#10 AI is not the end for creators - it's the beginning

An attempt at defining AI's complicated dynamic with human creativity

Chat GPT seems to have taken the internet by storm, and rightfully so. It has made the world of content creation boundless. What previously took hours to create, now takes a couple of seconds, which is of course, amazing. However, ever since ChatGPT became popular and content became cheap, I’ve wondered - uncomfortably - if the advent of AI means that art and creativity will be permanently transformed into something cheaper, and soulless. What is left of the soul of a creation if the effort is taken out of creating it?

While I ask this question, I do acknowledge that the use of AI in creativity is inevitable. The question then becomes this: how much is too much?

It’s difficult to draw clear lines around the parts of our creative process we might want to allow to be touched by AI - but I’m going to try. This (almost out-of-character) piece for Not Super Smart is essentially an attempt at defining AI’s complicated dynamic with human creativity.

The bot-ness of AI is loud, and that is our advantage

It’s a no-brainer to ask ChatGPT to - almost independently - create listicle-type blog posts which traditionally took us countless human hours without really offering anything of value. The value to man-hours ratio was disproportionate. It’s only productive to allow AI to take over. Since it’s the kind of content we have been creating to please an algorithm, and AI is essentially one algorithm that’s brilliant at pleasing another, it’s in our interest to step down and play spectator. What’s our job then?

The difficult things. What is harder than listicle-type regurgitation of information, is writing about the deeper, more pivotal questions about art, creativity, and human behaviour.

Let’s chat with GPT (hilarious, I know):

Question: What is the purpose of reading and writing?

Now, let’s see what Anne Lamott has to say about this:

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”

― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

You see my point? The bot-ness of ChatGPT is loud, and that is our advantage. The bots are great at satisfying each other. AI used for SEO writing is arguably the recipe for SEO success. Besides, which writer, in the history of SEO writing, has ever said, “Hey, I think that latest piece I wrote for Google’s algorithm is some of my best creative work.” The great news is that we get to leave the algorithm stuff to AI, so we can work on exploring, exercising, and amplifying our creativity. Hopefully then one day we’ll be able to write as beautifully as Anne Lamott. 

Human creativity vs. AI’s (failed) attempt

Humans have always communicated by telling stories. Unique human perspectives that emerge from a single brain are invariably more compelling than a hive-mind, no matter how powerful. This is because a hive-mind cannot - does not - understand nuance. The need for a nuanced human perspectives on the world is therefore even more pertinent now than it was before.  

Art came about because we couldn’t help but share. Somewhere a person saw a sky full of stars and thought it was imperative that he share its beauty with his brother. Maybe art was born out of our need to share, but one of the reasons why creative expression became addictive is because it acts as a channel for us to relive beautiful moments by revisiting them. Is all art reminiscent? Or is the act of creating it meant to extend the moment? Art stretches the beauty of the moment in a mysterious way. The minute is still sixty seconds. But it's also not. It's 60 expansive seconds spent trying to recreate the beauty of a thing we can't describe, but desperately want to. And so we find ways.

Coming back to AI and the potential of it replacing human creativity: it simply can’t. Human art and literature hold character, a personality, because of the story that surrounds it. A work of art - as an observer - is infinitely more vivid when a story is attached to its creation.

The first image is Van Gogh’s The Potato Farmers, 1885. The second, is an AI generated oil painting with the description of The Potato Farmers (via Van Gogh Museum’s official site). There’s already a difference, but hey, creativity is subjective so I still cannot definitively call the former better than the latter.

Now, let me add the story behind Van Gogh’s piece:

Van Gogh saw the Potato Eaters as a showpiece, for which he deliberately chose a difficult composition to prove he was on his way to becoming a good figure painter. The painting had to depict the harsh reality of country life, so he gave the peasants coarse faces and bony, working hands. He wanted to show in this way that they ‘have tilled the earth themselves with these hands they are putting in the dish ... that they have thus honestly earned their food’.

He painted the five figures in earth colours – ‘something like the colour of a really dusty potato, unpeeled of course’. The message of the painting was more important to Van Gogh than correct anatomy or technical perfection. He was very pleased with the result: yet his painting drew considerable criticism because its colours were so dark and the figures full of mistakes. Nowadays, the Potato Eaters is one of Van Gogh’s most famous works. 

Is Van Gogh’s painting now more meaningful to you as an observer?

Creativity is testament to the human condition. AI doesn't hold a match to the volcano that is the human experience and its need to express. AI is excellent at computational problems. It is brilliant at becoming a competent hive-mind. It can use human input to create exceptional pieces of literature and art. But human art is just that: human. AI doesn’t create art out of a burning desire to externalise a state of mind or to prove something about its creative ability to the world. It doesn’t take risks with shades and anatomy and technical imperfection. It creates what we want it to create, and unfortunately, the output is simply dull and unengaging in comparison. 

How much personality and nuance can we expect from a hive-mind after all?

Creativity literally enhances brain function

Let’s say that despite AI’s flaws, we as a society choose to let AI take over creativity. Let’s say the most popular artworks in 2033 will be AI-generated. What does it mean for our brains?

Not only does AI rob the creator of the joys of the creative process, it steals from us the direct benefits of creativity, because - and I’m thrilled about this information - creativity literally enhances brain function.

You may have heard that creativity uses your right brain while your left brain is triggered during more analytical tasks. Well, neuroscientists have found that creativity actually draws on your entire brain.

Source: Harvard Business Review

Is brain plasticity truly possible? If so, to what extent? How can creative thinking both induce and be caused by brain plasticity?

Anna Abraham, Neuroscientist at Cambridge, and Author of The Neuroscience of Creativity: Brain plasticity is a fact. Our brains change throughout our lifespan and this is readily evidenced by the everyday observation that we never stop learning. The extent of brain plasticity is harder to define and hasn’t been systematically examined. Creative thinking [and writing] involves the discovery of novel connections and is therefore tied intimately to learning. Arthur Koestler pointed this out rather beautifully several decades ago: “Creative activity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”

When creativity draws on, and enhances our entire brain, and we choose instead to let AI do all the difficult thinking & creating for us, who really wins?

Effort is satisfying. Our brains are not built for ease and convenience. When we’re met with too much convenience, we either try to find more challenging problems for our brains to solve (the upside), or we give in to the lack of stimulation (and I don’t need to point out the direct, alarming effects of an under-stimulated, dull society).

Wait, so does this mean I shouldn’t use AI as part of my creative process and do all the work myself instead? It doesn’t. That’s where drawing lines comes in.

AI should enhance our creativity - not replace it

Technology is meant to revolutionise the way we work. It is meant to make our lives easier and faster. It should complement our thinking, feeling brains instead of replacing them.

Here’s how I’ve been using AI to help workshop my writing:

• Using AI to communicate with other writers: after I finish a draft, I like to submit it into ChatGPT and ask it to rewrite it in my favourite writer’s style. It’s an eye-opening process to watch your own ideas and unique perspectives written in an infinitely better, more nuanced way. I study this work, see how it differs from mine, and take notes on how I could improve my style and structure. Note: just because the work is better, doesn’t mean I agree with every aspect of the way it is rewritten. I take the parts that inspire me to improve, and leave the rest.

  The prompt I use: Rewrite the piece below in [insert writer]’s unique style. Also add any references they might use.

• Using AI to get hive-mind opinions: I ask the questions I’m wondering about after I’m done forming my own arguments on the topic.

  

  This helps me incorporate any perspectives I may have missed out on without altering my initial thinking process and intent.

• Using AI to find direction: When I’m forming an argument and need another voice to bounce off ideas, I submit my draft to ask for all the different ways in which the piece could progress.

  Note: This is way better done with the help of actual, human editors, and I’ve seen the difference between Foster editors’ unique insights compared to generic AI responses. Where AI comes in handy is that its generic responses sometimes manage to remind me of a thought I had when I first started thinking about the piece.

• Using AI to summarise my work and synthesise an idea: So, essentially editorial help. Sometimes, I submit a rough draft into ChatGPT to ask it to summarise what I’m trying to say, and find the central idea I’m trying to communicate. This is easier with AI, because I tend to need this while I’m writing instead of after I’m done with a detailed draft to submit to editors.

What I’m doing is using AI to do the things humans cannot be expected to do for me: be instantly available exactly when I need an opinion on a line or direction, summarise my work for me, and workshop my writing at my convenience.

AI’s job is to allow us to focus our infinitely creative brains to solve better problems.

The better problem to solve

Quoting directly from ChatGPT’s response on the history of the printing press:

The printing press, invented in the mid-15th century, was initially used only to recreate and distribute religious text. But as it became easier and cheaper to produce books, it allowed for the dissemination of new ideas and information, which in turn led to the development of science, literature, and philosophy. As the popularity of the novel grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, the printing press became a key avenue for publishing fiction. Novels were printed in large quantities, making them more widely available and affordable. This led to a democratisation of literature, allowing people from all walks of life to access and enjoy novels.

Just like the printing press played a pivotal role in the development of science, literature, and philosophy, AI can play an important role in creating a better internet by doing two things: first, it takes care of bot-like writing and menial tasks humans find under-stimulating anyway. Second, it enables us to take on the difficult task of expressing our unique perspectives by serving as an aid.

Our better problem to solve now, compared to pre-AI, is that of building a better internet by creating good, honest writing instead of regurgitating the same information that has been doing the rounds for years. It is to use AI to help us become better thinkers and writers (instead of using it to think and write for us).

Defy the bot-ness of AI by using it to tell me about your world, your thoughts, discoveries, and opinions. Tell me what you enjoy learning about. Tell me your personal philosophy of the human condition. Tell me what, whom, and how you love. Tell me what makes you come alive. Tell me about your favourite poems - what thoughts do they spark? How are you making the connection from a line you read in a newsletter in 2023 to what an author, who is now dead, said back in 1811. Tell me.

AI is the end for bot-like writing, and (thankfully) the beginning for humans to reclaim our thinking, feeling, expressing brains instead of putting ourselves in consistency boxes for the sake of algorithms.

Battling bot-ness,

Yashmi

Edit - if you’d like to listen to this piece as a podcast, click here.

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Thank you, John, Benjamin, Nicolas, Sarah, Theresa, Yihui, Edvardo, Michael, and Charlene from the Foster community for the extremely insightful feedback on this piece.