AI vs Human Creativity

Is AI good or bad for human creativity? I am interested in storytelling, an inherently creative process. With technologies like ChatGPT and VEO-3 being “Generative AI”, are they helpful for human creativity or a hinderance? I believe helpful, but I also think people confuse this with the question of whether AI better at it than humans?

First, I think it useful to understand (at a high level) how AI learns to do things. You feed it lots of examples, and it identifies patterns it can reapply. Generative AI injects a bit a randomness into the mix to create variety in responses, but the results are still based on what it was trained on.

The name “artificial intelligence” came from the idea that this approach is mirrored on how humans learn. We experience the world around us and learn from it. I am not going to get into spirituality in this article, just that AI got its name from this same approach of learning.

(This means however AI models are not all the same. They have been trained on different data and have been adjusted to work better over time. In the image generation space, diffusion models start from random noise and “tweak” the image towards a final image over a series of iterations. The Wan models introduced a different approach by using different models for different stages of the processing. So the way in which the AI building blocks are assembled also affects what they can do.)

Personally, I am interested in AI to assist humans in their creativity, not replace it. I say this as a conscious choice. It has nothing to do with whether AI is better or worse, it is all that I am interested in.

Is AI better at tasks than humans? I think that is the wrong question. Maybe if I used AI to write this post it would get more likes and followers. I really don’t care. I write it because I want to share my experiences, with the hope that it is helpful to others. I believe an AI model can be trained to mimic responding in such a way that is sounds like it has hopes and desires. But I am a Christian - I think there is more to us than this physical body. And that is not true of AI. And as as a Christian made in the image of God, I think being creative is a part of us. It’s who we are. We can train AI to mimic us, but that does not change that I think humans are inherently creative.

My goal in creating (including these articles) is not because I am trying to be more popular or get more followers than others. There are great strategies around that look at how the social platform algorithms work and gear content to do better at those games. I am interested in creating because I want to create. Period.

I think that changes the discussion about how is AI useful for creators. I am happy to use AI to help me learn and create more useful content. I am happy to use AI to help me in areas I have no interest in learning how to create. I am happy to use AI to critique what I do and spark new ideas in my thinking. I think that choice is up to individuals. Think about what you are trying to achieve, then use AI to help you where you are weak.

(This is unrelated to the challenging topics of copyright and AI.)

Let’s get concrete.

• I cannot draw. If I fluke one drawing of a character, it does not mean I can do a second drawing and have it look like the first. And its not a skill I want to learn. So AI generation to create images of characters from descriptions interests me. It does not have to interest others, and that is fine.

• I like constructing stories. I like thinking about the journey of growth of individuals when you put them in different circumstances. I am happy to use AI to review my ideas, but I am not interested in it creating ideas for me, in this area. It can, but I want to control that area.

• I don’t enjoy being organized. Just ask my wife! So I am MORE than happy to keep things organized for me. Let me focus on where I want to be creative, but help me ultimately succeed.

But if you twisted my arm on the irrelevant question of whether AI is better than humans at certain creative tasks, I would say:

1. AI can be better at some tasks than an individual, depending on the skills of the individual.

2. AI could eventually become better than everyone at a task.

3. But there is a question of measurement. How do you judge “better” in a subjective field? There is no “proof” like in math where 1 + 1 always equals 2.

To expand, an artist creating a picture is sharing something of themselves, their lives, their view of the world. It is not a purely a question of technical skill to be measured. The question of “is AI better at that” makes no sense to me.

Here is another perspective. In writing stories, there are lots of frameworks out there. Three act structures (start with status quo, have an inciting incident that changes the status quo, build to a climax, have a final resolution), “Save the Cat” is popular with Hollywood filmmakers, and more. I think they are great frameworks to help writers learn and evaluate, but I also think its fine to break the rules. AI can be a great help, like these frameworks. But there are there to help, not to stifle creativity.

So fundamentally, I just don’t care about the question. I want to create because I want to create, and I am happy to use AI to help me in areas where I have less interest and could do with some help.