People Aren't Creative Enough With AI

You're using the most powerful cognitive tool in human history to write emails. That's like buying a rocket ship to commute to work.

Quick survey: What did you use AI for this week?

If you're like most people, the answer is some combination of: writing emails, summarizing documents, debugging code, maybe generating a bland social media post.

Useful? Sure. Transformative? Not even close.

Here's the thing: you're thinking way too small. The gap between what AI can do and what people are using it for is staggering. It's not a productivity gap—it's an imagination gap.

And that gap is costing you experiences you can't even conceptualize yet.

The Boring Box

Most AI use cases fall into what I call the "boring box":

• Make this email more professional
• Summarize this article
• Help me debug this code
• Write me a cover letter
• Explain this concept simply

These are fine. They save time. They're the AI equivalent of using a calculator for arithmetic.

But nobody gets excited about calculators anymore. Nobody says "a calculator changed my life." They're just... there. Infrastructure. Invisible.

And that's exactly what's happening to AI for most people. They've domesticated this wild, strange, infinitely creative technology into a slightly better autocomplete.

The Experiences You're Not Having

Let me show you what you're missing.

A Tutor Who Actually Knows You

In 1984, educational researcher Benjamin Bloom discovered something remarkable: students who received one-on-one tutoring performed two standard deviations better than students in traditional classrooms. That's moving from the 50th percentile to the 98th.

The problem? One-on-one tutoring doesn't scale. We can't afford a personal tutor for every student. There's a projected global teacher shortage of 44 million by 2030.

AI solves this. Not with some watered-down "adaptive learning" system, but with actual personalized tutoring. A tutor that:

• Knows exactly what you understand and what confuses you
• Adapts its explanations to your specific learning style
• Has infinite patience for your questions
• Is available 24/7
• Costs essentially nothing at scale

This isn't science fiction. Khan Academy's Khanmigo, Wolfram's AI tutor, and dozens of other systems are doing this right now. Early research shows they can match or exceed human tutors for certain subjects.

But here's the imagination gap: Most people still think of AI tutoring as "homework help." A place to get answers when you're stuck. They're not thinking about what it means to have a tireless, infinitely patient, deeply knowledgeable tutor available for any subject you want to learn—forever.

Want to learn quantum physics at 2am? Go ahead. Japanese? Macroeconomics? The history of Byzantine iconoclasm? All available. All personalized. All free.

A Companion Who Never Judges

60% of paying users on Replika—an AI companion app—report having a romantic relationship with their AI.

Your first reaction is probably to cringe. "That's sad. Those people need real relationships."

But hold that thought. What's actually happening here?

Loneliness is an epidemic. Studies show it's as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Millions of people—elderly, isolated, socially anxious, neurodivergent—struggle to form the human connections they need.

AI companions won't replace human relationships. But they can provide:

• A judgment-free space to process emotions
• Companionship during lonely hours
• Practice for social interactions
• Consistent emotional support without human burnout

Is it "real" in the way human relationships are real? No. But neither is therapy, and we don't dismiss that. The question isn't whether AI companionship is as good as human connection. It's whether it's better than loneliness.

And for millions of people, it will be.

Entertainment That Adapts to You

Here's a prediction: within five years, the most compelling entertainment experiences will be AI-generated and personalized to individual users.

Imagine:

• A story that unfolds based on your choices—not from a branching tree of pre-written options, but generated in real-time by an AI that understands narrative
• Characters that remember your previous interactions and evolve based on your relationship with them
• Games where NPCs have genuine personalities and can hold actual conversations
• Movies that adapt their tone, pacing, and even plot points to your preferences

McKinsey estimates that $10 billion of US original content spending by 2030 could be addressed through AI. Not replacing human creativity—augmenting it. Personalizing it. Making it responsive to individual audiences in ways that were impossible before.

This is going to be fun. Genuinely, wildly, unexpectedly fun. And most people can't even picture it yet.

Why We're Bad at This

The imagination gap exists for a reason. Several reasons, actually.

We extrapolate from current experiences

When you think about "AI," you think about your last ChatGPT session. That's your reference point. So you imagine the future as "that, but slightly better."

This is linear thinking applied to exponential technology. The AI of 2030 won't be a slightly better ChatGPT. It will be categorically different—more capable, more integrated, more... present in ways we can't fully anticipate.

We anchor on limitations

AI hallucinates. AI makes mistakes. AI lacks common sense. All true—today.

But when you think about the future, you carry those limitations forward as permanent features. You imagine future AI with today's flaws.

The flaws are getting fixed. Fast. The question isn't "can AI be trusted?" The question is "how quickly are the trust problems being solved?" (Answer: very quickly.)

We default to productivity

The tech industry has trained us to think about tools in terms of productivity. Time saved. Tasks completed. Efficiency gained.

This frame is too narrow for AI. Yes, AI can make you more productive. But framing AI purely as a productivity tool is like framing the internet purely as a faster mail system.

The internet didn't just make existing activities faster. It created entirely new categories of experience—social media, streaming, online communities, the creator economy. Things that didn't exist before and couldn't have existed before.

AI will do the same. The most important applications won't be "doing old things faster." They'll be "doing things that were previously impossible."

Expanding Your Imagination

Here's how to break out of the boring box:

1. Ask "what if it worked perfectly?"

Instead of thinking about current limitations, imagine the technology working flawlessly. What would you do with an AI that never hallucinated, understood context perfectly, and could engage with any domain? Start there, then work backward to what's possible today.

2. Think experiences, not tasks

Don't ask "what tasks can AI do for me?" Ask "what experiences can AI enable?" The first question leads to automation. The second leads to transformation.

3. Apply it to what you love

Whatever you're passionate about—music, history, cooking, sports, art—there's an unexplored AI application in that domain. The people who find those applications won't be AI experts. They'll be domain experts who understand what would be valuable if it were possible.

4. Play more

The best AI discoveries come from play, not productivity. Set aside time to experiment with AI for no practical purpose. See what happens when you push it in weird directions. Treat it like a creative collaborator, not a tool.

The Fun Future

Here's what I want you to understand: the AI-enabled future is going to be fun.

Not fun in a guilty, escapist way. Fun in a genuine, enriching, meaningful way.

Learning that adapts to you. Entertainment that knows you. Companions that support you. Creative tools that amplify you. Experiences we literally cannot imagine yet because they depend on capabilities that don't fully exist yet.

The pessimistic narrative about AI focuses on job displacement, existential risk, and social decay. Those concerns are worth taking seriously.

But there's another narrative—one about abundance, creativity, and human flourishing—that gets far less attention. Not because it's less likely, but because optimism is harder to imagine than dystopia.

The future won't be determined by the technology alone. It will be determined by how creatively we use it. By whether we stay trapped in the boring box or break out into possibilities we haven't yet conceived.