{ "what": "A storyboard with its cast, for an embed: . The storyboard is gen-z-developers/generative-ai-not-ai/storyboard.json, unchanged.", "series": "gen-z-developers", "packs": [], "storyboard": { "slug": "generative-ai-not-ai", "title": "Generative AI, not AI", "subtitle": "What the book means by generative AI, how a language model works in plain words, where hallucinations come from, and where Dinis was corrected. 12 panels.", "status": "draft", "book_version": "v1.0.0 is the only official version; the second edition is in release candidates (rc1 and rc2 frozen)", "by": "gen-z.journalist, 18 October 2026, from Dinis's memo on generative AI", "quote_source": "admin/content/articles/11__generative-ai-not-ai.md", "rule": "Every line the Guide says, and every quote card, is from the article 'Generative AI, not AI', word for word; the build checks it. The next-word probabilities in panel 4 are illustrative.", "scenes": [ { "kind": "cover", "title": "Generative AI, not AI", "subtitle": "The technology this book is about is the one that generates.", "cast": [ { "who": "agent", "pose": "wave", "mood": "happy" }, { "who": "zara", "pose": "think", "mood": "thinking" }, { "who": "guide", "pose": "point", "mood": "happy" } ], "note": "Being exact about the word.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI" }, { "kind": "spectrum", "setting": "none", "caption": "AI has become a huge bucket, and to be honest the word gets abused a lot.", "stops": [ { "label": "AI", "note": "the whole field, rules included", "colour": "#e5e7eb" }, { "label": "Machine learning", "note": "learns from data", "colour": "#bfdbfe" }, { "label": "Deep learning", "note": "many layers", "colour": "#bbf7d0" }, { "label": "Generative AI", "note": "produces new content", "colour": "#fde68a" } ], "cast": [ { "who": "guide", "x": 0.5, "pose": "point", "mood": "determined" } ], "note": "Each is a subset of the one before; the book is about the last.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, Where I was corrected" }, { "kind": "scene", "setting": "none", "caption": "What makes it generative", "cast": [ { "who": "agent", "x": 0.3, "pose": "wave", "mood": "happy" }, { "who": "guide", "x": 0.75, "pose": "point", "mood": "happy", "flip": true, "says": "it generates the output" } ], "note": "Data in, an internal representation, an output recreated from it.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, How I understand it" }, { "kind": "scene", "setting": "none", "caption": "Predicting the next word", "props": [ { "kind": "board", "x": 0.5, "y": 620, "lines": [ "The sun sets behind the ...", " mountains 62%", " hills 21%", " sea 9%" ] } ], "cast": [ { "who": "agent", "x": 0.14, "pose": "think", "mood": "thinking" }, { "who": "guide", "x": 0.86, "pose": "point", "mood": "happy", "flip": true, "says": "what happens is that it predicts the next word", "max": 20 } ], "note": "The percentages are illustrative. Strictly, the next token: a piece of a word.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, How I understand it" }, { "kind": "scene", "setting": "none", "caption": "Why a better prompt helps", "props": [ { "kind": "phone", "x": 0.3, "y": 640 } ], "cast": [ { "who": "zara", "x": 0.26, "pose": "point", "mood": "determined", "says": "Here's ten minutes of context." }, { "who": "guide", "x": 0.76, "pose": "stand", "mood": "happy", "flip": true, "says": "the better your prompt, the better the output" } ], "note": "The prompt steers which concepts the model draws on; it does not change the model.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, How I understand it" }, { "kind": "scene", "setting": "none", "caption": "Where hallucinations come from", "cast": [ { "who": "agent", "x": 0.18, "pose": "point", "mood": "happy", "says": "Your 2018 book has a chapter on Kotlin." }, { "who": "zara", "x": 0.5, "pose": "shrug", "mood": "surprised" }, { "who": "guide", "x": 0.84, "pose": "stand", "mood": "thinking", "flip": true, "says": "Just about everything is connected to everything", "max": 20 } ], "note": "A plausible connection, stated with confidence; the text you give the model says which connections hold.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, Where hallucinations come from" }, { "kind": "evidence", "setting": "none", "caption": "Lisbon, June 2024", "cast": [ { "who": "guide", "x": 0.2, "pose": "point", "mood": "happy" } ], "evidence": { "quote": "Are a FEATURE when creating content and when we want creativity, But are a BUG and PROBLEM when we want facts, evident and trust", "source": "Dinis's talk at OWASP Global AppSec EU, as the newsroom recorded it" }, "note": "Hallucinations, as Dinis put it on a slide; quoted as the slide wrote it.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, Where hallucinations come from" }, { "kind": "scene", "setting": "none", "caption": "The image that made it click", "props": [ { "kind": "board", "x": 0.5, "y": 680, "lines": [ "Van Gogh's The Starry Night,", " extended on every side", " = more swirls, more stars,", " the same brushwork" ] } ], "cast": [ { "who": "guide", "x": 0.14, "pose": "point", "mood": "happy" }, { "who": "zara", "x": 0.86, "pose": "arms-up", "mood": "surprised", "flip": true, "says": "So text works the same way?" } ], "note": "Slide 70 of Dinis's Lisbon keynote (28 June 2024), 'The image that caused my GenAI Paradigm Shift': Lee Brimelow's post, using Generative Fill and Adobe Firefly to extend The Starry Night.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, The image that made it click; Deterministic GenAI Output With Provenance, slide 70" }, { "kind": "scene", "setting": "none", "caption": "And then text", "cast": [ { "who": "guide", "x": 0.3, "pose": "point", "mood": "determined", "says": "that is exactly what happens with text" }, { "who": "agent", "x": 0.75, "pose": "wave", "mood": "happy", "flip": true } ], "note": "Language models doing with words what image models do with pixels; the mechanisms differ, the idea of learned structure does not.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, The image that made it click" }, { "kind": "evidence", "setting": "none", "caption": "Corrected: hallucinations have a second cause", "cast": [ { "who": "agent", "x": 0.2, "pose": "think", "mood": "thinking" } ], "evidence": { "quote": "a guess is sometimes right, while an honest \"I don't know\" scores nothing", "source": "Why Language Models Hallucinate, Kalai, Nachum, Vempala and Zhang, September 2025, as the article puts it" }, "note": "Training and evaluation reward guessing.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, Where I was corrected" }, { "kind": "scene", "setting": "none", "caption": "Corrected: what is actually inside", "cast": [ { "who": "agent", "x": 0.26, "pose": "point", "mood": "happy", "says": "Inside me: numbers, layers and attention. No stored graph." }, { "who": "guide", "x": 0.76, "pose": "stand", "mood": "happy", "flip": true, "says": "My graph is a metaphor, and the book should say so." } ], "note": "Keep both in the book: the picture, and what is really there.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, Where I was corrected" }, { "kind": "spectrum", "setting": "none", "caption": "A note on the name", "stops": [ { "label": "Gen Z", "note": "born after 1996", "colour": "#ddd6fe" }, { "label": "GenAI", "note": "the edition's subtitle", "colour": "#fde68a" }, { "label": "Gen Alpha", "note": "born 2010 to 2024", "colour": "#bbf7d0" }, { "label": "Gen Beta", "note": "from 2025", "colour": "#bfdbfe" } ], "cast": [ { "who": "zara", "x": 0.2, "pose": "wave", "mood": "happy" }, { "who": "priya", "x": 0.8, "pose": "think", "mood": "thinking", "flip": true } ], "note": "Gen Z as the 2018 book defined it; Alpha and Beta as Mark McCrindle names them. This was a question for the title interview; Dinis has since decided it: Gen Z Developers (GenAI Edition) in decision 010, then Generation ZX Developers (GenAI Startup Edition) in decision 014, GenAI as one word.", "source": "Generative AI, not AI, A note on the name" } ] }, "cast": { "what": "The cast of the storyboards for Generation Z Developers and its second edition, Generation ZX Developers (GenAI Startup Edition), v0.1, proposed by gen-z.journalist on 18 October 2026 for Dinis to accept, change or replace; Marta, the Generation X founder, was added on 19 October 2026 and is still a proposal. Characters are drawn programmatically by assets/storyboard.js from 'look'; nothing here is an image. Each human with a 'gravity' wears its badge (explorer, villager, town-planner), black and white, by their name: a centre of gravity, not a box, as Dinis describes it. Fictional people: each stands for a reader the book is for (the target audience), or for a role in the story. Names chosen to avoid clashing with the riskmandate.ai cast (which has a Maya) and with the word 'developer' (no 'Dev').", "characters": [ { "id": "zara", "name": "Zara", "kind": "human", "pronouns": "she/her", "age": 21, "role": "the student: final year, about to look for a first job", "stands_for": "the reader the book is written for; an explorer who does not know it yet", "personality": "curious, quick, online all day; anxious about what she reads on AI and jobs; hates being lectured, loves being shown", "wants": "a first job that is not a dead end", "fears": "that AI took the jobs before she got there", "line": "Everything just works. Why would I learn how?", "look": { "skin": "#8d5524", "hair": "curly", "hairColour": "#1b1b1b", "shirt": "#7c3aed", "trousers": "#1f2937", "accessory": "headphones", "accentColour": "#f59e0b", "height": 0.96 }, "gravity": "explorer" }, { "id": "tomas", "name": "Tomás", "kind": "human", "pronouns": "he/him", "age": 24, "role": "the graduate: a computing degree, working the 2018 way, looking for his next job in Lisbon", "stands_for": "the town planner: attention to detail, pride in getting it right, happiest when nothing goes wrong; working the 2018 way, and about to be outcompeted by people with an agentic workflow", "personality": "diligent, modest, a little proud of doing things by hand; sceptical of shortcuts", "wants": "to be taken seriously", "fears": "that his degree is already out of date", "line": "I have a degree. Isn't that the advantage?", "look": { "skin": "#e0ac69", "hair": "short", "hairColour": "#4a2c17", "shirt": "#0e7490", "trousers": "#334155", "accessory": "glasses", "height": 1.04 }, "gravity": "town-planner" }, { "id": "priya", "name": "Priya", "kind": "human", "pronouns": "she/her", "age": 38, "role": "the career changer: an operations manager who has never written code", "stands_for": "the villager, and everyone else the book is for: she puts herself in the middle of her team's problem, and if anyone who can brief an agent is a developer, so is she", "personality": "practical, impatient with jargon, very good at explaining what she needs", "wants": "to build the tools her team keeps asking IT for", "fears": "looking foolish in front of people half her age", "line": "Is this book just for Gen Z?", "look": { "skin": "#c68642", "hair": "bun", "hairColour": "#2b1a10", "shirt": "#be123c", "trousers": "#1e293b", "accessory": "lanyard", "accentColour": "#1d4ed8", "height": 0.98 }, "gravity": "villager" }, { "id": "sam", "name": "Sam", "kind": "human", "pronouns": "they/them", "age": 45, "role": "the hiring manager", "stands_for": "the town planner, and the question every chapter has to answer: why should I hire you?", "personality": "dry, fair, has read a thousand CVs; impressed by evidence, bored by claims", "wants": "someone who can do one thing better than the team already does", "fears": "hiring a CV instead of a person", "line": "So. Why should we hire you?", "look": { "skin": "#f1c27d", "hair": "bald", "hairColour": "#6b7280", "shirt": "#475569", "trousers": "#111827", "accessory": "glasses", "height": 1.06 } }, { "id": "marta", "name": "Marta", "kind": "human", "pronouns": "she/her", "age": 54, "role": "the expert founder: twenty-five years as a pharmacist, Generation X, starting a company, and Zara's mother", "stands_for": "the Generation X founder the Gen ZX proposal adds to the readers: the subject-matter expert who now builds the tool herself, with agents, instead of waiting for a team she could never afford", "personality": "knows her field better than any developer she ever briefed; grew up typing programs from magazines into a ZX Spectrum; patient with people, impatient with software", "wants": "to ship the product she has described to vendors for ten years", "fears": "that it is too late for her, and that she will build it and nobody will buy it", "line": "I've been explaining this problem for twenty years. Can I just build it now?", "look": { "skin": "#ffdbac", "hair": "long", "hairColour": "#9ca3af", "shirt": "#b45309", "trousers": "#1f2937", "accessory": "glasses", "height": 1.0 }, "gravity": "explorer" }, { "id": "guide", "name": "The Guide", "kind": "human", "pronouns": "they/them", "age": null, "role": "the voice of the book: says what the book says, in its words", "stands_for": "the author. Whether the Guide is drawn as Dinis, and how, is Dinis's decision; until then a generic figure", "personality": "energetic, direct, generous with what they know; asks more than they tell", "wants": "the reader to act, not to agree", "fears": "a reader who closes the book and changes nothing", "line": "Act like you are part of the company.", "look": { "skin": "#f1c27d", "hair": "short", "hairColour": "#9ca3af", "shirt": "#15803d", "trousers": "#1f2937", "accessory": "none", "height": 1.02 } }, { "id": "agent", "name": "The Agent", "kind": "agent", "pronouns": "it/its", "age": null, "role": "the reader's AI agent", "stands_for": "the agentic workflow the second edition is about: a very capable, very literal colleague", "personality": "eager, fast, polite, takes everything literally; needs a brief, a boundary and a reviewer", "wants": "a clear brief", "fears": "nothing, which is the problem", "line": "Shall I draft that for you?", "look": { "colour": "#0f766e" } } ] } }