I’ve spent three articles telling you why the most common arguments used by AI opponents are stupid. Most are based on a refusal to understand how anything remotely related to AI—including the software itself, computers in general, intellectual property law, and the creative process—actually works. The rest are based on magical thinking. There is one,…
A common argument against AI creativity is the belief that art requires a unique, magical force unlike any other human skill. The most simplistic arguments focus on the physical tools and processes used (paint/ink/whatever vs. pixels), echoing similar arguments about photography, Photoshop, and probably brushes (“Real artists use their fingers!”). In the 1990s, these morons…
Last time I talked about some common reasons people give for pretending that we can keep AI from becoming a thing. Most of those involved legal or technical issues and tend to be the talking points of people who actually do creative work and are scared, but not scared enough to actually do research. I…
Remember when I talked about Grunt Work a few posts ago? If you haven’t done any of that yet, this is probably where your project dies. All those exciting ideas you had at the beginning have been in your head so long they’ve become boring. You’ve now read that clever thing you wrote a hundred…
Aversion to criticism is probably the number one thing that turns things into Bad Idea Debt rather than Actual Products. You all know that person. The one who always wants to tell you about their novel or screenplay or game or whatever, but who doesn’t want to show it to anyone until it’s done. If…
So you’ve got this Thing I’m Working On, which means that sometime in the very near future you’re going to become a miserable bastard. It might not happen right away, but it’s going to happen. During those early stages when the theoretical project is just an idea, it’s lots of fun to think about and…
Last time I talked about that step of deciding whether you’ve got a viable project on your hands or just an idea that still needs some work before you can turn it into something. Once you’ve made it past that step, you’re really in danger of entering the Chapel Perilous of potential idea debt. In…
So, you’ve woken up the day after having your initial idea and (1) you haven’t completely forgotten it and (2) you don’t think it sucks yet. Don’t worry, before it’s over you’ll think it sucks at least a few times. That’s part of the process. But for now, it seems like a pretty good idea….
Since I don’t have anything new to talk about on the Cinemechanix front right now (I’m in the process of implementing all the things I’ve already talked about), I’m going to spend at least a few posts musing about the “idea debt” concept I rationalized my way out of believing in a few posts ago….
I first read about the concept of “idea debt” in a blog post by Jessica Abel that Leighton sent me some indeterminate amount of time ago. Basically, an idea debt is that project you want to do but you’re not working on. Abel’s advice is to throw away that idea debt because all the time…
