Creative Space with Jennifer Logue

AI and Creativity: Questions We Must Consider

• Jennifer Logue

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What happens when artificial intelligence steps into the realm of creativity? On this episode of Creative Space, I recount my own experience grappling with the presence of AI in the arts. We'll explore three pressing questions society must contemplate regarding AI's impact, including whether AI can genuinely be creative or not and is a work truly art if it was created with AI. I’ll also talk about the concept of AI model collapse and the pivotal role of human innovation in preserving the quality and authenticity of artistic expression.

This episode is an invitation to reflect on your own views on AI and creativity. Don't forget to share your thoughts with me via email at info@jenniferlogue.com. 

For more on me, your host and creative coach, visit: jenniferlogue.com.

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Jennifer Logue:

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Creative Space, a podcast where we explore, learn and grow in creativity together. I'm your host, jennifer Logue, and today we're going to talk about AI and creativity. It's a subject I'm so fascinated by the more I learn about AI, but I wanted to do this episode to address three key questions we should consider as a society as it relates to AI and our precious gift of human creativity. This podcast comes from an essay I wrote on my website of the same name, and if you've read that, you'll know that I'm in the middle when it comes to AI. I think it's an incredible tool, an incredible tool that can do so much good, but I also think we need to address its impact on artists and the creative community. So here it goes. I'd love to know your thoughts as well once you're done listening to the episode. Ai and creativity questions we must consider.

Jennifer Logue:

As a musician, writer and journalist, I find myself in a very unpopular place these days when it comes to talking about AI and creativity the middle Although before I did my own research into it, my initial reaction to AI was similar to most artists I felt stolen from, threatened, violated. Now that statement might seem like a stretch to a non-artist, but imagine for a second that you're a writer. You've been devouring books since you were four years old and writing short stories since you were five. You've spent a lifetime dedicated to your craft, lovingly tending to it as it blossoms from a tiny seed into a forest of words and ideas and heartfelt prose. The very foundation of your life, your very identity on this planet is rooted in your gift and commitment to writing. Now flash forward to November of 2022, and you're having dinner with some tech friends who bring up ChatGPT. You ask what it is and your one friend responds it can write better than most writers. You better find another job Now. He meant it as a joke, but this is your vocation he's talking about it's more than a way to pay the bills. It's who you are. And now, just like that, you feel irrelevant. You feel like your world is crashing down all around you, as if all the years spent finessing your craft was for nothing. Why spent finessing your craft was for nothing? Why? Well, because now, with the right prompt, anyone can write right. That same friend soon begins posting lengthy articles on LinkedIn when you know very well he's never written a day in his life. But with the click of a button, however, he's able to write articles using ChatGPT and pass them off as his own, getting the result that's taken you a lifetime of dedication to your craft to achieve.

Jennifer Logue:

Maybe it is time to figure out another career path, but before we cue the violins signaling the sad demise of writers and creatives everywhere, let's ask ourselves some important questions about AI and creativity, shall we Great? Number one is AI actually creative? Now, creativity is a big subject, so much so that I've dedicated a whole podcast to exploring it from different perspectives. So in business, we often box creativity into problem solving and strategy, but it's so much more than that. For most artists, it's downright spiritual. It's something bigger than ourselves, and so much of it is unexplainable, although we try we try really hard in this world to explain it. Anyway, for me, creativity comes down to choice the choice to say yes or say no to an idea, a direction, a possibility, a brushstroke, and that choice comes from within us, our conscious selves. So, on the subject of AI and creativity and deciding whether or not AI is actually creative, we need to examine if AI is conscious and able to make choices of its own.

Jennifer Logue:

There are many brilliant researchers hard at work figuring out if artificial consciousness is possible, but at the time of me writing this, ai, large language models like Chatship, et they're simply predicting the next best possible word. Some have described it as predictive text on steroids. You know, when you're texting someone or sending an email and you get suggestions on what to write, that's predictive text. Is AI choosing of its own volition? No, it's simply doing what it's been programmed to do. Chatgpt has been trained on the entirety of the Internet, so has a lot of data to pull from. It's also important to note that, since AI is simply predicting the next thing to write, it's not actually coming up with ideas of its own.

Jennifer Logue:

The work is not original. It's simply rehashing what's already been produced by real humans before, although perhaps in a different style or from a different point of view, depending on the prompt you use, and this is really fascinating. This is where it's important to bring up the concept of AI model collapse. Basically, experts are warning that as more and more artificially generated content clogs up the internet and what AI is feeding on, it could eventually produce outputs that begin degrading in quality over time. So human creativity is still needed, unless we become so used to low quality creative output that future generations won't be able to tell the difference. I hope we don't go that route. I really hope we don't get to that point. That would be really sad.

Jennifer Logue:

Another question to examine is are you an artist? If you made it with AI? That depends. Did you play a role in the production of the work, apart from writing the prompt?

Jennifer Logue:

Something that I've learned about creativity over the years is that it's not about the results. The process is the most important part. If you remove yourself from the process completely, I'm sorry. Ai is the artist, not you. Ai is the writer, not you.

Jennifer Logue:

But when it comes to AI and creativity, this gets more complicated if we haven't decided if AI is conscious or not. Art is the result of conscious choices made by the person creating the work. These conscious choices are complex because they're influenced by so many things that go beyond even artistic influences how a person was raised, the city they grew up in, where they live now. Every second of their life has the potential to create an imprint on the creative choices they make. So, calling yourself a writer after using ChatGPT to write a book, calling yourself a visual artist now that you've used DALI to generate a few images. That's not art to me and it doesn't make you an artist. However, on the flip side, let's say you're writing a screenplay without ChatGPT and you want to generate images to show your producer what different scenes look like in your head. Ai can be a great tool in an artist's palette when used as part of the creative process as part of the creative process, but it cannot circumvent the entire creative process itself. Eventually, we'll run out of juice. Remember AI model collapse. We still need human creativity.

Jennifer Logue:

And this last question I want to examine is can AI potentially harm our ability to create? And I'll begin this section with the question how many people listening to this podcast remember phone numbers? When I was growing up, I had all of my best friend's phone numbers memorized. Why? Because, growing up with a rotary phone, I had to. There wasn't much choice. Today, the smartphone stores our contacts for us, so, apart from our own number, there really isn't a need to memorize phone numbers, and if you try to memorize a few, it seems a lot harder than it used to. Am I right? I don't know, maybe it's just me.

Jennifer Logue:

Here's another one. Can you do basic math in your head without a calculator? You'd be surprised at the number of people today who can't, especially if they went to a school that didn't require memorizing things like times tables. Now, these are just a few daily functions that we've handed over to technology to do for us and, as a result, whatever cognitive muscles we were using to do them before inevitably become weaker. You wouldn't have chat GPT go to the gym for you, right? You can't circumvent the process when it comes to six-pack abs or training for that half marathon. It just doesn't work like that. Creativity is also a muscle and, like any muscle, if you don't use it, you lose it.

Jennifer Logue:

With AI and creativity, my fear is that we become so dependent on artificial intelligence to do the heavy lifting creatively that we harm our ability to not only create but to think critically. What kind of world could we be living in if creativity becomes reduced to writing a five-word prompt for a machine, a machine that's been specifically programmed to operate within certain parameters? These are issues we need to start talking about now. Ai is becoming more advanced by the second, and we don't want the creative process to become as irrelevant as doing basic math. This technology has the power to do so much good so much good in the right hands, but we also have to safeguard our precious human ability to think for ourselves and create. That begins with protecting artists and recognizing the sanctity of the creative process.

Jennifer Logue:

Now I want to hear from you what are your thoughts on AI and creativity. You can email me at info at jenniferlogecom. I would love to hear your POV. Anyway, that's all I have for this episode of Creative Space. If you love the podcast so far, please leave a review so more people can discover it. My name is Jennifer Loge. Appreciate you taking the time to tune in. Until next time, thank you.