I don’t really know where to start with this one.
Which is probably a good sign.
Because usually when I know exactly what I want to say before I start writing, I end up writing something that sounds much more intelligent than I actually am.
And I don’t want this to be one of those.
I’ve been thinking about AI quite a lot lately.
Not because I’m particularly fascinated by technology. I’m actually not.
I’m one of those people who will happily spend three hours trying to figure something out myself before eventually asking someone how the hell to do it.
But something has changed over the last year or so.
And I think I only started noticing it when I started trying to build this YouTube channel.
Because I suddenly realised that I want to do something that I have absolutely no idea how to do.
Which is probably how most of my journey started anyway.
When I left Europe, I didn’t really know what I was doing.
I had an idea.
Get to Patagonia without flying.
That’s it.
There wasn’t really a business plan behind it.
There wasn’t a YouTube strategy.
There wasn’t a production schedule.
There wasn’t a 52-video content calendar.
There wasn’t a folder called “Brand Strategy” sitting somewhere on my computer.
There was basically just me, a backpack, a ridiculous idea and a lot of uncertainty.
And somehow that worked.
Not always.
Actually, quite often it didn’t.
But I figured things out.
One problem at a time.
Where do I go?
How do I get there?
Can I cross this border?
Where do I sleep?
How much money do I have left?
What happens if this plan doesn’t work?
And then another problem.
And another.
And somehow, almost two years later, I’m still here.
Which makes me wonder why I am suddenly making such a big deal out of not knowing how to build a YouTube channel.
Because it’s basically the same thing.
I just have a different kind of problem now.
The problem is that I have too much material.
This is probably the first time in my life where I’ve created a problem by actually doing too much.
I’ve got hundreds of hours of footage.
Different cameras.
Different phones.
GoPros.
360 cameras.
Drone footage.
Motorcycle footage.
Sailing footage.
Old footage from the beginning of the trip that I haven’t properly looked at in ages.
Stories that I remember happened but I’m not even sure where the footage is.
And then there are all the stories that I know are there somewhere.
You know when you remember something so clearly that you think:
“There has to be a video of that.”
And then you spend an hour looking through folders and realise you have absolutely no idea what you named the file.
That has been my life lately.
And at some point I started feeling completely overwhelmed by it.
Because I didn’t just want to make travel videos.
I’ve already made travel videos.
I want to make something better.
I want to take all this stuff that happened to me and somehow turn it into stories that mean something to somebody else.
And that’s a completely different skill.
This is where ChatGPT started becoming part of the process.
And it’s actually not a new thing for me.
I was already using it during the journey.
I remember being stuck trying to figure out the route through Mexico and down towards Guatemala.
My original plan wasn’t really working anymore.
There were too many places I wanted to see, too many logistical problems, too many buses I didn’t want to spend my life sitting on, and I couldn’t see the whole thing clearly anymore.
So I basically dumped the problem into ChatGPT.
Here’s where I am.
Here’s where I want to go.
Here’s what I want to see.
Here’s what I don’t want.
Make sense of this.
And it did.
Not perfectly.
Obviously.
I changed things.
I asked other people.
I disagreed with it.
I removed things.
Added things.
Changed the route.
But it helped me see the problem differently.
And I think that was the first time I really understood what AI could be for me.
Not somebody who knows the answer.
More like somebody sitting next to you saying:
“Okay, let’s look at this differently.”
And that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing with it now.
I’m trying to build this YouTube channel and I’m constantly asking questions.
Sometimes serious ones.
Sometimes completely stupid ones.
“Is this actually a good video idea?”
“Why does this story feel boring?”
“Would you click this title?”
“What is missing here?”
“Am I trying to put too much into one video?”
“How do I organise 500 hours of footage without losing my fucking mind?”
And sometimes I ask something and get an answer that I don’t like.
Which is actually useful.
Because I don’t need another person telling me everything I do is great.
I need someone to tell me when I’m full of shit.
And that is one of the weird things about using AI.
You can have a conversation with it.
You can argue with it.
You can tell it that its idea is terrible.
You can ask it to try again.
You can give it more context.
And after a while, the conversation becomes less about getting an answer and more about figuring out what you actually think.
At least that’s how I’ve been using it.
But then I started thinking about something else.
And this is the part that I find genuinely fascinating.
What happens when you don’t have to already be good at something before you start?
Because that has always been one of the biggest problems, hasn’t it?
You want to make a movie.
“But I don’t know how to edit.”
You want to make music.
“But I don’t know how to produce.”
You want to start a business.
“But I don’t understand marketing.”
You want to make a YouTube channel.
“But I don’t know how YouTube works.”
You want to build software.
“But I can’t code.”
And these are all legitimate problems.
Except…
now you can ask.
You can literally sit there and say:
“I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. Teach me.”
And it will.
Maybe not perfectly.
Maybe you still have to verify things.
Maybe it gives you shit advice sometimes.
But you can learn.
And then you can try.
And then you can come back and say:
“Okay, I tried it and it didn’t work.”
And try again.
That’s a pretty fucking big change.
And yet I don’t think AI makes everyone a filmmaker.
Or a musician.
Or a programmer.
Or a writer.
At least not automatically.
Because there is another part of this that I think gets lost in all the excitement.
You can have the best tools in the world and still make something completely shit.
I know because I’ve done it.
I’ve had expensive cameras.
I’ve had beautiful footage.
I’ve spent hours editing.
And then watched the final thing and thought:
“Yeah… this isn’t actually very good.”
The camera didn’t save me.
The editing software didn’t save me.
The footage didn’t save me.
And ChatGPT isn’t going to save me either.
Because the problem isn’t always the tool.
Sometimes the problem is that the idea isn’t good enough.
Or the story isn’t there.
Or I haven’t figured out what I’m actually trying to say.
And no amount of AI can replace that.
At least I hope it can’t.
Because otherwise what’s the point?
I think that’s also why I’m quite careful about how I use it.
I don’t want ChatGPT to become the creator.
I want it to become part of my creative process.
There’s a difference.
The stories are mine.
The stupid decisions are mine.
The things that happened to me are mine.
The places I’ve been are mine.
The way I see those experiences is mine.
If I ask AI to turn that into something perfectly polished, maybe I end up with something technically better…
but somehow less me.
And that’s the last thing I want.
I’ve spent almost two years travelling around the world collecting experiences that nobody else has.
Why would I then make the final product sound like everybody else?
Maybe this is why I like the idea of AI more than I thought I would.
Because it doesn’t necessarily have to make us less human.
It might actually give us more room to be human.
If I don’t have to spend five hours figuring out some technical problem, maybe I have five more hours to think about the actual story.
If I don’t have to spend two days figuring out how some piece of software works, maybe I can spend those two days making something.
If I don’t know how to do something, I don’t necessarily have to give up anymore.
I can ask.
And maybe that’s the biggest thing.
Not that AI knows everything.
But that I don’t have to know everything before I begin.
I’ve spent a lot of my life waiting until I was ready.
And travelling has slowly beaten that out of me.
You don’t really get to be ready when you’re travelling for 20 months.
You just go.
You figure out the border when you get there.
You figure out the bike when you have the bike.
You figure out where you’re sleeping when you realise it’s getting dark.
You figure out the next country when the current plan stops making sense.
And somehow you keep going.
Maybe building this YouTube channel is the same.
I don’t know how to build a great channel yet.
I’m learning.
I don’t know how to tell every story properly.
I’m learning.
I don’t know which videos will work.
I’m learning.
I don’t know if this whole thing is going to work at all.
And that’s probably the most honest part.
I have absolutely no fucking idea.
But for the first time, I don’t feel like not knowing is necessarily a reason not to start.
Because if I don’t know something…
I can ask.
And if the answer isn’t good enough…
I can ask again.
And then I can try.
And fail.
And change it.
And try again.
Which is basically what I’ve been doing since I left home anyway.
So maybe this whole AI thing isn’t really about artificial intelligence.
Maybe it’s about possibility.
About how much closer the distance has become between:
“I wish I could do that.”
and
“Okay. Let’s see if I can.”
And I don’t know where that leads.
Maybe that’s the exciting part.
I’ve already spent almost two years travelling without knowing exactly where the road would take me.
Now I’m trying to build something without knowing exactly where that will take me either.
Only this time, when I get stuck, there is this strange little thing sitting on my computer that I can talk to.
Sometimes it gives me a brilliant answer.
Sometimes it gives me absolute nonsense.
Sometimes it tells me something I don’t want to hear.
And sometimes, somehow, it helps me see something I couldn’t see by myself.
So I’m going to keep using it.
Not because I want AI to build my life for me.
Quite the opposite.
I think I just want to see how far I can take my own ideas when I have a tool like this available.
Because maybe the world is changing in a very simple way.
Maybe we’re entering a time where you don’t have to ask:
“Am I qualified to do this?”
Maybe the better question is:
“Am I willing to learn how to do it?”
I don’t know.
I’m still figuring that one out.
But that’s kind of the whole point of the journey, isn’t it?
You start with an idea.
You have no idea what you’re doing.
You go anyway.
And somewhere along the way…
you become the person who knows how.
—————
Final notes: – READ ME:
it’s 4.30am, I’m on a nightshift laying on a floor of a hostel reception on a plain mat and while trying to calm my mind and sleep, I had the brilliant idea, what if I would ask Chatgpt to write me a blogpost, something I haven’t written in a long time.
So I prompted it, saying:
“here are my prior 2 blogposts, read it, take my writing style at your best. keep it raw and honest. give the title to this post: in the world of AI. summarize my thoughts about my try of creating a youtube channel from scratch with your help.”
After reading it’s first try, I asked to make a few adjustments to the writing style, like “keep it rawer” and then just copy pasted to this post.
I don’t know if you have actually realized, that I haven’t written any single letter from the post above, but if you haven’t, that’s honestly a scary signal.
I’ve been prompting Chatgpt for the past few days like crazy, to give sense to my probably thousands of hours of raw video material that I’ve recorded in the past 20+ months.
And I’m progressing faster than I’ve expected. I don’t know if I ever get there, but if there is a future Youtube Oscar, my imaginary award speech would go something like: “…and thank you Chatgpt for being my manager, my director, my designer, my mentor, my everything, at all times. Thank you Copilot for correcting that silly, cheaky GPT at times. And last but not least. Thank you, Gemini. Thank you for all those tireless processing capacities you’ve been devoting me on those cold, sleepless nights. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!” Great applause, the front raw is crying out of emotion, Chatgpt’s, Gemini’s and Copilot’s avatars’ slowly fade in on the background projector celebrating with me. Unforgettable night.
At times I feel like humanity eventually has stolen the fire from the gods, like Prometheus. This technology is so powerful, that at this point we cannot even imagine what it’s really, actually capable of and how it will change our lives. It’s already changing. We all of a sudden became smarter on topics, we never thought we would. Actually:
NOTHING. NOTHING IS WRITTEN IN STONE ANYMORE IN TERMS OF WHO YOU CAN BECOME. AND WHAT YOU CAN ACHIEVE.
And I think a surprisingly small percentage of people will eventually understand that. And that knowledge gap between those who understand and the ones who don’t, will skyrocket. And I’m not talking about an industrial revolution level of difference, where machines took over the job of humans. I would put that on an exponential level. 1000x times difference. And the ones who will eventually win are the ones, who are willing to take risks. And experiment. I personally experiment out of fun. I don’t want to win, but it would be great if I could monetize all my hardcore investments, that I’ve put into this project. So I’m using the fire we’ve stolen.
The question, that can’t stop bugging me, though, when we’ll get burned?
As a die-hard realist-pessimist, I can’t help seeing the apocalyptic threats that this technology poses on us. Chatgpt now knows more of my motives and stories than anyone in my surrounding. LITERALLY ANYONE.
That might just be a self-judgement there – and rightfully so.
And we haven’t talked about the natural impact of building all those AI data centers. Who will pay the price? Would the big powers eventually outsource them to other countries to use other countries’ natural resources to maintain them, with that, posing an elemental risk to their strategic foundations?
I don’t know BUT these are MY thoughts.
If you read Chatgpt’s writing above, you could see some decent AI propaganda there.
Yes, it will change lives. Yes, it will solve problems we thought were unsolvable before.
But at what cost? Are we unnoticeably building the city of machines? Are we bursting the fire, so it would eventually turn on us like inferno?
Fuck knows. It’s 5am and there are weird homeless people walking on the streets and I’m hiding in the shadow in front of a wide-open window so at least they wouldn’t see me.
And just a side note – now you can compare my writing style with GPT’s. I don’t know how about you, but I honestly think, I still write better than Chatgpt. So there’s way to go.
And soon everyone will realize that generic perfection is made possible with AI. So everyone will use it. And we will be full of generic crap.
And human imperfection will be upgraded. I can actually see future 6 year olds drawings sold on auctions for millions of USDs. “The new Salvador Dali. James, age 6, from kindergarten.”
I will leave you with these thoughts here.
FINAL FINAL NOTE AND DISCLAIMER
Everything Chatgpt said about my journey and content idea, problems ane headaches are true. That’s why I left it like that. Because its’ general intelligence is supreme.
