In case you missed it…we announced our annual zine: Whoa, Vol. 2: Conversations on AI and Creativity. Over the next ten weeks, we’ll be releasing one conversation here each week.
If you’d rather savor instead of scroll + want early access to all ten conversations, including David Perell, Oliver Burkeman, Venkatesh Rao, Anu Atluru, and more…grab the physical + digital zine.
|
 |
Every other banking platform makes me feel like I’m doing taxes. Mercury makes me feel like I’m building something. The interface is unbelievably intuitive, fast, and lets me handle everything in one place – banking, cards, spend management, invoicing, and more.
If you’re a business owner of any type and haven’t tried Mercury yet, visit mercury.com today and find out why so many of us actually love how we bank.
**Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust; Members FDIC.
A conversation with Mills Baker, Head of Design at Substack
The first conversation is with Mills Baker, Head of Design at Substack, where he shapes how millions of writers and readers connect through the platform. We cover:
Why he's bearish on LLMs being able to do creative work that audiences care about
What he's witnessing AI do to Substack's ecosystem of writers and creators
The one question about creativity that isn't being asked enough
Why he's worried Chris Best (the CEO of Substack) may fire him
Why AI is just a mild anxiety reducer
The conversation is available however you like to consume it:
You’re a reader? → Get the edited written version here
Prefer audio? → Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
Visual? → Watch on YouTube
Want to savor it instead of scroll? → Get the limited edition zine here
Excerpts we loved
On why LLMs are not helpful in his writing
Alex: You write a ton and you think a ton, but it sounds like with neither of those, you find AI all that helpful.
Mills: Well, no, because almost everything I write or think about is either too particular for convergence machines like LLMs to have anything to say about it, or I want to know what I think or what the people I work with think or what the market I work with thinks, which again, is particular. So, you know, it can give me some kind of general point of view on social media. But the general points of view on social media, first off, they're common. I think most people already know them. And second off, they don't apply that directly to Substack. Substack is in peculiar phases of evolution, has different constraints, different dynamics. And I think this is true for the things I write too.If I thought generative AI or LLMs or whatever had an interesting thing to say about something I was writing, I probably would also think, well then I don't need to write this because it's already part of the generalized training data conclusion system.
On the limits of vibe coding
Mills: I was talking to one of our top engineers (at Substack), one of the brainiest guys we've got, who's deep into this particular scene. And I was asking him about a particular project and what he thought the delta pre-LLM and post-LLM was. And he was like, before LLMs, it could take 10 months. After LLMs nine and a half months. And I was like, okay, well, that's not a huge thing. And he was like, no, these things don't solve complicated, hard problems in a particular space that well.
What they're really good for is starting from nothing and building stuff that doesn't have to support a lot of weight. So you'll see these guys who post things like, I coded a thing for my TV in two days. And you're like, yeah, it's not that hard to go from zero to a thing for your TV. Now try to modify Facebook so that it works in a different way. Well, it doesn't really understand the way Facebook does this. And it doesn't understand how this is set up and I couldn't get it to work right with this. So it's the particularity, again, just like with creative writing, it's not there. Because they're generalization machines.
Why Substack's Head of Design Thinks LLMs are Overrated -- Mills Baker Whoa, Vol. 2: Conversations on AI × Creativity |
Why Substack's Head of Design Thinks LLMs are Overrated -- Mills Baker Sublime |
If you enjoyed this interview, follow the rest of the series to get notified of upcoming episodes:
Don’t want to wait? Grab the limited-edition zine and get early access to all upcoming interviews, including David Perell, Oliver Burkeman, Venkatesh Rao, Anu Atluru, and more.
 |
| ||||||||||
