The year is 1984. Carnegie Mellon. A strange little experiment.
Researchers paired novice chess players with an early computer assistant—one of those boxy, humming engines descended from Ken Thompson's "Belle." The machine could out-calculate entire clubs.
The assumption was obvious: human + computer beats human alone.
Except it didn't. The novices got slaughtered.
They didn't know which positions mattered. So they fixated on the wrong suggestions. The computer didn't correct their instincts—it amplified them. Meanwhile, the masters didn't need the silicon at all. They had something the machine couldn't fake: taste. Pattern recognition. A feel for what's cliché, what's dangerous, what's artful.
One researcher nailed it:
"A tool without judgment just accelerates your mistakes."
That's the uncomfortable truth about intelligence. More isn't always better. The difference between genius and garbage? Knowing what not to do when the machine sounds confident.
Micro-Muses: The Rise of Vertical Creative AI
That 1984 experiment wasn't about chess. It's about every creative field happening right now.
Most AI tools are the novice with a computer. Confident. Fast. Completely blind to taste. They can't tell a niche fragrance accord from a Yankee Candle knockoff. They don't understand why a low-magic TTRPG campaign falls apart the second you let a model add dragons.
But here's the thing: the Harvey moment already happened. A vertical AI built just for lawyers hit $5B valuation—after sprinting from $10M to $100M ARR in 36 months. Enterprise buyers stopped paying for generic intelligence. Now they pay for domain-specific judgment.
The creative world wants its version. AI that speaks a subculture's dialect. That critiques clichés. Knows the canon. Helps people make original work instead of beige soup.
That's the opportunity: Micro-Muses. Taste engines built for the weird, the niche, the craft-obsessed.
From the Vault
Rail Explorers Hit 650K Riders. The $1.2T Outdoor Boom Has Room for More.
America quietly turned abandoned railroads into a goldmine. Most people scroll past the railbike videos. Meanwhile, operators pack tours at $40–$50 a head. Sold out weeks in advance. Expanding into multi-state mini-empires.
The heist isn't the bikes. It's locking up the best forgotten corridors before anyone realizes they're finite.
The Side Door
→ KiwiCo's $1B Playbook Has a Gap. Here's the $8M Move
→ Suno's $2.45B Bet Just Opened a New Label Model
The world is drowning in generic tools and generic experiences.
The winners? They go narrower. Deeper. Stranger.
Railbikes. Kid-craft engines. AI record labels. Niche taste machines. The leverage isn't doing more.
It's knowing exactly where judgment still matters—and building there.
