Building a personal moat in the age of AI
AI can write code and generate art, but it can't replicate your unique perspective. Here is how to lean into your unfair advantage.
Every day, a new AI tool drops that threatens to automate a chunk of the creative process. Writers worry about LLMs. Designers worry about Midjourney. Developers worry about Copilot. The panic is understandable, but it’s misplaced. AI is exceptional at generating the median. It can write a perfectly average blog post. It can design a perfectly average landing page. But it cannot generate a perspective.
4 min read
Creator Economy
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The AI Commoditization
When content becomes infinitely cheap to produce, value shifts. The value is no longer in the artifact (the text, the image, the code). The value shifts to the origin of the artifact: the human. What AI cannot replicate is your 10 years of failure. It cannot replicate the specific way you view a problem because of the town you grew up in, the weird hobbies you have, or the niche combination of skills you've acquired.
/02
How to build your moat
Your personal moat is built on authenticity. It’s the un-googleable traits that make you, you. 1. Have strong, contrarian opinions. AI models are trained to be safe and helpful. They avoid taking strong stances. If you have a well-reasoned, unpopular opinion about your industry, state it loudly. AI will never compete with you there. 2. Combine disparate skills. Be a designer who understands behavioral economics. Be a developer who writes like a poet. AI struggles to combine vastly different domains in a way that feels truly native. 3. Share the process, not just the output. AI can generate a finished product, but it can't share the messy, human struggle of getting there. People connect with the struggle. AI is a tool. It will make you faster. But the person wielding the tool is still the product.
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