Livestock helps a person make a living. Cows need to make milk, chicken eggs, and sheep wool. These animals were part of a business decision. While a farmer may grow fond of their livestock, there will eventually come a day when the farmer needs to send them to the butcher. It’s business.
A pet is essentially part of a person’s family. Dogs and cats don’t need to help make money in order to earn their spot; they just need to be loved. When one passes away, it can feel as painful as losing a family member. It’s personal.
These two classifications—livestock and pets—tell entirely different stories about animals. It’s why the idea of eating dogs can seem disgusting, and the idea of having a pet cow seems so whimsical. It’s also a useful metaphor for thinking about your creative projects.
For example, if you’re an author working on your book with a publisher, don’t be surprised if they treat it like livestock. It’s just another book to them, and it’s how they make a living.
If you want to make a business out of your own creative projects, it may be more useful for you to learn how to treat them more like livestock than pets. And vice versa if you want to get more fulfillment from your creative projects; you want to treat them more like pets than livestock.
From this perspective, it’s easier to understand disagreements in perspective. Some people vehemently disagree with using AI in creative work, because to them, creative work is like a pet. Other people think it’s silly to not tap into such a powerful technology because it’s livestock. Nobody’s wrong; they each have different goals and purposes for their creative work.
This contrast is also useful for being flexible. For example, I treat every blog post like a pet, so I type everything by hand. That’s the point. However, if there’s a project I’m working on to promote my work, or to support a client, I will use AI as a tool if it helps make the work better; it’s livestock.
A good way to balance this could be to treat one project like livestock—e.g., purely commercial interests, etc.—and then to treat the next one like a pet—e.g., as a passion project. You can keep alternating and build a balanced portfolio of projects, with a half sustaining profit and the other sustaining passion. The old Hollywood saying goes, “One for them, and one for you.”