Business

Movies, books and paintings

Business

No important movie has ever been a solo project.

While we can see a director’s point of view from movie to movie, the collaborative nature of the work is evident. Actors, cinematographers and musicians all change what we see. And because of the huge amount of time and money involved, compromise (and the resistance to compromise) are a dominant force as well.

A book might be a solo act, but it’s often influenced by a great editor. Few of these professionals get the credit they deserve (and sometimes they’re called agents or spouses.)

And with rare exceptions, paintings are done by just one person.

Great directors are also great project managers. And broken-hearted screenwriters often began with a misunderstanding of what they were getting into.

When we set out to create, it helps to understand who are collaborators are and to choose them wisely. A well-trained AI, an insightful editor, an A&R person running interference–these are choices.

Understand the medium and your resources before you begin.

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The ghost in the machine

Business

When a system becomes complex and our knowledge peters out, we’re tempted to assert, in the words of Gilbert Ryle, that there’s a ‘ghost in the machine.’

“How does the stoplight work?” “Well, it knows that there’s a break in the traffic so it switches from green to red.”

Actually, it doesn’t ‘know’ anything.

Professionals can answer questions about how. All the way down.

[This is one reason why the LLM AI tech stack is so confounding. Because there are no experts who can tell you exactly what’s going to happen next. It turns out that there might be a ghost, or at least that’s the easiest way to explain it.]

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