Looking for meaning in a world where I don’t have to learn anything, Part 2

Creating something used to be a hassle, but the real meaning and joy came out of that painful process.

It wasn’t enough to have an idea. You had to shape it into something you could actually build with the skills you had at the time, and that made you feel knowledgeable. You couldn’t just summon walls of text from a vague idea. You had to write, rewrite, review and get feedback, and that made you feel accomplished. Sometimes you had to branch off for a week or two to pick up a new skill. Boom, intellectual fulfillment.

If only, we would say, if only I had more time, if I could learn React faster, I can build my project faster and I know, I just know, people will find it so useful! And then, our prayers were answered. AI tools arrived. We didn’t have to do most of the grunt work anymore.

Yet, there aren’t any life-changing, mind-blowing products being pushed out every day. We have all the tools at our disposal and all the knowledge quite literally just a click away. But what the majority creates looks mass produced and unattractive. How come?

It’s easy to think, oh that’s just AI slop, that’s what AI creates. Yes, sure, to a certain point. But I don’t think it’s “because of” AI. It’s because of us as the human in the equation.

Many of us try things we wouldn’t have tried before generative AI without learning the basics first. As inexperienced designers, developers, analysts, when creating, we lean on Claude, Gemini or whichever LLM, to go and grab the answer for us. We ask it to create “a user-friendly interface”, “script for a video about the latest news in AI” without knowing what makes an interface friendly or a script worth watching.

We’re still the adult in the room. An LLM is a brilliant assistant who needs to be given direction and feedback constantly. To give direction we need to have direction, we need to know what we want. And no, that doesn’t mean asking ChatGPT for the 10 most important principles of user-friendly design and then asking Claude to design with them.

LLMs are great at blending everything into mush, which is, in the end, AI slop. Ask for a high-retention YouTube script for developers and you’ll get the average of every tech video on YouTube. Ask for one for Unity mobile developers fighting frame drops on low-end Android phones and you’ll get something far more promising.

But it doesn’t end there. This isn’t 2025. It’s not just about prompt engineering. We need to lean in and be opinionated. Let the process inspire us. Make room for creative freedom. Which brings me to my next point.

More in Part 3.