🤓 Stupid Simple: Breaking Things

Picture this: before airplanes existed, if you asked someone how long it would take to travel from New York to California, the answers would be constrained by the limitations of trains, horses, or ships. But what if we started with the premise that the fastest route between two points is a straight line? This isn't about choosing air travel over land or sea; it’s about rethinking the problem without the confines of existing solutions.

This very question—how to get from point A to point B in the fastest way possible—might have led to considering air over land, sparking the invention of the airplane. Just like this, breaking the mental models that define our current reality can lead to monumental innovations.

He was banned from using ChatGPT…

This week, I spoke with a law student at my coffee shop who shared that his school has a zero-tolerance policy for using AI like ChatGPT. He isn't even exposed to AI in his curriculum. This is one of the top-30 law schools in the world, in essence, still teaching students to travel by bus when they could be flying, limiting their ability to leverage modern tools help more people.

This anecdote highlights the importance of 'reimagining' the future. As Henry Ford famously stated, if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. Steve Jobs also urged us to "create the reality we want to live in." These visionaries didn't accept the status quo; they reimagined it.

The Necessity of Breaking Things

Innovation often requires breaking things apart—not for the sake of destruction but to understand their components and essence. Like dismantling a clock to see how the gears fit, breaking down preconceived notions about problem-solving allows us to rebuild them in innovative ways. This approach led humans to take flight, reimagining not just the speed but the method of travel.

AI: The New Frontier of Innovation

Just as Ford and Jobs reshaped their industries, AI is removing limitations in ways we're only beginning to understand. Over the next decade, we will continue to discover how AI has enabled us to break through barriers once thought insurmountable. AI isn't just a tool for enhancing existing processes—it's a platform for redefining what's possible.

Creating Without Constraints

If we approach problems, ideas, and innovations from a blank slate, we avoid creating new limitations in a world where AI has removed almost all of them. Imagine a generation of students who build their foundation on AI, not limitations. These students will be equipped to explore, create, and achieve at unprecedented levels. Schools and educators have a responsibility to use AI as the foundation, not just a tool that we tend to resist.

“If we approach problems, ideas, and innovations from a blank slate, we avoid creating new limitations in a world where AI has removed almost all of them”

I encourage you to think about what “rules” are just waiting to be broken. What are the assumptions in your field that need to be challenged? How can you reconstruct the pieces into something revolutionary?

Stupid Simple: Challenging the Norms

In the "Stupid Simple" segment, I'll continue to ask these challenging questions, helping us to rethink our world. There is a world before AI and a post AI world, and all of the limitations from the world before need to be reconsidered. In the coming years, we must forget as much as we must re-learn the new normal.

Because of this transformative time, I'm thrilled to announce that "Stupid Simple" will soon become a podcast! Next weekend, I'll bring you the first episode featuring one of the biggest voices in AI.

Let's keep challenging our current reality and let AI redefine a new normal.

Cheers to breaking things for the better,

Eder Teixeira 
Founder | The Daily Bite & Snack Prompt

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