MANIFESTO FOR HUMAN/AI COLLABS
Don't let AI steal your creative joy.
1. Your process IS your product. That flow state when you're deep in the zone of creation? That's not inefficiency, that's where the spark of imagination turns into a forest fire. Don't let AI optimize away the journey to reach the destination a little faster at the expensive or your growth as a creator.
2. Keep your hands dirty. There's something irreplaceable about typing until your fingers ache, scribbling notes at 2am, sketching that half-formed idea. Your body and brain are biological partners in ways that voice commands to AI LLMs can't replicate. Physical creation engages neural pathways and the kinesthetic senses.
3. Embrace productive friction. Every breakthrough I've had came through wrestling with a problem, not sneaking around it. Let AI handle tedious stuff, but embrace challenges that make your brain sweat. That resistance is the forge of originality.
4. Diversify your curiosity diet. I remember browsing magazine racks at the local newsstand. That random collision of ideas, quantum physics next to motorcycle magazines. That's what AI algorithms are designed to eliminate. Seek out the weird adjacent stuff that has nothing to do with your current project.
5. Question everything at least twice. When AI gives you research or suggestions, that's your launch pad, not your stellar destination. Deploy the Five Whys (keep asking "why" until you get to root causes). Research the opposite. Dig into the peripheral industries. Demand novelty from your LLM. The algorithm's comfort zone isn't where the novelest stories dwell.
6. Protect your discovery process. Take meandering walks without podcasts. Sit in diners and eavesdrop. Browse physical bookstores. The best material comes from unexpected encounters that can't be prompted or predicted. Strolls, not scrolls. Embrace serendipity.
7. Share the journey, not the performance. Document your process, but the moment your social media about how you make things takes longer than actually making things, you’ve lost the plot. I’m totally guilty of this. Uggh.
8. AI is your research assistant, not a co-scribe. It can gather info and suggest structures, but can't give you the lived experience that makes characters breathe or the cultural insight that makes your stories resonate with relevance.
9. Build creative sanctuaries. Carve time and space for just you, your imagination, and a notebook. Your unassisted brain needs room to make those weird and uniquely human connections the algorithms miss. Pen and paper, there is no substitute.
10. Slow down when it counts. Speed isn't the enemy. Some ideas need extra time to marinate. Some problems need to be endured and lived with before they're solved. Scribble, ignore, revisit, revise, execute.
11. Your voice is your fortress. Soon we'll be drowning in waves of AI slop that nails the "story math" but lacks "story soul." Your specific, weird, human perspective is shaped by your personal experience. Every conversation you've ever overheard, every painful failure you've survived. That's the unique shizz an LLM can't yet replicate.
12. Joy is the only metric that matters. If a new tool or process is killing your creative spirit, dump it into the molten foundry pit to melt into oblivion along with Cameron’s T-1000. Efficiency without fulfillment is the engine of misery.
