We are well into the age of AI. It’s unstoppable and it is causing a palpable sense of anxiety for creatives, including designers, artists, musicians and writers. Until recently, activities like painting, making sculpture, writing poetry or even proving math theorems were regarded as uniquely human endeavors. With AI seemingly able to make art and prove theorems, this no longer seems to be the case, which is the reason for our existential worries.
Is this fear justified? Will AI kill human creativity in the arts and sciences? In this post, I would like to share my thoughts on this subject. But first, it’s important to put AI into perspective. AI is an innovation in a long history of innovations. Our relationship with innovations has always been fraught with mixed feelings. We innovate to push technologies forward to make life easier, yet we fear those very same innovations for making us irrelevant.
Examples abound. In the 4th century BCE, Socrates objected to writing on the grounds that it would ruin our memory. During the Victorian period, widespread adoption of the steam engine led to fears that mechanical power would permanently replace human and animal muscle across factories and transportation. Closer to the present time, the emergence of robotics in manufacturing and some sectors of the service industry sparked anxieties about blue-collar mass unemployment. Suffice it to say that none of those fears have materialized in unequivocal ways. Consider robotics in manufacturing. A study by prominent MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo shows that deploying industrial robots in manufacturing did cause clear local “harm” via significant job losses and wage drops. But the global picture is more nuanced. Their calculations show that adopting robots lowers consumer prices and boosts firm productivity, creating a complex mix of localized harm and distributed economic benefits. “When you look at use of robots at the firm level, it is really interesting because there is an additional dimension,” says Acemoglu. “We know firms are adopting robots in order to reduce their costs, so it is quite plausible that firms adopting robots early are going to expand at the expense of their competitors whose costs are not going down. And that’s exactly what we find.” His study finds that firms that move quickly to use robots tend to add workers to their payroll, while industry job losses are more concentrated in firms that make this change more slowly.
Let me now zoom in to my main topic (impact of AI on creativity). For brevity, I’ll focus on the impact of three innovations of the last fifty years, that of computer-aided design (CAD), 3D printing and music synthesizing. Did CAD kill drawing? With the benefit of hindsight, the answer is no. Instead CAD became a precision design tool existing alongside old-fashion freehand drawing. Freehand drawing on paper remains vital for early-stage creative explorations. Making rough sketches helps humans to doodle or think through loose ideas before turning them over to CAD for precise 3D modelling. Not only is freehand drawing fun, but there’s also scientific evidence that there’s a lot happening in our minds and bodies when we design. The same goes for any form of art, from painting to sculpture to pottery making. “Anything that engages your creative mind – the ability to make connections between unrelated things and imagine new ways to communicate – is good for you,” says Girija Kaimal, a professor at Drexel University and a researcher in art therapy. He continues: “Engaging in any sort of visual expression results in the reward pathway in the brain being activated, which means that you feel good and it’s perceived as a pleasurable experience [1] … Art’s ability to flex our imaginations may be one of the reasons why we’ve been making art since we were cave-dwellers.”
Did 3D printing kill sculpture? Again, no. Instead it became a tool to supplement traditional methods like pottery making, stone carving or bronze casting. What 3D printing has done is enable artists and designers to build models before turning them into final pieces. It has not and cannot replace the human hand in art making where textures formed by the finger and various types of imperfections such as uneven surfaces are not merely tolerated but celebrated.
Did music synthesizers kill music? No. Rather, it has become a versatile tool for innovative musicians, from Stevie Wonder and ABBA in the 1970s to the likes of Vangelis and Hans Zimmer. Will AI kill music? Much like synthesizers and digital recording before it, AI will change music, but it won’t destroy it. Making music is part of what humans are and there is always room for great music no matter where it comes from. For sure, AI will lower the barrier to entry for some musicians to enter the field, but the human need for authenticity will always be there. What that means is that AI cannot replace human insights and life experiences nor cultural meanings that give authentic impulses to music making. Not only that, AI can be a collaborative tool for musicians to expand musical possibilities. Federico Reuben, a musician and academic with an enviable CV chimes in:
“I see a comparison with sampling (the reuse of a portion of an existing sound recording in a new track), which in the early days was seen as a threat both to musicianship and to copyright. It took time for musicians to realize that sampling is a new instrument and to see the possibilities it presented … So, I hope something like that will happen with AI. That people will start to see it as a co-creating relationship, where musicians and AI are jamming and making music together, creating new sensations, emotions and knowledge. That’s when people will starting getting less fearful and more excited about it.” [3]
The bottom line: While AI tools may streamline routine tasks and nullify “low hanging fruits” of creativity, they cannot replicate the depths of human creativity encompassing lived emotions, judgement, contextualization, making connections between unrelated areas, engaging in thoughtful critiques etc. As Dr. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor, author and co-founder of deepersignals.com puts it, “the critical question is not whether or how we can remain more creative than AI, but rather, how we can become more creative with it.” [4].
Bloom: A video by Hanna-Leana Kuus
References
[1] Kenji Katahira et al. (2018), “EEG Correlates of the Flow State: A Combination of Increased Frontal Theta and Moderate Frontocentral Alpha Rhythm in the Mental Arithmetic Task,” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 9.
[2] Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo (2020), “Robots and Jobs: Evidence from U.S. Labor Markets,” Journal of Political Economy, vol 128:6.
[3] “Is AI Killing Music?” University of York feature article, https://features.york.ac.uk/big-questions/is-ai-killing-music/
[4] Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is the co-founder of deepersignals.com and a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia University. He is the author of I Human: AI, Automation, and the Quest to Reclaim What Makes Us Unique, Harvard Business Review Press, 2023.