paintboard3

I've been finding a lot of fulfillment in using AI to assist with things that are (for now) outside of the scope of one-shot AI. For example, when working on projects that require physical assembly or hands-on work, AI feels more like a superpower than a crutch, and it enables me to tackle projects that I wouldn't have touched otherwise. In my case, this was applied to physical building, electronics, and multimedia projects that rely on simple code that are outside of my domain of expertise.

The core takeaway for me is that if you have the desire to stretch your scope as wide as possible, you can get things done in a fun way with reduced friction, and still feel like your physical being is what made the project happen. Often this means doing something that is either multidisciplinary or outside of the scope of just being behind a computer screen, which isn't everyone's desire and that's okay, too.

LLMs have massively increased the number of creative projects that I start. It makes the jumping off point for a vague idea much easier to stomach.

Coming from a non-technical arts field, but always being interested in the technical side of things, LLMs have led to me realizing functional versions of software projects that I've never had the time to learn myself, allowing me to act more like a project manager than a software developer, but exposing me to so much code that I've also become more comfortable making my own functions and edits to the code. I also use LLMs frequently to build shortcuts or write me commands to make common processes quicker in my workflow.

From a creative POV, I frequently use LLMs along with models like whisper to transcribe and make sense of long ramblings, turning a 20 minute voice memo from a car ride into a functional plan and organized beginnings of a project such as a screenplay, essay, movie, etc.

Whenever I get off a documentary shoot, I also run all my footage through whisper to get the timecode transcripts, as well as highlights from those transcripts that are deemed as notable by the LLM. This gives me a good jumping off point to start crafting the narrative.

Right now I see LLMs as a really good tool to help kick off and trudge through projects that might be daunting to take on solo otherwise, but they are massively underpowered at actually "finishing" anything. As a result, I have a ton of projects in-progress that I wouldn't have started otherwise, but probably the same % ratio of finished to unfinished projects. In that sense, LLMs have increased the population of my ideas-graveyard, but put me in a better position to pick the ideas back up if I renew my interest in any of them.