Great Artists Steal (With LLMs)

Great artists steal. But how?

In order to steal, you have to find inspiration. Even in the age of the internet, inspiration isn’t cheap. 

Social algorithms feed you mass-produced, lowest-common-denominator content. Google surfaces ads and gamified top 10 lists.

There is still the hard way. Read a lot. Take copious notes. Follow your intellectual curiosity for years until—no matter the situation—you have a reservoir of inspiration to turn to. This method is time-tested and sound, but it takes a lifetime. 

Sometimes, you need help now. 

What’s more, sometimes you have a situation so specific, a creative problem so well-defined, that you know someone out there has already encountered and solved it better than you ever could. 

How do you find those sources? Use an LLM.

.    .    .

I had a problem like this last week. I wanted to write a practical explainer about ChatGPT but didn’t want it to be boring. I wanted it to feel voicey and personal. I wanted it to be funny and maybe even a little bit poetic. 

It’s exciting, as a writer, to be able to frame a problem so specifically like this. Verbalizing your taste gives you a target at which to aim. But I didn’t know how to achieve the effect I wanted.

Surely, someone else had faced this problem before and solved it better than I could. I knew if I could see an example, it would nudge me in the right direction. 

But there was nothing I could reference to help inspire me. Not many books on my shelf are practical explainers of new technology with an interesting voice. Not many articles in my Readwise app had those qualities, either.

Google results for “best practical and voicey explainers on technical topics” made me want to puke: