The Dopamine Trap

There's a dopamine hit that happens when you see an idea manifest into a working thing in a short period of time. I don't think we've fully reckoned with how powerful that is when it comes to what these models can generate.

I see people talk about AI fatigue, AI addiction—people building really cool tools, working on the frontier. I think this concept is at the center of all that. It's genuinely addictive, watching your ideas come to life.

But there's a challenge that comes with it. It's particularly acute when the stakes aren't tight—when your well-being isn't tied to whether whatever you're building actually succeeds. When that's the case, the long tail gets even harder. That twenty percent problem—the work that takes eighty percent of the effort—becomes significantly less attractive, because you can always just move on to the next idea and chase the next hit of watching nothing turn into something.

That's where things get tricky. The very thing that makes these tools so exhilarating can also be exactly what keeps you from actually shipping.