In the age of AI, advanced tools do not equate to improved capabilities. The article points out that although AI technology has given people powerful creative tools, true creativity and imagination are the key. The author expounds on the relationship between tools and capabilities through personal experiences, emphasizes the importance of imagination, and suggests that people do more seemingly useless things in their daily lives that stimulate their imagination to meet the challenges of the AI era.
01
Tools are not the same as abilities.
I don’t know if anyone is like me, who has had the illusion that as long as they buy something, they can have a certain ability, life, or state behind such a thing.
For example, I often saw people on the Internet using iPads to draw by hand, with chic and flexible lines, brilliant brushstrokes, and they could sketch anytime and anywhere on the high-speed rail, at the airport, and on the grass in spring.
How interesting it is to record life in this way, I also want to try this way, so I started an iPad, Apple Pencil, Procreate, and then searched the whole network for good-looking brushes and tutorials. But apparently, I couldn’t rely on these drawings to create anything good, so they were quickly forgotten in a corner of the room, only found every time I ate instant noodles.
Another example is DJI Pocket, which has been very active recently, and everyone’s life under the lens is always so wanton, flamboyant, and full of freedom. I thought that my life also needed such passion, so I decided to place an order.
But after receiving the goods, I found that behind these beautiful videos, the real key is not the equipment, but time and freedom, and I don’t have such freedom, so pocket naturally eats the ashes.
In today’s prevalence of consumerism, I find that it is becoming easier and easier for us to alienate certain expectations of ourselves and life into a kind of consumption behavior. It seems that as long as you buy something, you can find the self you dream of.
After 10 years of interaction design, why did I transfer to product manager?
After the real job transfer, I found that many jobs were still beyond my imagination. The work of a product manager is indeed more complicated. Theoretically, the work of a product manager includes all aspects of the product, from market research, user research, data analysis…
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But this matter is clearly not quite true. As netizens said in the pocket video comments: Their lives are not wonderful because of DJI, but DJI just records this wonderfulness.
This is a relationship of cause and effect, but unfortunately, many times we ignore this relationship and often even turn it upside down. But at the end of the day, tools don’t equal ability.
02
The same is true for AI, having technology often does not equate to creating results.
As a writer, I often think about a question, in an era where AI only takes a few minutes to write an article, what else can we do?
Under the broad concept, AI is already omnipotent. Answer questions, write scenarios, generate images, music, and videos. In today’s technological narrative, if a person uses AI, he can become almost omnipotent.
“Super individual” is a new word that has emerged with the development of AI. Since the beginning of 2023, this concept has been frequently mentioned in various scenarios. In the context of a super individual, even a completely inexperienced person can write novels, draw comics, make soundtracks, and finally make a movie with the blessing of AI.
If you are still hesitant, it doesn’t matter, there are a lot of self-media that will tell you that this is a great opportunity to overtake in corners, and you only need 998 to cover the teaching package.
From this perspective, AI has given us countless opportunities, and even driven by marketization, there are many people willing to help you get rich.
But even in this case, I still feel lost when I get an AI tool. It’s like you pick up a pen to write, but you don’t know what to write; I turn on my iPad to draw, but I don’t know what to draw; I got the pocket and wanted to shoot, but I didn’t know what to shoot……
We know that AI can generate images, videos, text, music… We know that AI has unparalleled creativity, but we don’t know what to create. It’s like facing an omniscient wise man who can’t ask a useful question.
It’s a deep sense of powerlessness.
03
I thought about this question repeatedly, and finally attributed this feeling of being at a loss to my own lack of imagination.
Imagination is the source of all creation, and even if you have powerful tools, it is difficult to do anything if you cannot imagine the world you want to create. Just like many AI products are still tinkering with traditional products, it is difficult to build a fully AI-native product.
But we have to admit that as we age, our imagination continues to decline.
The Torrance Test of Creative Thinking (TTCT) is one of the most authoritative creativity assessment tools in the world, proving that teenagers have richer imaginations than older people.
Countless artists and scientists throughout history are also proving this, and they are generally in their youth when they complete the key works of their lives. For example, Mozart completed the “Symphony in G Minor” at the age of 17, and Byron published “The Travels of Child Harold” at the age of 24; Newton proposed gravity at the age of 24…… In fact, there are not many examples of real late bloomers.
I can clearly feel that as I grow older, I have fewer and fewer of the endless and bizarre ideas I had when I was young. My understanding of a thing is becoming more and more dependent on past experience, becoming routine and ordinary.
I still remember that when I was a child, walking on the way home from school, I could extend countless thoughts in my mind because of a cloud in the sky, and then make up a story with a rich plot; When I was sentimental in middle school, I could also write a lot of words and phrases that seem to be quite spiritual now….. but these are now buried in my work year after year.
Some time ago, a friend shared a Douyin with me, about a young girl recording her days as an intern in a newspaper, and the delicate and gentle text calmly told the restlessness and restlessness of youth, attracting nearly 100,000 likes and thousands of comments.
After reading the content, I was attracted by one of the comments, he said: “One day, you will find that you can no longer write delicate words, and then you will really enter society.” It is a kind of dizzying heat that comes regardless of the four seasons, and there is no other way to bury it deeply. ”
I deeply believe that we are born different, with infinite imagination and possibilities, but we wear up all our spiritual energy in our lives day after day, year after year, and eventually become mediocre.
04
But in the AI era, mediocrity is the least needed, AI will replace most ordinary jobs, and imagination will become more and more important.
When material things are scarce, we need productivity. But when productivity is abundant enough, how to use that productivity becomes a problem. So the AI era is an era that requires imagination!
To this day, there are many examples of success because of AI in the market.
For example, some people use AI to generate earthy short dramas in which kittens do housework, claiming to earn 500,000 yuan a month; Some people use AI to generate the daily life of primitive human programmers, and each video can receive thousands of likes; Others use AI to generate weird “hallucination” videos, attracting hundreds of thousands of fans…..
Behind these cases, inspiration, creativity, imagination, things that were once difficult to measure, are becoming visible to the naked eye.
05
Perhaps, more important than mastering AI tools, is to relearn how to see the world.
But unfortunately, the imagination and creativity of most of us have been exhausted in our daily lives, and people have gradually lost their desire to explore the world, their enthusiasm for life, and their innate spirituality.
So when we face AI, it’s like in the past when we got the iPad, the camera, the pocket, the tools were upgraded, but we still couldn’t create better works.
In the era of AI, people and human imagination are still the key to creation, and if you don’t change yourself, AI can’t change you. Fortunately, the deterioration of imagination is not irreversible, on the contrary, it is an ability that can be trained.
Neuroscience research shows that imagination involves multiple areas of the brain, such as the Default Mode Network (DMN) related to free association, situational construction, and future thinking, or the executive control network related to conscious attention management. These areas still exist in the adult brain and do not naturally deteriorate with age, and the key is whether to use them.
There was a hot meme on the Internet before that “talent will be taken away if it is not used for too long”, which probably means this.
For example, we are often surprised by the unique temperament of artists, which can be easily judged by their dress and mental state. Or, those freelancers, those who have no jobs, but are pursuing ideals and loves, and those cattle and horses who are temporarily absent from their desks, their temperament and mental state are also completely different.
And the reason why they have a unique temperament is that they are always really experiencing life and constantly unleashing their imagination.
But in today’s social life, we are so obsessed with what we can get about everything, so in the process, we focus on the steps in front of us and forget to look up at the stars.
So, get out there. read a few useless books and listen to a few unplanned winds; to feel the summer moon and chat with people you don’t know; Do something that is not for the sake of results or in return.
Throughout our lives, we are not looking for meaning, but regaining that kind of curious look at the world.
Imagination is not a childhood privilege or a gift of genius. It is a way of living, a choice. When you are willing to slow down, look, and think, you will find that the inspiration that you thought was long gone is actually just a temporary sleep.
