ENGLISH VERSION

一些关于即生成即用（create-as-you-go）的时代的想法。

Gemini 3 发布的第一天，社交媒体上所有的反馈都集中在同一个方向：这东西会颠覆用户交互界面。这并不是说 Gemini 3 本身发明了一种更好的交互界面，而是说，它让生成完全依赖于具体问题和具体用户需求的即生成即用的交互成为可能。

在传统的用户体验里，工具负责生成一系列标准化组件，人脑负责把这些组件融合在脑海里生成更深入的理解。比如你要理解 DNA 的构造或者 Tesla 的设计或者房产税的施行细节，工具能给你的是各种文本表格图片文档，任何比它们更高阶的交互都因为依赖用户个性化的需求而无法标准化，因此从这些非常原始的数据中组装信息就成了一种不平凡的智力活动。整整一个中介行业（前端设计/编辑/视频制作/etc.）的工作本质上就是把这些细粒度的标准化低阶信息包装成终端用户能接受的状态。

这个中介行业有两个从本质上就没法绕过去的缺点：1. 贵。2. 它永远无法真正切合每个实际用户的需求。这种工作的交付是静态的，用户只能被动接受。出色的中介能尽可能精确地猜测到用户想要什么，但也仅限于此。

Gemini 3 发布之后，任何终端用户都可以直接对它说：给我一个关于 DNA 构造的动画教程，然后 Gemini 就能生成一个酷炫的交互式 3D 界面，允许你自己探索 DNA 的一切。这不是一个静态的交付，你随时可以根据个人体验而不断要求它更改：讲得更细致一些，展开解释某个背景知识，给渲染出的图像换个角度，对某个难点提出疑问……最终得到的是一个完全私人定制的东西，而且基本上只有一次性的使用寿命。——当然，Gemini 允许你把生成出来的结果分享给他人，但从实际效率角度来说，别人直接从零开始制作一份自己的版本往往更省事也更有针对性。

这带来了一些关于信息流通的根本上的新工程哲学。

人类所有工程领域一直都共享着一些不言自明的原则：标准、坚固、可复用。在这一点上，软件工程师和桥梁工程师没有什么不同。如果你是个桥梁工程师，标准意味着你可以大规模生产工程预制件，坚固意味着你希望你造的桥能用很久，可复用意味着你希望你造这座桥工具和经验能够尽可能直接被拿去用来造另一座桥。这些原则如此显而易见，以至于人们不会意识到它们的存在，也不会深思它们的代价。

如果你实际上既不需要标准化，也不需要坚固，也不需要可复用，你能省下多少资源和能量用来解锁别的 feature？你能做到多少本来因为需要满足标准、坚固、可复用而无法想象的事？

这有点像是从物资匮乏时代到物资丰裕时代的观念代沟。我们都遇到过长辈对旧物的执念——他们会坚持说：好好的东西扔了干嘛？万一哪天你还用得着呢。事实上你知道，首先很难遇到这个万一，其次就算真的要用，弄明白一个旧东西怎么用的功夫你已经从淘宝上下单了一个新的并且送到了门口。你不得不痛苦地给长辈解释说，为了存放那些破烂「以备万一」所占用掉的家居面积乘以单位面积房价，足够你每天买一个新的了。

从这个视角往回看，你会发现我们曾经为了这些古代的神圣原则付出过多少代价。传统的办公软件（比如 powerpoint）异常臃肿笨重，因为各种你可能永远也用不着但也许对某个人某天有用的功能都必须一出厂就准备好，而今天的你完全可以为了你现在要做的 presentation 直接生成一个成品，包含任何当下的你需要的 feature，不用关心它能否被另一个 presentation 用上。传统的代码库里包含着精雕细琢的注释文档和复杂的引用依赖，因为模块会被层层复用，你需要大费周章地解释意图和注意事项，既不能过于简略别人无法理解，也不能过于冗长让人没耐心阅读。你需要隐藏复杂性，提供简洁接口，一旦软件出错，你需要非常精确的错误信息才能帮助人定位问题。——所有这些对 AI 都属于过度设计，杞人忧天。有连篇累牍解释怎么复用高阶接口的功夫，AI 已经读完了几千行底层代码和几百行报错信息，然后另起炉灶写了一个全新的模块出来。你甚至不太关心生成的东西有没有 bug，只要你用的过程中不要遇到 bug 就行，或者就算有，你再生成一个新的就是了。

这当然不是说软件工程不存在了，只是成本和注意力都需要颠覆式地重新分配。底层的元件和设施也许需要更坚固更有效率——大模型基础设施供应商仍然需要千方百计从石头里榨出油来最大化每片GPU的使用，AI 本身也仍然需要调用有效的渲染引擎来支持各种定制化的高级界面——但你在链条上越靠近终端用户，就越需要提醒自己用户仅仅生活在当下，你和他们每一次长尾的、浮光掠影的、昙花一现的交互本身才是你真正要交付的产品。如果你是斯科塞斯，你关心的是你的电影是否永垂不朽。如果你想制作的是霸道总裁爱上清洁工的短剧，按照斯科塞斯的方式来执行就成了自寻死路。

设想一下，如果你能够每天根据你当下的心情和需求以几乎零成本生成一套新的家具并随时无痛扔掉所有旧家具，你会怎么理解家具这个概念本身？用黄花梨木来生产日抛型家具是没有意义的。

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All that is solid melts into air

Thoughts on the Era of “Create-as-You-Go”.

On the day Gemini 3 was released, feedback across social media converged on a single point: this thing is going to disrupt the user interface. The consensus wasn’t that Gemini 3 had invented a better UI, but that it enabled a “create-as-you-go” interaction model—one where generation is entirely dependent on a specific question and a specific user’s immediate need.

In traditional user experience, tools are responsible for generating a series of standardized components, while the human brain is responsible for synthesizing these components into a deeper understanding. Whether you are trying to grasp the structure of DNA, the design of a Tesla, or the implementation details of property tax, tools can only offer you various texts, tables, images, and documents. Any interaction higher than that cannot be standardized because it relies too heavily on personalized user needs.

Consequently, assembling information from this raw data becomes a non-trivial intellectual task. The entire existence of the intermediary industry (frontend design, editing, video production, etc.) is essentially to package this granular, low-level information into a state that the end-user can digest.

This intermediary industry has two inescapable, structural flaws: 1. It is expensive. 2. It can never truly match the specific needs of every actual user. The delivery of this work is static; the user can only passively accept it. An excellent intermediary can guess what the user wants with some precision, but it remains just that—a guess.

With the release of Gemini 3, any end-user can simply say: “Give me an animated tutorial on DNA structure.” Gemini can then spin up a cool, interactive 3D interface allowing the user to explore every aspect of DNA themselves. This isn’t a static delivery; you can demand changes based on your personal experience at any moment: explain it in more detail, expand on background knowledge, render the image from a different angle, or raise a query about a specific difficulty… What you end up with is something completely bespoke, with a lifecycle that is essentially single-use. Sure, Gemini allows you to share the result with others, but in terms of efficiency, it is often faster and more targeted for others to simply generate their own version from scratch.

This introduces a fundamental shift in the engineering philosophy of information flow.

All fields of human engineering have long shared certain self-evident principles: Standardization, Durability, and Reusability. In this respect, software engineers are no different from bridge engineers. If you are a bridge engineer, standardization means you can mass-produce prefabricated parts; durability means you hope your bridge lasts a long time; reusability means you hope the tools and experience gained from building this bridge can be directly applied to the next one. These principles are so obvious that people rarely notice their existence, let alone reflect on their costs.

But if you actually need neither standardization, nor durability, nor reusability, how many resources and how much energy could you save to unlock other features? What could you achieve that was previously unimaginable because you were constrained by the need to be standard, durable, and reusable?

This is somewhat like the mindset gap between an era of scarcity and an era of abundance. We have all encountered elders who obsess over old items—they insist: “Why throw away something perfectly good? What if you need it someday?” In reality, you know that “someday” rarely comes. And even if it does, by the time you figure out how to use the old thing, you could have ordered a new one online and had it delivered to your door. You are forced to painfully explain to them that the cost of the housing square footage occupied to store that junk “just in case” is enough to buy a new one every single day.

Looking back from this perspective, you realize the price we have paid for these sacred, ancient principles. Traditional office software (like PowerPoint) is incredibly bloated because every feature—ones you will likely never use but might be useful to someone, someday—must be shipped right out of the box. Yet today, you could generate a finished product specifically for the presentation you are doing right now, containing only the features you need right now, without caring whether it can be reused for another presentation.

Traditional codebases are laden with polished documentation and complex dependency management because modules are meant to be reused layer upon layer. You have to go to great lengths to explain intent and caveats—you can’t be too brief lest others don’t understand, nor too verbose lest they lose patience. You need to hide complexity and provide clean interfaces. If the software fails, you need incredibly precise error messages to help humans debug it. For AI, all of this is over-engineering; it is borrowing trouble. In the time it takes to write a treatise explaining how to reuse a high-level interface, the AI has already parsed thousands of lines of low-level code and hundreds of lines of error logs, and then started from scratch to write a brand-new module. You don’t even really care if the generated output has bugs, as long as you don’t hit them during your use—or if you do, you simply generate a new one.

This doesn’t mean software engineering is dead, simply that the distribution of cost and attention needs a disruptive reallocation. The underlying components and infrastructure may need to be even more robust and efficient—infrastructure providers still need to squeeze blood from stones to maximize every GPU cycle, and the AI itself still needs to call upon effective rendering engines to support various customized high-level interfaces.

However, the closer you get to the end-user on the chain, the more you need to remind yourself that the user lives only in the present. Your product is the interaction itself—long-tail, fleeting, and ephemeral. If you are Scorsese, you care if your film is immortal. If you are making a 30-second “CEO falls for the Janitor” reel, executing it the Scorsese way is suicide.

Picture this: If you could conjure up a brand new suite of furniture every single day—perfectly attuned to your immediate mood and needs—at virtually zero cost, and then discard the old set without a qualm, what would ‘furniture’ even mean to you? It makes no sense to craft daily disposables out of heirloom rosewood.