AI makes judgement more important, not less
I’ve been messing around with a small software project and using different AI models to help me think through it.
What surprised me was how differently they behaved. One kept giving me more possibilities. Every time I thought I had the idea pinned down, it would suggest another direction. Another basically said: enough, pick something, define v1 and build it. And I realised neither was really answering the question I was struggling with: what is actually worth building?
AI is already pretty good at generating options, critiquing them, planning them and increasingly building them. But if generating and building things gets cheaper, choosing the right thing to do has probably become the harder part.
I’ve ended up thinking there’s a stage between exploration and execution that we don’t talk about enough. I’m calling it “convergence” — basically testing and killing off possibilities until you’re confident enough that one is actually worth pursuing.
Not claiming the term is new. The idea overlaps with a lot of existing work on exploration/exploitation, project uncertainty, benefits management etc. It was just interesting seeing the problem become so obvious while working with AI.
I wrote up the longer version here if anyone’s interested: https://gettoknow.you/library/before-you-build
But I’m more curious whether other people building with AI have noticed the same thing. Do you find AI helps you decide what to build, or mostly gives you more things you could build?