The ineffable power of ideas

What does it mean to have an idea? To be confronted with a challenge and attempt to solve it by asking questions, observing people, conducting research, studying precedents? It means we bring to bear every element of our learned experience–the practical, the inspirational, the psychological, the referential. Sometimes we borrow from other realms, looking to construction or special effects to address a problem in a completely unrelated area of interest. AI is brilliant for getting a quick visual or verbal output of prompted references. But ideas–creative solutions (and by this I don’t mean mathematical solutions, but emotional ones) are the aggregate of lived experience and human association.

This is why I believe we are some way off before AI makes us irrelevant in our creative problem-solving pursuits. I can prompt all day to create a superficial output that synthesizes all the elements I conjure, but without that lived experience, the resulting bricolage is just a collection of visual references with no substance behind it. The cultural knowing of what works, when and why, is an intrinsic part of why any creative output has relevance and meaning. So much of what we make is a response to the greater world, the political moment, the nature and nurthire of our existence. So while AI can move us faster to revenue, it does not encode the relevance that separates good work from slop. Not yet anyway. Speed without substance has a backlash. Witness the slow food movement and the artisanal craft movement of recent decades. We can expect to see these impulses amplified for the kinds of people who claim their own humanity, agency, and lived experience to mean something. If we give over the deliberation, the doing and the decision making to the machine, we become an army of drones downloading our brains into the borg without critical thought or considered process to shape the outcome.

Are there clients right now who will rush to pay less for the soulless slop as a stand-in for thoughtful work? Absolutely. But they are not the demographic who ever valued what we do. The old adage remains true “Fast, cheap or good. You can have two of the three, but not all at once.” I would argue that AI nails the first two. But as someone who has always aspired to the better-than-good, I have faith that some of us will always recognize and prize the values that each of us, with unique perspective from lived experience, bring to ideas and solutions.

Takeaways: Start with art. Use AI for mocks and moodboards all day long. Streamline admin processes and merge legal and process based frameworks. Automate billing and processing. But idea MAKING and determination of the WHY and the MEANING of an idea should remain in the human domain–clearly considered, researched, rationalized, defended. Validate that the idea is strong and compelling. Write the idea and why it’s meaningful in a paragraph. No images. If it doesn’t stand on its own, it’s not strong enough to be developed.

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About LMNL Studio

Whether physical or virtual, our future environments and interactions must start

with human-centric design and values-based storytelling. LMNL Studio develops

strategic foundations, narrative frameworks, and design solutions to

bring more humanity to our future places and pursuits. Our mission is to

create purposeful interactions that educate, elevate, and inspire.