(Image credit: the Sistine Chapel)

The Cup of Coffee Theory of AI

AI has its use cases, but it can’t solve a perennial mystery—yet

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As the author Ryan Holiday’s research assistant, I’m worried about AI replacing me. 

By most of the common psychological tests of intelligence, AI is smarter than me. AI can brainstorm more ideas than I can. AI can read a book, find information, fact check, and create content faster than I can.

So I’ve considered going back to working in coffee shops.

After I graduated from college, I chased winter. I lived and skied all over Colorado for the Northern Hemisphere’s winter months, and for the southern hemisphere’s, Australia and New Zealand.

To fund this year-round skiing, wherever I went, I worked part-time as a barista. When I think about my time working in coffee shops around the world, I find reasons to be optimistic about my job security.

Coffee shops around the world all have the same powerful machines. They’ve science’d most parts of the process—how the beans are grown, the mineral composition of the water, the milks and the drinkware. So, unlike not that long ago, you can get a great latte, cappuccino, or flat white basically anywhere. 

Yet many people still love their drip coffee with half and half. Many love their cheap store-bought beans brewed by their countertop coffee pot. And many don’t care—they just want their shot of caffeine.

Coffee preferences are personal and abundant. The world is big enough for espresso machines and French presses. And which machine the barista uses depends on who they’re serving. 

Art preferences are similar. So when I hear talk about how AI is going to replace artists, I think to myself, the world is big enough for both. Or when I see tweets about how AI wrote this “great” article or produced this “great” image, I ask myself, “great”—according to whom?

Countless authors, painters, and inventors who were considered ordinary in their own time are revered in ours. And anyone who has made and released creative work has experienced something analogous to making a delicious espresso for an audience that prefers a French press.

This is the perennial challenge of the artist: finding the middle of the Venn diagram where one circle is the artist’s tastes and the other is the audience’s tastes. 

For the past two years, we’ve tried to hire another research assistant. We’ve trialed dozens of smart, creative, ambitious, book-loving, speedy fact-checking individuals. We always give them a version of the same assignment: read this book (usually a biography) and pull out two good anecdotes and two good quotes. What they come back with is not in the middle of that Venn diagram. 

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Great stuff Billy - it will be thought and reasoning like this that will help guide us through this next era as AI becomes more integrated with our daily lives. Now, how about those espresso machine lessons?

@francois.ascani over 2 years ago

I love this positive, realistic and moderate view of the place of AI in our future world. Thank you for that!

@andrew.koole over 2 years ago

Still looking for that research assistant? I'd love to give it a shot. https://www.linkedin.com/in/apkoole/ ; https://ponytail.substack.com/

@musictourer over 2 years ago

Hello! Thanks for such interesting ideas. But ChatGPT is trained on tons of documents, websites, etc. You can make your personal model by feeding it ONLY by Marcus Aurelius books, and letters. And the answer will be more accurate then.

Nikos Kakavoulis over 2 years ago

Check out the discipline "neuroaesthetics". It might be of interest. AI will eventually know our tastes better than we do ourselves.

@abelbayre94 over 2 years ago

ever since i red about da vinci in robert green book mastery, i dall in love with him with his style and everthing about him what a man he was damn damn looking forward to red his bio soon