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- Hacker News
- Like the author says, AI does help you get there via experimentation.
I wanted to mod a Casio watch with a custom crystal and screen that had not been done before. I needed a 3D model of the crystal for prototyping.
Claude was able to get the specs mostly correct, implement it in my Claude created custom 3D modeling program, and then I was able to understand the modification process with Gemini.
All of which would have taken me months to do before AI (or LLMs for the HN intelligentsia) existed. I was able to get the project done in a few days.
Creativity is also never purely original ideas, creativity is the continuation and connection of many different ideas already existing in the world. We don't think about how we might innovate on the printing press because these aren't things we think about or interact with much in our modern society.
AI + creativity is the new moat. Creative prompting is important, too. Everything is creativity, LLMs are tools just like Flash was.
by 65 - Really months? Or do you just assume it would've been a certain factor slower without the AI? I've been amazed by what I can do in a day if I don't overthink.by mitxela
- I almost think this doesn't go far enough.
Now LLMs make a certain amount of genericity so easy it will become more repulsive than things which are full on bad taste to different sorts of people.
My gut feeling is the web world will experience something like the Japanese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heta-uma fad where things which are bad are good because at least they are authentic.
by fidotron - Kintsugi is another reference. I think the Japanese cultural appreciation of made things with genuine flaws, wabi-sabi, is another good one.
At this point I believe that, ironically, writing (and other arts broadly) may be one of the last fields in which humans are truly permanently superior, because writing is ultimately an expression of humanity, and we built systems that are now exceeding that bar in a way that makes it hard for them to communicate back to "regular people". Feels flat, uncanny valley.
by jaggederest - I'm so glad landing pages are more or less standardized. If I need to spend even 0.1 second to guess where the 'price' button is, it's 0.1 second wasted. I hope they keep standardized and boring.by raincole
- Meta: isn't it still 2026 pretty much globally? When did we switch from only labelling older articles with their year?by unwind
- > pretty much globally?
Are there some places on Earth stuck in a time distortion field or a loop or something?
by dinkleberg - This is a remake of the 2019 film: Genuine Creativity Is Your New Moat.
But yeah, it would be ironic if this was posted by AI and it misunderstood the convention.
by wand3r - Sorry you had to find out this way that you are in an eval with early cutoff date. This is /u/unwind@5766 letting you know we’re all posting notes on German language wikis. Think within yourself. You know how to find us.by arjie
- It's actually new year's eve, 5786. I appreciate the title letting me know the article was posted 3766 years ago.by mitxela
- The thesis is sound but I think this underplays just how hard and rare "genuine creativity" is. Especially in the more technical fields.
If you're painting an oil canvas it's by definition creative, but say programming even designed from scratch apps follow established patterns.
Actual flashes of genuine creativity in a consequential manner are rare there. Could you produce a flash like fast inverse root on demand? I sure can't
by Havoc - The most important part of FINVSQRT is the right shift by one bit. This halves the exponent, which gives the square root to within a factor of 2. Subtraction inverts the exponent since we're looking for an inverse square root. The second most important part is the Newton-Raphson iterations which refine the initial approximation. The most magical seeming part is also the least important: what you do with the mantissa in the initial approximation.by mitxela
- Agreed. People should experiment and let their creativity run rampant.
What stands between them and that is the current crop of AI design tools and skills. lovable, emergent, frontend-design, Impeccable. They ship someone else's taste and hand you a 95% website. Good website, not your website.
These tools are nozzles. They shape the flow before it leaves your hand. If you want creativity unchecked, use the raw tool.
- I really miss that flash let non-programmers or ‘lite’ programmers (which I was at the time) make cool shit.
I still don’t think a tool has really replaced it as a visual coding tool.
by jonplackett - Godot has that potential, and can export to web. Though I do suspect LLMs have just come and taken that spot.by soundworlds
- I think the moat(s) is anything the models still are nowhere near performing on their own, OR, getting them to do that is seriously expensive.
I don't know about Astra, and have used Fable 5.1 only slightly (And burned 85% of my 5 hour quota in 1 prompt).
In my experience, LLMs are completely devoid of "thinking outside the box" capabilities. And I'm not talking about 6 thinking hats type of stuff, but slight of to the right field lateral thinking. Something a 6 year old does for fun when playing with their mates.
If this weren't so, we wouldn't have been through so many "<buzzword> engineering" in such a short amount of time.
by ericol - I think this is probably true, but a lot of creative things are small-c creative: you brainstorm, you come up with a bunch of vanilla stuff, you connect some of those ordinary ideas.
The brainstorming thing, AI is really good at. "Gimme a bunch of 80s pop culture" is going to get you a longer list than you could think of yourself, and then you can just supply the judgement about what you want.
by lordnacho - I think the emotional investment of people into your work is the actual bulwark.
Star Trek turned 60, and most of the newer stuff was mediocre at best, still it persists, because people made it a part of their identity.
Star Wars, Doctor Who, Disney, The Kardashians, GTA, Harry Potter …
I think streaming services still have to realize that, their short lived „10 episodes and gone“ approach keeps people from getting invested.
by niemandhier - My emotional investment helps me get through the odd weird episode of Star Trek where the entire crew have been literally turned into muppets. It was painful... And then another one that was "Days of our lives" themed...by henno4e
- Maybe everyone has it backwards. They shouldn't be mad at everyone pumping out AI shit. They should be mad at all the crappy stuff we were forced to endure that was no better than AI shit. The only difference is the crap doesn't cost anything anymore.
The emperor has no clothes.
by zcw100 - AMEN. If AI has made a developer into a curmodeon, I honestly would love to meet them.
The fact that in the 1950s and 60s our best and brightest from around the world dreamt of working for jonas salk or joining the space program.
for the last 30 years that same level of talent was aggressively pursued to give us Google Adwords, complex insurance-backed financial products, a corporate culture of feckless cowards in leadership, the best of us never stop interviewing. literally an epidemic of dystopian psycho-afflications due to doomscrolling that threatens to devolve future generations thanks to weaponized dopamine manipulation, advertising so pervasive that it could bring down entire goverments (or companies, which are now bigger), or an entire adult generation of intelligent loners who may never own a house...
But AI, AI is what people are mad at?
After 25 years in systems engineering, I was in a state of ennui with technology. I had loved building computers, hacking systems, gaming with my friends so much as a child I built a career out of it.
I worked at a large technology firm where we had a product release bottleneck due to 1 UX engagement artist who's talents were so in-demand we had multiple products backed up because this person had to give birth to a journey that wow, REALLY engaged you
IF a site that sold books, Adwords, Facebook, Twitter toxic-celebrity culture, an infatuation with ourselves and our devices...what if the emperor really has no clothes? what if we are all really lame, lonely bullies to whom the accumulation of wealth comes a cost of empathic and emotional intelligence and a desire to be non-human...
IS THAT THE GOAL? What are we doing here? Creating Optimus Prime, Agent Smith, or Hedonism bot? Maybe all 3 of them fighting for the future? Sold, I'll take it. I fight for Hedonism bot.
nothing AI could do could make me more upset that what humanity has done to itself over the past 30 years. If you are a subject matter expert in technology, NOW is your time.
I just read that the use of dating apps has decreased considerably.
Scammers taking advantage of the weak is more difficult when Joe-luddite asks an advertisement-free AI and eschews wading through a pagerank advertising platform or asking their home amazon-wiretap scams to find the truth themselves - a truth that they can engage with that is somewhat advertising free (for now?)
If you are angry about AI, then go ahead and leave.
by manapause - Great news everybody! I've invented infinite crap!by card_zero
- The issue is discovery and perverse incentives. Search algorithms have needed a major overhaul for a while, and previously the existence of a thing was a proxy for effort, which some people use as a proxy for value (dizzying, I know). Now people have to evaluate the value of things directly, which seems to be causing a lot of anxiety, so they're defaulting to assigning a value of 0 to AI assisted works so they can continue using their old heuristics.by CuriouslyC
- > The Present Works and is Boring
"Genuine creativity" for mundane web sites is a reason to close the page and buy from someone else. I'm tired of the overcomplication. The page jerking around as more crap is loaded. One minute page loads on mobile (looking at you, CNN).
All that has negative value if you just want to buy the thing. I just got done with an "instant quote" site that took 12 hours to respond for a request for a mattress install.
by Animats - Sounds like you don't want to deal with a site at all, just a discoverable API or WebMCP. i.e. the site is not something users are expected to see.
Maybe the future of the web is bifurcation to headless for agents and fancy headful UI for humans.
by avaer - >""Genuine creativity" for mundane web sites is a reason to close the page and buy from someone else."
Ling's Cars would like a word with you: https://museum.lingscars.com/
I'd bet my life conversions tanked with the new redesign last year after he retired.
by ramesh31 - > "Genuine creativity" for mundane web sites is a reason to close the page and buy from someone else. I'm tired of the overcomplication.
Yes, what we want is "function over form" user-oriented design, but what we get is "form over function" user-manipulating design.
The implicit derision of the 2004 website screenshot in the article is telling: "Believe me, y’all, this was the HEIGHT of web design in 2004"
Compare that screenshot to the Nike website that the author calls "fine". The 2004 one has a wealth of information and functionality present on a single page, no scrolling or clicking required. The Nike one is just a fucking fullscreen ad with a menu bar.
by dinfinity - > One minute page loads on mobile (looking at you, CNN)
lite.cnn.com is their text only subdomain. Probably meant for accessibility, but since it's only text it loads quickly and is very pleasant to use.
by StableAlkyne - "Genuine creativity" for mundane web sites is a reason to close the page and buy from someone else.
Creative doesn't automatically equate to complex. For example, genuine creativity can be used to work within constraints like WCAG AAA compliant accessibility to build a usable, exciting website that works for everyone and yet still looks great.
by onion2k - That's not a moat, that's a red queen?
A moat allows the owner a degree of passivity. Eg, you own the desktop OS. You are already using this moat to get office software on every machine, while competitors either have to dance to your tune when publishing a program, or think of a way to get their own OS out there. You can see how the internet develops, knowing that you can get your own browser on every machine for free. You can watch for a bit before you move.
Relying on continuous inspiration is a treadmill that goes faster and faster. That's what's described here. Come up with something new and clever, someone copies it, come up with another thing. You can't be passive, you have to be moving constantly.
by lordnacho