, celebrate it. It's the exposure artists never could have gotten before.

The AI removes barriers of tech to create anything that you can dream up.

You can copy, like many people did before even before AI.

Or you can think of something new and have AI help you execute it.

AI and the Algorithm are already here - they aren't perfect, but they definitely don't reduce art.

That's up to humans to decide.

Ever since AI came around I've appreciated the human elements of anything more. The amateur low budget short-film, a website with a glitch, a typo in a blog post. The bit of unpolished makes it interesting, jagged and have edges. There's something about getting to know the person more when you get to see inside instead of seeing something equivalent to a Tiffany Box - yes, iconic, but once you see it so many times it's too perfect and the same.

AI is unlocking "Paint & Brush" creativity. The best uses of AI have a blend of the human element in the correct spot, my personal taste leans to the human element being something analog - like a painting. Instead of technology being a barrier to creating a blog, building an app, publishing my work, it has become an asset with AI. I can expand my creative routes of painting, photography, and editing videos to go beyond what I dreamed with the assistance of AI. Whether it's freeing up my time, helping me get to publishing faster, or handling the technical components it gives me the space for Paint & Brush Creativity.

I'm not a coffee drinker. It was only a few years ago I learned how to make a pot of coffee. Once I did that, I was baffled by the Keurig industry. It only saves maybe two minutes of prep time. The rest is only waiting for the coffee to brew. How big of a deal is it to wait for coffee to brew? I put the coffee on in the morning and when my partner wakes up it's ready. It made me think: How many inventions were created in the spirit of convenience to later find out that this made the entirety of society lazier? Escalators, Keurigs, and Microwaves. Product designs to take shortcuts society never needed. I'm building things that are net positive, not just a substitute for something that we don't want to do.

Could every fitness wearable, Oura Ring, Whoop, Fitbit be created to fit an individual users needs? How hard would it be to make a DIY Oura Ring? A product where all the data is yours, and they aren't using it to profit and make their products better. The data that Oura Ring tracks like sleep time, potential sicknesses, and energy level could probably be predicted and prescribed by the current AI models without the need to tap into Oura Rings data.

Even if it wasn't accurate the first few weeks, as it got to know you, wouldn't it be incredible in a month?

If you can't tell, I have a privacy issue with wearables, and I'm not even a big fan of Apples Pedometer. They are amazing products, but I don't think we should have to trade in all our health data for eternity to be able to benefit from them. Seems like too high a price to pay.