Notes on AI
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Notes on AI 〰️
Every medium has an uncanny valley
In 2004 The Polar Express was called dead-eyed and pushed the uncanny valley into everyday conversation. Five years later came Avatar, and people talked about Neytiri, not about how she was made. AI is at that stage now. When something still looks like AI, it isn’t the AI anymore.
First it was craft, then creativity, now taste
The creative industry has found its comfort word for 2026: taste. The logic is reassuring – AI does the execution, taste separates the good work from the slop. But taste isn't a gift. It's a trained muscle. And anything that can be trained can be taught.
The resurrection of creative disagreement
In the 1950s, Bill Bernbach paired copywriters and art directors to engineer creative friction on purpose. Today we argue about where creatives should sit. The better question: which kinds of collaboration actually require proximity, now that AI produces the possibilities and we only judge them?
Creative debt
"Fuck AI. Destroy it. Kill it." Ronny Chieng's advice to Harvard graduates is really a plea to use your head. Cognitive debt is what happens when the brain stops practising. Creative debt is what happens when the next generation never trains the muscle at all.