I remember the very first time I played Super Mario Brothers on an NES console. It was 1989 and I was down with chicken pox. To stop me from scratching myself and keep me distracted, my dad rented a console and I played Mario (and Contra) non-stop over the next few days (with my mom – who to this day is an avid gamer). I had seen someone play the game before but had not held a controller in my life. Forward and backward made sense. There were these bricks above me. And what was this horrid creature coming towards me?! (I probably learnt that it was called a Goomba maybe a decade later; pre-internet fandom in small town India was a trip).
As I died for the first of what felt like a million more times and that pithy sound clip of Mario’s death rattle played over the TV speakers, a gazillion grey cells dazzlingly eviscerated in my 7-year-old brain. And this happened over and over again. The joy of jumping on top of that first Goomba, or evading it and consuming the mushroom to grow in size can only be compared to falling in love for the first time (don’t tell my wife).
I didn’t care if I died again and again and that this very first level took eons to pass. Princess Peaches and Bowser could wait. These Goombas needed to be taught a lesson (wait – I can shoot fireballs?!). I somehow had the magical epiphany that this joyous and wondrous and delightful game was easy to play but difficult to master. But master it I would.
Not having a console of my own impeded progress. I think I first crossed all 8 worlds of the original Mario game (and its sequels) only in 1994. And by then I had my second magical epiphany – with coding.
As I sat working on a project on the single DOS machine in my school’s “computer lab”, I found a high school senior patiently hovering behind me. I was trying to create a simple program that spat out trivia questions and gave points when one answered correctly. I had attended an introduction to computers workshop during the summer and knew words like CPU, RAM and ROM. I had also written some Hello World type programs in BASIC. But mostly I had spent time playing Prince of Persia and Gorillas (it was always obvious to me that Angry Birds would become the success that it did a decade and a half later).
“Why are you typing all your questions and answers into the body of your program?” said the senior.
“What do you mean? Where else should I type them?” I retorted.
“You can use an external text file. Here let me show you.”
Without judgement, she proceeded to explain CRUD operations to me and how I could read and write to an external file. She had experience in BASIC but preferred Fortran. She had just started learning C. [I have sadly forgotten this senior’s name. I only met her a couple of times before she went off to college. She was a wonderful teacher and had a profound effect on my life. I coded pretty much non-stop for the next 9-10 years of my life.]
The joy of coding also came with the hardship and struggle of hitting one wall after another. Sometimes answers were readily available – there was a relevant book in the library or someone had faced a similar challenge and overcome it (Stack Overflow did not exist yet and I only got onto online forums 6 years later in college). Other times – you just hoped your head was strong enough to break through the wall. It was easy to get started – difficult to master.
This brings me to the present. What’s happening with generative AI (and in the broader AI field) has a similar flavor to my previous magical epiphanies. I felt it with the advent of the smartphone. I didn’t feel it with web 2.0 or crypto (mostly my limitations and not the technology’s). It is this wonderful egoless pristine state: you are only limited by your creativity and ability to dive deep and wade through problems.
So I’ve crafted a personal AI manifesto – a few rules to live by. The idea is not to be preachy. I am going to try and follow these for the next 6 to 12 months and then reflect and revise. These are for me. You do you.
My Personal AI Manifesto:
Don’t be a luddite.
A lot of things may/ will go wrong for the world before they become better. Remember what the great John Carmack recently wrote (link to full thread):
Suspension of ego is going to be critical. Your hard earned skills might/ will not keep you employed. Unlearn. And learn.
Don’t think of AI as just another tool.
It sets up a weird mental trap – a better tool makes you more efficient. So this must be about efficiency gains? No – this is a multiplier. A once in a century multiplier. Time will tell if this has a similar or bigger impact compared to the printing press or the steam engine or even the integrated circuit.
Graham Weaver helps people through a mental exercise – if you had 9 lives what would they look like? We are entering a world where leading multiple lives and leaving a much bigger footprint on the tapestry of the universe would be possible for each individual. Our current education system and the way we think about our careers is a vestige of the industrial revolution. I spoke about this a couple of years back in a lecture I delivered at my alma mater – IIT Madras. Our lives are about to become a lot longer and richer.
There is no barrier to building.
That’s it. If you can think of an idea – you can prototype it and get your first draft out. Don’t share ideas – share something that works. “Show, don’t tell” – is now true for all forms of building.
This needs time.
The first-time user experience of building an app on Bolt or Lovable with just a prompt or generating an 8-second video clip on Veo 2 is so high in delight that people assume (incorrectly) it is all going to be smooth sailing from that point on. Hour 2 with any of these tools is truly revealing (and devastating). I expect there is a massive drop off in usage as complexity increases. AI is like the best kind of game: easy to play and get into, difficult to master. You have to persist.
There’s no speed limit.
Derek Sivers has always been right. Speed limits are artificial when it comes to learning. You go at the speed that you can. If you can finish a year’s worth of syllabus in three months – do it. Learn the way you want to.