one sentence answer
Your future personal value will not depend on your proficiency in doing things with your hands, but on your ability to mobilize, judge and guide AI to solve problems.
Anxiety of being replaced: Which track are you on?
Many people always have a pessimistic defensive mentality when talking about AI: "Will my job be replaced by AI?" "Writing copy is not as fast as it, and drawing pictures is not as beautiful as it, so what else should I learn?"
If we position ourselves as performers of "pure manual labor/pure repetitive labor", this anxiety is indeed inevitable. Because in the dimensions of "speed, quantity, and basic specifications", it is impossible for humans to defeat computing power.
But what if we change our perspective and regard AI as a all-round, low-cost, 24-hour "creative assistant team"?
In the creative story of Liu Ziyu, a wedding photographer from Yunnan, he does not have any hard skills in writing code or doing special effects, but he knows how to "tune" AI and shows a very high "director's thinking" in the process.
The jump from executor to director
To collaborate with AI like a director, we need to complete three reconstructions of our thinking:
1. From “making requirements” to “design context”
Ordinary people treat AI as a search engine: "Write a development letter for me." The results are often empty and boring. The director treats AI as a senior employee: "I am now a software service provider for Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises in Malaysia. The customer's pain points are the high cost of computing power and the lack of technical personnel. Please write me a cooperation letter of about 300 words in a sincere and practical tone." **Providing sufficient context (characters, scenes, pain points, limitations) is the prerequisite for obtaining high-quality output. **
2. Make good use of fragmented iteration instead of expecting “one-time success”
Traditional software development or film and television production requires a complete and coherent process. But in the AI era, the best works are often produced by "making, modifying, and colliding". When Liu Ziyu made "Zombie Scavenger", he did not have a perfect script. He uses both his hands and his brain. When he sees certain pictures generated by AI, he is inspired, and then he goes back to revise the script and constantly polish the parts. This is an agile development mindset: use trot and fast iteration, and let AI grow with your ideas.
3. Check the final aesthetic and human temperature
AI can generate content that is most “in line with common sense” based on probabilistic models, but it is often emotions or designs that “break common sense” that impress people the most. Machines cannot understand what "romance in the wasteland" means, nor can they truly feel the touch of instant capture in wedding photography. Your experience, your empathy, and your true insight into your customers are the finishing touch.
How to take your first steps
Don’t wait until you’re completely ready to use AI. You can try these three things in your daily routine starting today:
- Brainstorming Partner: When planning an event or writing copy, enter your ideas and let AI provide you with 5 different thinking dimensions.
- Multi-language rewriting: If you do business in Malaysia, after writing a Chinese copy, let AI rewrite it into an English or Malay version that is more suitable for the local context and check for cultural taboos.
- Knowledge refining: Send a long article or an industry report to AI and let it help you refine the 3 most direct action suggestions for your business.
When you get used to this kind of "director-style" communication, AI is no longer a threat to you, but the best lever for you to extend your creativity and business empire.
FAQ
Is there any hardware threshold for middle-aged people or non-technical people to learn AI?
Most of the mainstream AI tools now run through web pages or apps. As long as you have a browser and can type, you can get started. The core is the ability to dismantle problems and aesthetics, not hardware configuration.
Why is the content I get using AI always so rigid?
The main reason is that the prompt word (Prompt) is too broad. Try to give the AI a specific identity (for example: senior marketing manager, strict reviewer) and clear tone restrictions in the instructions, and the effect will be significantly improved.
