“The work of art is valuable only in so far as it is vibrated by the reflexes of the future.” – André Breton
As I’ve been exploring the AI world and using it for my own creative facilitation, I have occasionally written about its ability to help me get past the blank page phenomenon. Every creative writer, painter, and photographer struggles with this phenomenon. In my case, this can last for days or even weeks. I never know when my creative energy will emerge.
One of the frequent criticisms I hear about AI from creatives is that if you use AI to mitigate this pain, you will lessen the product of that inspiration. Has this happened to me? I don’t know. As someone who is usually insecure about his work, I’m never sure whether my output has gotten better, gotten worse, or become in some way not me.
I washed the last blog I published through ChatGPT much earlier than I otherwise would have because I had two related half-blogs, neither of which worked alone. After two or three cycles in the chatbot, I went back to editing with a much clearer vision of what I was trying to say.
At the end of that process, however, it was very difficult for me to figure out how much of that work was mine and how much of that was a product of ChatGPT. It conveyed the message I wanted to transmit.
Often when I see people (especially my students) use AI chatbots, they are using it to replace their lack of inspiration. This creates inauthentic outputs that are easily discernible from quality human work. Human inspiration is central to the human voice. AI can tune that voice, not replicate it.
I like to tell people that if they are seeking answers from AI, it will disappoint them. Instead, we should seek questions. Completing your work is to offer an answer. Suggesting courses of action should stimulate questions.
The Knowledge Navigator I am working on is at its root a platform to help surface questions. I see it as an intuition accelerator. In this way, it can inspire our writing and creating. It does so by generating the seeds of inspiration by pulling together disparate ideas and assembling them into maps that the writer or creative can then navigate to figure out what to say.
Creating has always been a product of synthesis aided and abetted by technology. We went from copying phrases of music to sampling them in the 1980s. However, you can tell which songs are the product of creative genius by what the synthesizer does with the phrases and ideas in their new creation.
Instead of Beethoven, listening to Mozart and then putting phrases of his into his own work, the artists of the 20th century could literally take the performed music itself and assemble it into whole new works of art.
This extended beyond music. Visual artists like Andy Warhol took photography and embellished it into novel art forms. Collage art is another example of synthesis in the visual sphere.
However, I’m not trying to appropriate anybody else’s work more than any other kind of creative writer or photographer. I am trying to use AI to make my own writing better and more accessible.
It’s always been a struggle for me to reduce the complexity of my thoughts to two-dimensional sentences. Even worse is trying to make those sentences convey the richness of my thought without losing the reader.
I am dictating this blog into my phone right now as I walk down the street, so in its initial draft, it’s a very unfiltered version of my thoughts. It takes a lot of hammering to get those thoughts into a format that I find understandable to others.
Is it cheating to let AI help me with that? The thoughts that are coming out of my head are genuine and a product of my creative brain at work. I use the technology of my phone to take dictation as I walk. Is that an inappropriate use of technology? How far does this go?
The more I use various AI tools, the more I realize just how much AI will change how we think and communicate our thinking. It will change how we research and assemble ideas. It will also change how we polish our ideas for others.
AI allows us to tone them for various audiences. For instance, it should allow us to translate scholarly writing into something understandable for a general audience. Applied creatively, these tools magnify our ability to exchange ideas.
But what is most important to this process, the ideas or the struggle to communicate them? Is suffering required to produce art?
Would you be able to tell the difference between something that’s never been touched by AI and something that has? Which one is better?
One thing, however, that we should hold onto as our own as a species if not individual is that genesis moment of creation. Whatever methods we use to create the spark that ignites the art, whether written or visual; it must be a human spark. That is where authenticity lies.
AI will redefine art, just like reproduction and broadcast did. It will broaden the reaches of art to most forms of human generated content.
Humans generate a lot of low-level content, such as graphics for advertising or filler writing for marketing brochures. Sometimes this reaches the level of art, but, most of the time, people paid to mass produce content generate it.
Like many creatives, I’ve done both artistic and commercial work as a photographer and as a writer. Most creators recognize the difference between the work that they do for themselves and the work that they did for a paycheck.
AI will take over a lot of that commercial space. It’s already happening.
This should prompt a deeper conversation about how we support creative work and value it in our society. Capitalism and art have always had an uneasy relationship. AI will throw that into even starker relief.
We need to build systems to incentivize humans to push themselves into new areas of thinking and creation. Right now, our educational systems dis-incentivize that kind of activity. So do most of our work environments.
The more we teach people that creativity is not worth the creative pain, the more vulnerable we make ourselves to being replaced by AI. Creativity requires a frame of mind motivated by intrinsic forces, not the promise of extrinsic rewards.
AI may simplify the process of creation, but the act of creation will always be artisanal. I’m able to do photography these days, because I have access to digital tools. I am a better writer because of word processing. AI tools are another evolution of my toolbox, not a replacement for me, any more than PhotoShop or a grammar checker are.
If we can use AI to build bridges and help us communicate our passions better, it will lead to greater innovation and understanding among all of us. That can’t be a bad thing.