An Invitation to Play Again!

I stumbled upon the world of Generative AI (GenAI). A world where I discovered “play” again. For the first time—in a very long time—I gave myself the permission to try out silly ideas. To experiment, be spontaneous, dabble with things, and follow my curiosity.

While this journey has been full of awe and delight, would you believe—if I told you—that it initially started with some skepticism?

The Skeptic

My first impression of GenAI was ChatGPT. I saw it as a glorified search engine. You ask it a question, it gives you an answer—in a human-like way. Ok, cool—but not special. The hype around this new cool technology reminded me of the ones that came before.

Do you remember blockchain, cryptocurrency, web3, and other technological waves of the past decade? They all came with a big splash and are now long gone and forgotten; normal everyday people don’t talk about them. I perceived GenAI could encounter the same fate.

Moreover—similar to those forgotten technologies—everyone became a GenAI expert or evangelist overnight. “Here are 10 best practices on how to use GenAI to double your revenue,” “If you are not using GenAI you are falling behind,” “Prompt engineering is the job of the future,” and the list goes on. As expected people tried selling you courses—on a technology they don’t understand.

This GenAI wave felt too familiar—like a movie I have seen before. It starts with a big wave, overnight experts and evangelists pop up to cash in, then it becomes forgotten. The classic technological gold rush playbook.

I was careful not to fall for any of the hype, but to observe from afar as things unfolded. Little did I know what life had coming for me.

The Turning Point

Life really had it coming for me as a series of events changed my perception, moving my position from that of a skeptic and distant observer to that of a curious explorer.

The first event happened at my workplace. I was assigned to work on a project—Chat Concierge^[1]— that would leverage GenAI as one of its core technologies. Now my job depended on this GenAI thing. Who would have seen that coming?
As a designer I like to understand the technology driving the experience I am designing for—so I had to get familiar with GenAI. I started looking into AI-powered products, reading, and watching videos. There was an endless feed of content on X (aka Twitter), so I had a few leads to follow.

Around that time I joined a Responsible AI (RAI) group at work. I did not know what I was getting into—I was following my curiosity. I discovered more articles, books, and resources on GenAI. One thing led to another and I stumbled upon a book, Co-intelligence by Ethan Mollick^[2]. It was recommended in the RAI group.

This book was the third event in my turning point. After a recommendation from the RAI group, it was mentioned again on the company’s intranet. Then I heard about the book again on the Deep Questions with Cal Newport podcast. So I purchased a copy. I found it to be a book that explains GenAI to mere mortals like me. The book not only helped shape my perception, it shaped my perspective on how I can invite GenAI as a collaborator in my thinking, learning, working, and living.

The book provided me with some theoretical and practical tips. But something was still missing—the hands-on experience!

The Explorations

I explored GenAI tools to get some hands-on experience—putting into practice what I learnt from the book.

First, I invited GenAI as my collaborator. As a copywriter it provided me with some feedback to improve my writing. As a teacher it helped me on my learning journey of programming languages. I could ask a lot of questions on writing or go very deep to understand hard programming concepts. It was there to guide me through every step. Next, my curiosity led me to other GenAI apps.

I had a blast playing with tools like Replit and Midjourney.
I used Replit to build and test app ideas. I dug into my list of project ideas and selected a “Get to Know You” question and answer game. I used a curated list of questions from a friend. It was a joyful moment to see how I brought an idea from my mind to reality—all by talking back and forth with a computer. What I really loved about the building process was the feedback loop and rapid iteration of ideas. Beaming with happiness I shared the prototype to friends and they were amazed.
A friend suggested I make a customizable crossword puzzle game…and boom, I made it. They were amazed with the speed of bringing ideas to live.

I pivoted to Midjourney. I made images based on random and silly ideas. Think of an era or style in art history?—Midjourney makes that. How about the combination of two or more unrelated ideas?—it’s capable of making that too. Want to remix an image or use it as reference for another?—it cooks up something mind blowing. The image making process sparked joy.

Engaging with GenAI was fun and its capabilities felt like magic. At the same time its capabilities did feel alien^[3]—fueling my curiosity to play more with it. These explorations and fun adventures helped adjust my perception of GenAI to be more than a glorified search engine.

The Challenges

I encountered a few challenges along the way.

First, GenAI was sometimes poor at implementing feedback. When you ask it to do something or fix an issue, it makes things worse. It would reassure you, apologize, and take ownership of its mistakes only to create a new issue by fixing an existing one. It becomes a game of whac-a-mole. Sometimes it couldn’t apply common sense to the most obvious things.

Second, the lack of direct manipulation on the output made building UI a strenuous activity. It felt like driving a car wearing oven mitts^[4]. To move a button to a particular location in the layout, you had to write a long essay in the form of a prompt. It was an overkill, too much effort for little gain.

Lastly, it lacked an integrated multimodal input capability. Here is what I mean, when I am giving it some feedback, I want to talk to it while interacting with the UI—to show it what I am talking about. I want to move things around on the canvas while referencing a browser tab for it to get some resources from. I want all modalities to work in sync in realtime.
New technologies are not without shortcomings. While these shortcomings can really test your patience, the good news is—this is the worst version GenAI will be. It will get better with time.

The Invitation

We are all creative in some shape or form. You owe it to yourself to explore these GenAI tools and follow your curiosity just as I did.

I used it as a copywriter to gain confidence in my writing, and as a teacher to learn programming languages. What a morale boost it is to build competence in a new subject.

I used it to bring app ideas to life. Something that was traditionally time consuming and expensive was done with speed and fractions of the cost. Think of the cost savings and morale boost it is to will something from your mind into existence.

All I brought to the table were some loose ideas and curiosity. If I can do it, you too can.

It’s now open season to test your ideas and follow your curiosity. What are you waiting for?

This is your invitation. Start with one tool and follow your curiosity.

Explore your creativity!

Happy playing!