At a conference in Austin, an AI tool changed how I brainstorm

I went to a small tech meetup in Austin last month where a developer showed off an AI that generates story ideas from random photos. He pulled up a picture of a rusty bike and the AI spit out three plot hooks in seconds. One side says this kills creativity by removing the struggle, the other says it just removes grunt work so you can focus on bigger ideas. Where do you draw the line between helpful tool and crutch?

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nathan_hill603mo ago

I keep coming back to that phrase "removes the struggle" because that's exactly where the problem hides. The struggle IS the part that builds your creative muscles, plain and simple. I've noticed this pattern everywhere now - people use GPS before they even learn their own city streets, so they never build that mental map. Same with calculators in school, kids skip learning basic math and then struggle with harder concepts later. If you skip the hard parts of brainstorming, you never develop the instinct for what makes a story tick. The tool is fine for getting unstuck, but if you lean on it from step one, you're just outsourcing the learning process to a machine.

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emerycarr3mo ago

Isn't skipping those early failures just trading long term skill for short term results? The way I see it, the real problem is people don't even know what they're missing by not struggling first, like learning guitar with a robot picking out chords for you from day one. You need to hit the wrong notes for a while before you understand why the right ones work.

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