Curious Companion: Are You Being Ambitious Enough with AI?

Inspired by a recent article I read, written by an engineering manager at Anthropic, this episode zooms out to look at the bigger picture and dives into the question of whether we are being ambitious enough with AI. We are no longer working with the AI of 2023, and in light of how capable present-day AI has become, I think that we can ask more of it. A certain level of tech tenacity will always be required in order to get the output that you want. This episode looks to consider how much creative ambition is also required.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

The Inspo

Full transparency, this episode was 100% inspired by an article that put up huge numbers on X. I don’t be hanging out over there, but my good friend Khe does, and he sent the article to me along with a message that we both need to be more ambitious with AI.

Honestly, he’s not wrong.

The article, titled Titled “How to Be More Ambitious: A Tutorial for Humans with Models” Is an 8-minute read, written by Felix Riesberg, an Engineering Manager at Anthropic who has led engineering for Claude.ai, Cowork, and Claude Code Desktop. Translation, dude knows his shit.

Is the article any good? Yes, and also I feel like quite often these pieces be doing the literal most. You can CLICK HERE to read it if you’re interested, but for me, even the title is inspiration enough to think about how I’m using AI, and that’s exactly what we’re going to dive into in this episode.

Are We Being Ambitious Enough with AI?

I don’t want to speak for you, so I’ll speak for myself. I can say with full certainty that I am not being ambitious enough when it comes to AI

I’m not sure if I said it in last week’s episode or the one before that, but in case I failed to update you, I submitted a proposal to a company to build a website for them, got the gig, and crushed it. I did the whole thing with the help of AI, and y’all, this is not the same AI of 2023. It’s not even the same AI as last year.

People continue to lean on the argument that “AI can’t do that” or “AI sucks at that.” And honestly, what they’re highlighting when they say that are people who aren’t great at using AI. That is not at all a dig at those people, but the reality is that AI of present day has become capable as hell.

I will say that I think it still falls short when it comes to things like personal writing and truly creative tasks, but it’s getting there. And perhaps what I see is honestly a product of me not being ambitious enough with it in those domains.

Perhaps you read that and thought, “WTF Maestro, why do you want AI to be as good as humans at those things?” and I can assure that is not at all where my head is at.

My head is at, and has always been at, thinking about all the shit that AI can do for me that I don’t enjoy doing, and the fact that now it can do it well.

Abstraction, Built-In Friction, and Creative Ambition

In last week’s episode I discussed a term called abstraction, which is hiding the details of how something works behind a simpler way of using it, so you can work at a higher level without handling the steps underneath.

I think many of us are still living in last year’s models and the like, where we had to concern ourselves with all of those details if we wanted a decent output, and even then the output wasn’t always great.

Because of that, we have mentally built in friction that stops us from trying to do more with AI. It even stops us from retrying things that we tried in the past that didn’t work so great, because all we can think about is the effort and the failed outcome.

Y’all, we can be way more ambitious.

AI is way more capable than it used to be. And what’s crazy (maybe this is a good thing, maybe this a bad thing) is that because of this abstraction, we can actually say less to AI and get a better output than we ever did in the past.

This means we can really just focus on what we want as the outcome as opposed to being so detailed about how to get that outcome and what the AI needs to do. Then we just let the AI do its thing. Per Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, that is actually the best way to be using present day models…and I believe it.

Now, a certain level of tech tenacity is still required in order to get AI to do what you want, for sure. But what I want to convey with this episode is that a certain level of creative ambition is needed as well, and I think that we’re all setting that ceiling way too low.

I think we can dream bigger, I think we can ask it to do bigger tasks, and I think that it can do it.

As per always though, don’t just take my word for it. Go try it yourself. That’s literally the point of this episode: go try it and go be more ambitious.

A Note on the AI Naysayers

Something I share before I wrap this up is that I feel no kind of way about the AI naysayers. If you don’t want to use AI, don’t. Despite the theme of this episode and my encouragement to be more ambitious with AI, you’re NEVER going to have any pressure from me to use AI.

I bring this up because Prompting Curiosity as a brand is about all facets of AI, not just the tech. I’m here to think about and discuss the human side, the philosophical side, the ethical side. All the things. So, for those wondering:

No, I don’t want data centers popping up all over. Objectively, we don’t need that.
Yes, I want renewable energy sources for everything. We have shown that works.
And also, yes, I really, really enjoy AI and think there are so many incredible use cases, many of which I haven’t tried yet because I haven’t been ambitious enough.

If forced to live within the binary and choose AI or nature, of course I’m choosing nature every time. Like, c’mon. If someone said I could go back and have a hard reset with the internet as a whole, I’d press that button in a second.

My point being, I’d be more than willing to give up the creature comforts afforded by tech if it was a binary situation, and my options were nature or AI technology, or the ability for humans to think critically or have AI technology.

But the binary isn’t reality. I think we can have both. (Extractive capitalism will however be the death of us all.) And I really don’t have any desire to entertain, well, anything from the AI hecklers.

This feels important for me to say because with my other brand, The Movement Maestro, I know that I have influence as a thought leader in the space, and I know that folks look to me for my opinion on certain things. It’s honestly been quite interesting navigating AI and looking to respect as many viewpoints as possible regarding it.

My decision to cancel ChatGPT and fully rebrand from ChatGPT Curious to Prompting Curiosity speaks to the respect that I hold for nuance and personal values, and I do very much believe that it was the right decision.

And while no one is bullying me by any means, it felt like this episode was an appropriate one to share my thoughts around the folks who are hard line in the sand anti-AI, or perhaps more accurately, share my feelings about their beliefs, which is that, as per always, to each their own.

Nuance exists. Plurality exists. I am very pro-AI, and I will also do my part to offset the fact that the worst people ever are in charge of it.

How I Used AI This Week

Each episode I share a quick example of how I used AI that week.

This week I used Gemini’s image generator very much in line with this episode’s theme: I used it to mock up my dream property. Claude doesn’t have image generation like that, but Gemini is actually really good, so I went and dreamed a bit and played around with it.

It was actually really fun to visualize a space with, a separate gym, a garage for a project car, a hot tub, and a proper Finnish sauna.

Lex and I are INCREDIBLY fortunate with the space we have now, but it’s still fun to think about downsizing the house and upsizing the backyard and some sort of ADU situation.

My point though with this week’s use-case: You don’t have to use AI just for work. Obviously that’s a lot of what I discuss on Prompting Curiosity, but you can absolutely use it for fun as well, and that’s exactly what I did.

Da Wrap-up

Are you being ambitious enough with AI? Probably not, but I don’t want to speak for you, so I’ll just reiterate that I am absolutely not being ambitious enough. The tech is more capable than ever, and I’ve set my creative ambition ceiling too low. So, if the spirit moves you, let this be your invitation to dream bigger, ask more from AI, and see where that ambition takes you.

As always, endlessly grateful for you and your curiosity.

Catch you next Thursday.

Maestro out.