Steve Jobs famously said: “Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.”

‍Let’s not forget the rationale behind that statement: In the early days of Apple, Wozniak was the technical one. Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs makes it clear that at first, non-technical Jobs’ place in Apple was anything but secure.

‍Without a genius partner like Woz, Jobs surely wouldn’t have become one of the world’s most influential people.‍

But as time went on (and perhaps in self-justifying defense of himself), Jobs started to see and value exactly what *he* brought to the table.

‍Sure, he couldn’t solder microchips and code assembly, but it became clear that introverted Woz wouldn’t have been able to build Apple by himself, either.‍

Now? “Vibe coding” is the rapidly-expanding practice of using AI to code, instead of writing code manually.‍Many dyed-in-the-wool programmers understandably look down on this practice.‍

But love it or hate it, we’re entering a world in which all of us will have countless minions (basically for free) to do our bidding.‍This means that all of us will increasingly be the players of the orchestra, and the musicians will increasingly be AI.

‍We’ll all be a lot more like Jobs, and we’ll all be a lot more like entrepreneurs have always been: in charge of finding novel ways to get musicians to play in harmony.‍

Some people in this world are musicians, and some people play the orchestra.‍

To thrive with the rise of AI, every musician needs to learn how to play an orchestra of their own.