P.S. A Column On Things

By PAUL E. SCHINDLER JR. I am from Portland, Oregon, Beaumont ’66, Benson High ’70, MIT ’74. Some things are impossible to know, but it is impossible to know these things.

Amateurs+LLM=Amateur Product

February 22, 2026

My friend and former editor Joe Brancatelli says not AI/LLM  reminds him of the “first generation of word processors and design programs. Just because amateurs had the tools didn’t make them writers or designers.”

Your text or image cannot possibly be better than your imagination or your expression of that imagination in a prompt. AI can’t listen to your requirements and give you something you never knew you wanted. You can’t compose a prompt that provides you something you’d prefer, better suited to your needs, had you but known.

My personal rule is “Don’t tell a professional how to do it, just tell them the end result you want.” You have to tell AI how to it, which means you will never get a creative output guided by a professional who has done it for 10,000 hours. Have you been a professional writer or a designer for 10,000 hours? For 10 hours?

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Paul E. Schindler Jr.

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