Carving with AI

I've recently been trying to describe how working deeply with AI as a process leads to desired outcomes. My children have asked me if they can build games with AI, and I tell them, "Of course, but the hardest part is knowing what you want."

I tell them to imagine that in one hand, they're holding the game that they absolutely want, and in the other hand, they're holding the question that they need to ask in order to get AI to give it to them. They know that AI is something like a statistical generator, so they get the idea that when they ask it something, the answer will be correct, but somewhat random.

If they start simply and say, "Make me a game," AI will absolutely succeed and make them a game, but because the request is so vague, the AI is very unlikely to produce the game that they want. If you imagine that AI is going to randomly pick an answer that fits your question, you begin to see the problem—every game ever made matches this request. The likelihood of getting the game you want is miniscule.

In this way, working with artificial intelligence is very similar to working as a sculptor. Michaelangelo said about sculpting:

It's simple. I just remove everything that is not David

The possibility of getting what you want from AI means removing all of the opportunity for it to produce what you don't want. The art becomes knowing how to ask and knowing what you want.

"I want a game" becomes, "I want a two-dimensional platformer game", and then becomes, "I want a two-dimensional platformer game that looks like this, has these features, and produces this feeling."

The more complex your desire; the more specific the outcome that you want, the more difficult the question becomes and likely the more iterations you need. Because of the way AI works, the value of creating a good first prompt is significantly higher than the value of tweaking your answers afterward. It's really hard for AI to forget the things that you asked for and focus on the new thing that you want.

Learning this skill is difficult and new. It's been very interesting and fruitful to dig in deeper.