First Blog Entry
When AI becomes efficient enough to do our work; what do we do? That seems to be my question du jour as recent developments in AI have demonstrated the potential I have seen used to describe the technology since 2022. In the weeks following the release of Anthropic’s Claude 5.5 Opus model, which seems to have superhuman coding capabilities, the internet has been a fascinating place to be a nerd. Between witnessing the exponential development of a free Open-Source Adobe Creative Cloud replacement, watching viral videos of “game mashups” made in a single afternoon, reading announcements from Epic Games regarding AI implementation for their new Unreal Engine & Epic Games Store, and seeing Microsoft’s recent announcement of a new vibe-coding division of Xbox; it’s clear that the computing power of AI is no longer a promise of future capability but a product to be used right now.
In this blog entry, I will…
Explore these developments through my personal experience
Speak on my opinion of how these developments are shaping the way I view / experience American culture
Discuss what I think it all means for the future
I’m a computer geek, sure, but I’m ultimately an artist. Despite having an affinity for understanding systems and the functions that cause something to work or do what it does, coding and scripting has just never stuck. I’ve had countless ideas for tools, software, and games; but I have never gotten far on my own. I learned to dream small. After seeing some of the new advances with Opus 5.5, though, I might be able to change my fate there. To understand the capabilities of the new Claude model, I wanted to try it out for myself: A small project that I could’ve made by hand, as a test and point of comparison. I asked the model to create a small Minecraft mod that adds a Biome based on the Amalfi Coast to the game, something I could do quite easily with a few days and the existing guides / tools. I figured that it wouldn’t be an impossible task for the AI, given the simplicity of world generation rules in Minecraft (ultimately just numbers within a text file).
Immediately, it got to work. It asked me some questions about my idea, wrote a guide based on my style requests, and presented me a project outline. If I approved of its plan, I just had to click a button and would apparently have a working mod on the other side of it all. And I did. In that process, it took only a few minutes for me to realize that the AI game of today is vastly different than what it has been over the course of this decade: See, the ChatGPT-of-it-all never really impressed me. I saw it and similar LLM technologies as glorified chatbots. I used Cleverbot and played Façade as a kid; this new “AI” merely reflected the advances in information storage sizes over the course of the 2000s. More data, less space: Better chatbot. But it seems that these models are not just generating text anymore but acting on it as well. Following the creation of the biome, a task that took minutes and maybe a few back-and-forth revisions after testing in game, it’d go on to help me create new items, assets, and structures that could generated within the biome, incorporating my designs and assets. It was shocking: For the first time in my life, as a creative with big ideas, I was able to hand off every technical piece to someone else and focus on the creative tasks I find joy in. For once, I didn’t have to wear every hat… Talk about a game changer!
Following my small experiment with the Minecraft Mod, I’m truly intrigued. I have accepted a life where I have to wear every hat... but now I can see a future where I can just wear the ones I like, the ones that fit me. My own games as a way to showcase my music and environmental designs. lush.wav, a studio. I’ve created and published pop music, for sure, but I wanted to make game music. The albums were just the containers for expression that I had to work with as an individual (a broke one at that). Likewise, I have spent so much time exploring world design in games like Planet Coaster and The Sims while desiring to explore environmental design in my own game or engine, and heaven forbid, make money with the skill. That’s always been my dream, but I had come to a place where I just figured it wasn’t on the cards for this life. I knew what I wanted to make when I was a boy, but I only gave myself permission to be a creative at the tail-end of college: Too late to find training, a team, or a job in the field without going back to school with even more money that I didn’t and don’t have. With these advances, I have started to imagine a future where I do get to do what I love. I don’t love automation and still find myself uncomfortable thinking about AI-generated images and music; but when I watch the AI reason and build the software in front of me, I hesitate to think about it the same way.
So yeah, I’m intrigued. I truly think that we stand in a new place. I don’t think that I’m going to magically have Claude make me a game that’s out tomorrow, but that isn’t what I’m imagining. Instead, I’m picturing a future suite of personalized tools. If I know the game I want to make, I could reasonably break it down into the pieces of development and workflows required and begin to build a library of programs that do just that. And, with the right set of tools that allow me to work comfortably and intuitively, I can do anything.
If a tool doesn’t speak my language, I’m frozen. 3DS Max vs. Blender, for example: I can model and texture just about anything environmental in 3DS Max but can’t even make a cube in Blender. Maybe I’m dysfunctional or just have expensive taste, but I find that 3DS Max works the way I need it to while even the basic controls of Blender feel like a trip to the Faerie Realm. Of course, I cannot afford 3DS Max, leaving me unable to create models that speak to my creative vision and ultimately stifling my workflow in creating experiences within Unreal Engine or Unity. But
I’ve spent years designing worlds in Planet Coaster, playing pretend game-dev, and now I can design worlds in a tool that feels just like Planet Coaster. Bit by bit, designing and building features around exactly what I want to do. Eventually taking out the strife of the entire project and allowing me to simply be the creative worldbuilder. Knowing my limitations, I have spent the last few years dreaming small.
With these advances, I have started to imagine a future where I do get to do what I love. I don’t love automation and still find myself uncomfortable thinking about AI-generated images and music; but when I watch the AI reason and build the software in front of me, I hesitate to think about it the same way as media.
I consider myself to be progressive with the environment as a prime concern for the future.
So… what do we do? Well, if we’re optimists, we find our passion: And I think we ought to be optimists. One day, the political era we’ve been experiencing since 2016 will end and a new era will rise: It’s our spirit and optimism today that will protect that future we all deserve. I know that for me, I’ve always felt called to be a Renaissance Man. Before the “real” world clicked in my brain (and we could argue it still hasn’t), I wished not to work or climb a corporate latter, but instead wished to read, to write, to learn, to create, and to play. I just wanted to be the most creative, cultured, and intelligent man that I could be. lush.wav is my personal brand and has become the way I express that desire in : But more than that, it is my dream of a studio. I wouldn’t be killing myself trying to get and keep a job that pays less than 20/hour, I’d be the head of my studio. I’d create music, games, experiences, and tools. If I had the time, the money, and ability to do so from my own will alone: I’d want to create a home for my art and spend my life nourishing it.
And it seems that I may be getting the time, the money, and ability to create that studio with the new development of these tools.