Back before AI could gurgle out a list of spit-polished ideas replete with some sycophantic grovelling towards our imminent greatness, I was in love with random idea generators.
Don’t confuse one with the other.
AI makes ideas by stringing together patterns that make sense.
Idea generators are the Frankenstein-esque cobbling together of digital randomizers and curious arrays of word-bytes that when triggered result in a mad-lib-style shuffling of the input data towards an often nonsensical list of results. There is no intention. Only chance.
“Write A ROMANTIC DRAMA about A FISH set in HISTORICAL ROME.”
“Write A SCIENCE FANTASY about A BARISTA set in A SANATORIUM.”
“Write AN EPIC POEM about LOST KEYS set in A FAST FOOD KITCHEN.”
I wrote my fair share of these generators. The code behind them was simple: a couple data arrays chock full of verbs and nouns and settings and styles, a random number generator, and some user interface bits. It was all coding spare change compared to the corporate-billion budgets of modern AI systems that barf out polished gems of inspiration that could never match the lightweight brilliance of a digital dice roll.
Creativity, I think, often emerges from serendipity. Something amazing and unique can tumble out of our brains when we trigger those brains with curious nonsense.
I have asked AI for ideas, nudged it to brainstorm, and it comes back with clever concepts, sure. But none of it stacks as a trigger for the weirdest flights of my imagination compared to the raw random indulgence of a simple idea generator.
I think maybe the more we extract ourselves, remove our humanity, from the process the more boring the final result—and rolling dice, digital or otherwise, is just random enough to preserve our involvement in the loop.
Terms FROm this POSt
- corporate
- Having worked in many desk jobs, I tend to think of the corporate mindset and anything related to it as a kind of collective brain of capitalism and the search for profit. It is a core piece of the culture, but personally I’ve found it to be the antithesis of creative spirit, and often use the word as a pejorative in this sense.
- generator
- Ideas often come from interesting places, and algorithmic generators poll the randomness of the universe to create serendipitous spasms that occasionally stumble upon genius. The generators I often refer to on this site are simple programs or apps that cobble nouns and verbs together in interesting ways intended to kick start human imagination from the results.
- inspiration
- A vague concept I mention frequently on this blog but rarely define, I think the notion of being inspired is really at the foundational level, the seeds of creativity. Without inspiration, without muse, without spark creativity is just work or repetition or rote effort. Inspiration does not necessarily need to be monumental or epic or of the highest quality, but rather it is what is at the start of every creative process …until it flowers and drops more seeds of inspiration and the cycle repeats.
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