No. 38 · Creativity

You have to break the rules to be creative

Line illustration: a figure stepping out of a square frame, leaving footprints that walk off the frame.

You have to break the rules to be creative. That's just what the word means. Otherwise it's a remix of what's already accepted.

I implement AI for a living. I build with it every day, for clients, for my own projects, for most of this blog. And I still think this — if you lean on AI for your creative practice, you're staying inside the rules. Because AI was trained on what already exists. It's the best rule-follower ever built.

Inside the rules

What AI does

Remixes everything it's already seen
Optimizes toward the average of what worked before
Can't reach past the edge of its training data

Fast, competent, and structurally incapable of the new.

Outside the rules

Where new things come from

The idea nobody's dataset has yet
The wrong move that turns out to be the point
A blank page, with no assist, until something shows up

This is the only place long-term innovation lives.

The split — one side executes, the other side has to go first

So the real practice is making time to think and make without the machine — a blank page, a blank canvas, a blank melody, no assist — until you know what you actually want. Then bring AI in to help execute it.

Or if you don't work well with a blank canvas, have AI give you ideas, then work off them to make them ridiculous, illegal, dangerous. That's where innovation sits.

Practice thinking outside of AI. It's our only way to innovate long term.

Go first. Then let AI catch up.

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