Why Irrational Greatness Is The Best Strategy

I admire authentic creative expression, and the people who are irrational enough to engage in the process. This is a message for them.

AI is changing the economic equation of doing great things.

The opportunity cost of doing something great is increasing as the cost of doing something mediocre is plummeting.

In a world in which AI can generate content and automate tasks for us, settling for mediocrity is becoming easier and more efficient, to the point of making it almost irrational to take the additional time and effort to imagine, craft, and refine to the point of subjective perfection.

Not only is the economic argument for striving for greatness becoming more difficult to justify, but our data-obsessed culture also dismisses “greatness” as secondary or irrelevant. There is no universal measure of what is perceived as “great”, and the ambiguity of its measure makes it seemingly useless to strive for. Greatness is rarely a result of data-driven decision making, but a consequence of caring more than most.

While striving for exceptional greatness is seemingly increasingly irrational, it might also be the most rational strategy.

AI makes it possible to generate an image or design in one-click, write an essay from a prompt, and develop a web page with brand guidelines. What used to take weeks or months is now near instantaneous. Creative execution is more accessible and efficient than ever before. AI will pave the way towards an abundance of creative expression, but abundance of creative expression does not necessarily mean abundance of valuable creative expression.

The value of an output is not determined by how easy or how long it takes to create, but by how good it is. Accessibility and efficiency inform feasibility, but greatness is what justifies value.

Being “good enough” in the world of AI is not good enough anymore. AI derives its output from the most likely outcome. AI creation is by definition of average taste and quality. “Good enough” is the expected standard, and AI is excellent at meeting the standard expectation. That is precisely what AI is optimised for.

Moreover, content generated by AI will soon outnumber and outweigh human crafted creation in AI’s training dataset. The more we produce AI-generated creations, the more we feed and inform AI’s training dataset with itself, and not with human creativity. The consequence is a convergence towards predictable mediocrity, and in an increasing supply. If market demand and price premium are functions of supply and differentiation, then AI is a net negative on the market demand and price for what it creates.

The act of creation alone will therefore no longer be sufficient to be valuable and differentiate. What AI will execute and produce will be commoditised, but the extra mile of subjective greatness in design and experience on top of what AI yields will not be.

Greatness and the extra mile of craft will be necessary to support demand and justify a premium on creation.

Greatness is antithetical to what AI is optimised for. It is an intentional practice of seeing and doing more than what is predictable, standardised, and expected. Striving for greatness is the irrational will to diverge from consensus and go beyond the imperative. It comes from an innate curiosity and appreciation for detail, a strong conviction in beauty and delight, indulgence in craft, and an ambition for excellence at every touchpoint - all of which are natively human qualities. Striving for greatness focuses on the value it creates, and not on what it takes to create it.

Another reason why greatness will matter is that it will be rare.

The increase in marginal cost of greatness will make it harder to justify, and hence fewer will be motivated to pursue it. The fewer pursue greatness, the more scarce greatness becomes, and the more valuable it will be.

Examples of this today are manifested in historical architectural masterpieces. Michelangelo’s hand-painted ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, or Blue Mosque's tilework are all manifestations of irrational greatness. We have become so efficient with modern construction that the craft that was required to realise them would no longer be rationally acceptable. Such artifacts stand out as uniquely amazing, and drive entire populations to pay and travel the world to experience them as a result.

In the context of AI creation setting the new norm, greatness is a rational strategy specifically because of how irrational it is.

Greatness effectively counterpositions against AI because there is no objective function for AI to make sense of it. Greatness is arbitrary, subjective, and unquantifiable - all of which make it challenging or impossible for AI to accurately model against.

The other advantage greatness has as a strategy to counterposition against AI is that greatness is by definition exceptional, and hence would be dismissed as an outlier in AI’s dataset. Striving for greatness is therefore a way to preserve authenticity, and perhaps even to reduce the risk of being replicated.

While AI will undoubtedly continue to make creation more accessible and efficient, what is required to achieve greatness will not be.

Greatness is facilitated by time, space, and engagement in the process. The time to develop a unique point of view, the space required for new ideas to emerge, and the patience to engage in a skill to the point of subconscious mastery cannot be facilitated by shortcuts.

In a world in which our software is lowering our tolerance for friction and inefficiency, having the patience to do great things becomes increasingly counter-intuitive. The inefficiency of human crafted greatness is specifically what makes it so difficult, and why so few are willing to go there.

I hope we can continue to strive for more - and do more irrationally great things.