What does slow AI look like?
I am tired of seeing speed as a selling point
I am tired of seeing speed as a selling point.
I’ve wanted to talk about this for a long time.
I think one of the main reasons many of us feel anxious is because we have more productivity tools than ever, but these tools rarely match how we naturally want to create.
Here’s an example:
“From thought to action faster than humanly possible.”
You know, because why sit and reflect when we can go straight from a half-baked idea to a fully executed mistake in 0.5 seconds?
Here’s another example:
“With the snap of a finger, Blaze creates all the content you need and posts it for you.”
Who is asking to be turned into a passive bystander in their own work?
Who wants to read another listicle-style LinkedIn status update in ChatGPT's exact voice and tone?
And you’ll post it too? Thank God! Because the toughest part of being a creator is that painful moment when you have to click publish.
And another one:
“Create unlimited presentations in seconds.”
Why are we assuming that people want more, faster? Has anyone ever said, “if only I could make unlimited presentations”?
What if we want to craft one presentation, but do it beautifully?
What if we actually, genuinely, love the in-between moments when we return to a draft after days have passed, sharpening one word here, adding a better verb there.
Great software products aren’t simply a collection of buttons, icons, and menus. They shape how we think and who we aspire to be.
The problem isn’t that machines are becoming more human-like, it’s that humans are becoming more machine-like in an effort to keep up.
There are no shortcuts to hard-won insight.
No one does this in a snap.
But it’s hard to slow down when the only thing our tools push is to do more, faster.
So for the love of God, can we stop with the speed obsession?
What would it look like if, in a McLuhan-esque, medium is the message sort of way, our tools said to us:
It’s gonna take you a while.
It’s normal to take a while.
It’d be weird if you made something beautiful so quickly.
The problem isn’t that you’re not working fast enough.
The problem is your expectations are not realistic.
Our AI helps you slow the fuck down and make something wonderful.
My cards are on the table.
I don’t want to go live in a cabin and swear off AI.
I want a world where “slow AI” doesn’t sound like such an oxymoron.
Where we collectively stop falling for the empty promise of doing more, faster.
And focus on doing less, better.
The goal can’t be making more stuff.
It has to be making something wonderful.
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"You know, because why sit and reflect when we can go straight from a half-baked idea to a fully executed mistake in 0.5 seconds?"
I am stealing this for an email sig, but I'm a polite person so I'm letting you know.
Also, "As soon as possible" is misunderstood by so many people we perhaps need to say "as soon as possible, but no sooner". (Compare also "as simple as possible, but no sooner", often attributed to Einstein among others.)
Rory Sutherland pointed this out recently at some conference. Good point