The Little Prince vs the Utilitarian Philistine
The Little Prince played his music to an auditorium as expansive as a cosmos yet as vacant as a void, save for a single red rose.
It was his act of defiance, his flaming youth set ablaze, strumming the chords of rebellion and passion. "My parents think I'm crazy and they hate the things I do," he sang, his gaze locked on the rose. His song echoed in the cavernous space, a solitary anthem of unyielding individuality.
“Muahahaha”
Meanwhile, the Utilitarian Philistine, a tech executive ensnared in a world of cold algorithms and hot profits, started gaining ground. His idea of using Generative AI to craft crowd-pleasing melodies began to draw attention. Investors, shareholders, even some artists, swayed by his promise of overflowing auditoriums and record-breaking revenues, joined his cause. His power surged.
"But will it touch the heart of my rose?"
The Little Prince asked asked the Philistine, struggling to comprehend this surge of soulless pragmatism.
“That's not measurable”
shrugged the Philistine, a response that grew like an echo in the Prince's mind.
The Prince found his once vibrant world clouding with complications.
His performances were threatened by the corporate concert culture, his soulful music drowned out by the Philistine's manufactured melodies. His rose, his anchor, seemed to wilt under the harsh glare of the utilitarian spotlight.
But the Little Prince wasn't to be defeated.
He strung his guitar, donned his leather outfit, and made a decision. He would give one last performance, an ultimate expression of his flaming youth. He'd risk it all: the stage, the rose, the essence of his being.
As he sang that night, his voice filled the auditorium with an ethereal melody that went beyond words and numbers.
It was a heart-rending song of defiance, of hope, of aesthetics untouched by profit or popularity. His performance was more than music; it was a cosmic dance of resilience and love for his rose.
In the audience, people listened, really listened.
They began to comprehend the essence of his music, seeing the beauty that lay beyond the quantifiable, the invisible becoming visible. The melody touched their hearts in ways the Philistine's AI-generated tunes never did. The spell was broken. People saw the soul behind the song, the aesthetics behind the art, the humanity behind the numbers.
The Utilitarian Philistine watched, his power now waning.
The Little Prince's song lingered in the air, his flaming youth setting the world on fire, his rose blooming brighter than ever. In the end, it was the promise of aesthetics, the courage of personal style, and the power of individuality that triumphed.
And the Little Prince sang on, reminding us that while we live in a world that loves to measure and count, it's the immeasurable, the subtle promise of beauty and harmony, that makes us truly human.
Why does this matter?
This short story showcases what LLMs are great for (coherence) and what’s hard to achieve with them (consistency).
Consistency (hard)
Unlike traditional computing and creation, LLMs today destroy all previous creation whenever you create a new prompt. That makes it very hard to achieve consistency across outputs and makes it really difficult to attain consistency across models. Definitely a great opportunity for a new set of tools to start capturing state and allow for a more permanent and sticky way to experiment with preferences.
If you are interested in learning how a prompt works, I recommend following Nick St. Pierre @nickfloats. For instance, check this simple yet powerful way to think about prompt structure for Midj-ourney:
Coherence (easy)
What makes LLMs so different and so powerful is that they help find and create coherence across disperate ideas or point of views. They are a great tool to inspect, associate, and brainstorm with. For the Little Prince tale above, I wanted to created a short story that included my favorite book (The Little Prince), my favorite song (Flaming Youth by KISS) in a contemporary situation.
Go ahead. Try to find coherence. It’s never been this easy.