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Today on AI For Humans:
We’re All Developers Now
Elon’s New Vision Is…Inspiring?
Plus, Claude Code + ComfyUI
Welcome to the AI For Humans newsletter!
It’s another busy week in the AI space but before we jump into today’s newsletter, I want to make sure everyone knows…
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I want to start today’s post with the following from 37signals co-founder and web 2.0 legend Jason Fried:
Jason, a well-known creator of software, is making the argument here that even though he uses all these AI coding tools, the world at large won’t immediately pick them up and start doing stuff.
I am sorry but I call BS.
I lived through the last one of these revolutions.
Reader, have you heard of a little website known as Youtube?
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How YouTube Changed The Idea Of ‘The Producer’
Many people (me) have written about how the rise of YouTube and other user-generated-content (UGC) platforms gave us a roadmap for the rise of Generative AI.
But something that people haven’t really fully gotten is what YouTube did to people’s ideas of what was possible for them as individuals.
It's hard to imagine now but pre-YouTube it was nearly impossible to get distribution for any video unless you were already inside the system.
You needed a TV deal, a film distributor, or at minimum a connection to someone who had one of those things.
The gates were real and they were heavily guarded.
Then, two things happened, almost simultaneously, that changed everything.
First, the camera in your pocket got good enough.
Not great. Not cinema quality. Good enough.
Second, and this is the part people always underestimate, people started seeing other people succeed.
They watched videos like the above where Michelle Phan showed that doing make-up tutorials and being yourself could lead to HUGE audiences (and, ultimately, a multi-million dollar net worth).
And the thought that changed everything wasn't "that looks easy."
It was "wait... that could be me."
That second part is the one Jason Fried is missing.
He's right that most people don't wake up wanting to build software. Just like most people didn't wake up in 2007 wanting to become TV producers.
But they didn't need to want it at first.
They just needed to see someone like them do it.
Someone who just... started.
You Are The Developer Now
Right now, AI coding tools are the mobile camera.
They're not perfect. They're def not going to replace professional developers any more than the iPhone replaced cinematographers.
But they are good enough for a huge number of things that regular people actually want to build. Google’s new AI Studio is a big step in that direction.
And the distribution layer? It already exists.
The internet is right there. You don't even need to get into the App Store.
You can build a tool, host it, and share a link.
Attention? Well, that’s another matter entirely, but you can publish whenever you want.
Nobody looked at early YouTube and said "this is going to produce prestige television" but the surprising thing is… that it kind of did.
Whether or not you think Mr. Beast is prestige TV, you have to admit the production quality in the video above is happening at a very, very high level.
Jason says giving everyone building tools doesn't mean everyone becomes a builder.
He's right. But YouTube didn't need everyone to pick up a camera.
It just needed enough people.
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Breaking Down The (Software) Gates
Look, I'm not saying everyone reading this needs to go fire up a coding tool tonight.
But I am saying: the gates are open.
For the first time, the ability to make software isn't locked behind years of computer science education or a $200K developer salary.
It's just... there.
And there is something that happens when you build a piece of working software for the first time.
When you describe a problem to an AI, and it writes something, and you run it, and it actually works.
It's hard to describe if you haven't felt it.
It's this little jolt of "oh wait, I can just... do things now?"
That feeling is the same one that launched a million YouTube channels.
It's the permission slip.
I promise you, figuring it out feels incredible.
See y’all next Friday for a new episode!
-Gavin
This week’s AI For Humans: Google’s new AI Studio & Kevin’s Generative DOOM!👇
3 Things To Know About AI Today
Elon Gets Back To Big Science Vision: TERAFAB & Mass Drivers
I want you to go back, say, seven years ago, pre-pandemic, and try to remember how you thought about Elon Musk.
It’s difficult to erase the feelings of his more recent actions but there was a moment in time when it felt like he alone was helping push humanity into the future.
Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink & Neuralink are all companies that are doing things that previously could only be described as science fiction.
Maybe that Elon is (somewhat) back?
A mass driver up until now has been an entirely science-fiction-y concept but even having the audacity to create a video like the above is exciting.
The larger announcement here was TERAFAB, Musk’s proposal for a giant U.S.-based fabrication effort aimed at producing advanced AI chips at enormous scale, rather than depending on outside suppliers like TSMC or Samsung.
If Tesla, xAI, and Musk’s other companies are going to need mountains of computing power for self-driving cars, robots, and frontier AI, they may eventually want their own industrial pipeline for the chips that make all of that possible.
Of course, there’s also something else big on the horizon for SpaceX so… take all of these announcements with a big ol’ grain of salt.
AI Is Everywhere Including… Cow Herding?
There’s been more chatter about whether or not AI is a bubble (see last week’s Plain English podcast for another deep dive on this issue) but one thing anyone can see about this wave of tech:
It is affecting a MUCH larger swath of the general population than something like Web3 or other fleeting tech ideas.
Case in point: Halter, the AI cow collar, is raising money at a 2 billion dollar valuation.
This sounds like a bit of a joke but it actually makes a massive difference in controlling how cows graze which turns into significant percentage increases in both beef and dairy farming.
Be sure to check out the Halter YouTube page their AI + Cows 101 series.
Karpathy Discusses How He’s Using AI Agents
Whenever Andrej Karpathy does a sit-down interview, we’ll be there. And you should be too.
But I can’t promise it won’t give you anxiety about your lack of token use.
The former OpenAI & Tesla AI engineer/researcher chatted this time with No Priors’ Sarah Guo to chat about how he’s using AI agents, his autoresearch project and a bit about how AI will morph education in the near future.
We 💛 This: Controlling ComfyUI with Claude Code
Every week, there are more and more things we’ve learned to do with Claude code.
Like, for instance, did you know you can give it an entire podcast recording and have it cut short clips with tools like FFMPEG & Remotion? I just did. <mindblown.gif>
So we were so excited to see friend of the pod Purzbeats doing a nice tutorial about how to integrate Claude Code into the notoriously difficult ComfyUI node process.
The link is here because YouTube hates embeddeding livestreams.
We love a good AI educational series and Purz has been doing them forever.
Give him a follow and see if Claude Code makes Comfy easier for you to use.
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