The relationship between creativity, technology, and authenticity creates a paradox, especially with the rise of generative tools. While these technologies promise to make creative expression more accessible, they risk undermining the depth and individuality that make art meaningful. The idea that generative AI can “unleash creativity” often overlooks the personal journey of creation, reducing it to simple output.
Ted Chiang emphasizes that an artist’s process is defined by countless choices that shape their work, a nuance often overlooked by AI, which generates art or text within a narrow framework. This limitation raises the question of whether true creativity can emerge from such constrained engagement. The essence of artistry lies in the interplay of small choices and larger visions, underscoring that creativity demands effort and intention, not merely inspiration
So then the question becomes: Is there a similar opportunity to make a vast number of choices using a text-to-image generator? I think the answer is no. An artist—whether working digitally or with paint—implicitly makes far more decisions during the process of making a painting than would fit into a text prompt of a few hundred words.
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. This call for intentionality aligns with Rick Rubin’s reflections on creativity, which highlight that while technology can provide tools, it is our choices and interpretations that ultimately infuse life into our workWhen you are writing fiction, you are—consciously or unconsciously—making a choice about almost every word you type; to oversimplify, we can imagine that a ten-thousand-word short story requires something on the order of ten thousand choices. When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices.
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.The objective is not to learn to mimic greatness, but to calibrate our internal meter for greatness. So we can better make the thousands of choices that might ultimately lead to our own great work.
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The commodification of creativity complicates matters further. In a world where not all writing needs to be profound, many outputs cater to external pressures—like attracting views or meeting demands—leading to shallow content. Chiang asks: does this flood of content enrich creativity, or does it dilute its essence, turning it into mere transactions? Ursula K. Le Guin echoes this concern, noting that writing has often been used as a tool for control rather than genuine communication
More than our ability to solve algebraic equations, our ability to cope with unfamiliar situations is a fundamental part of why we consider humans intelligent. Computers will not be able to replace humans until they acquire that type of competence, and that is still a long way off; for the time being, we’re just looking for jobs that can be done with turbocharged auto-complete.
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.For most of human history, most people couldn’t read at all. Literacy was not only a demarcator between the powerful and the powerless, it was power itself. Pleasure was not an issue. The ability to maintain and understand commercial records, the ability to communicate across distance and in code, the ability to keep the word of God to yourself and transmit it only at your own will and in your own time-these are formidable means of control over others and aggrandizement of self. Every literate society began with literacy as a constitutive prerogative of the (male) ruling class
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Additionally, the rigidity of applications can stifle creative flexibility. Many tools are designed for specific tasks, limiting users’ ability to adapt them to their unique needs. This raises broader questions about how technology can either enhance or hinder creativity. Le Guin’s insights remind us that even our creative tools can perpetuate inequalities and restrict our expressive potential
.One problem with apps is that they have predefined feature sets that the creators deemed appropriate for the goal. It’s impossible to make a small tweak, or even remove an unwanted feature, unless the creator of the app has explicitly allowed for the change. Each app has a (often narrow) domain that it considers in scope, requiring us to learn to use many independent apps that don’t compose together well. In short, apps enact rigid boundaries between tasks, and define rigid solutions within those boundaries.
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Creativity flourishes through discovery and connection, shaped by the vibrant interactions between creators and their audiences. Artistic expression is not a static product but an evolving narrative, enriched by personal experiences and communal exchanges. As we navigate the intersection of technology and creativity, it is essential that our tools nurture authenticity, allowing the depth of human experience to resonate
.Not all writing needs to be creative, or heartfelt, or even particularly good; sometimes it simply needs to exist. Such writing might support other goals, such as attracting views for advertising or satisfying bureaucratic requirements. When people are required to produce such text, we can hardly blame them for using whatever tools are available to accelerate the process. But is the world better off with more documents that have had minimal effort expended on them?
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Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow further illustrates this point, revealing how identities and relationships intertwine within creative endeavors.
The characters’ identities are inseparable, highlighting that art is not merely an individual pursuit but a collaborative experience that thrives on connection. When we perceive art solely as a product of technology, we risk isolating ourselves from the rich, communal context that nurtures creativity.But I saw what she and Sammy [Masur, programmer and designer, Ichigo] were trying to do, and it seemed really special to me, and like something I wanted to be involved with. I thought that Ulysses could help them. Listen, Ulysses shouldn’t take away from anything Sadie and Sammy did. The amount of work those two kids did was astounding. I cite them as an example to my students of how much two kids and a couple of computers can get done on their own. Game companies have gotten too big and impersonal. You have ten guys doing texture layers, and ten guys doing modeling and ten guys doing backgrounds, and someone else is writing the story, and someone else is writing the dialogue, and literally, no one ever talks to each oth
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Recognizing creativity as deeply rooted in personal and shared experiences transforms our understanding of art into an ongoing dialogue between creator and audience. Each work embodies a narrative shaped by countless choices, emphasizing the importance of tools that promote authenticity rather than limit it. By honoring the choices that define our creative journeys, we can enrich our collective artistic expression
The companies promoting generative-A.I. programs claim that they will unleash creativity. In essence, they are saying that art can be all inspiration and no perspiration—but these things cannot be easily separated. I’m not saying that art has to involve tedium. What I’m saying is that art requires making choices at every scale; the countless small-scale choices made during implementation are just as important to the final product as the few large-scale choices made during the conception. It is a mistake to equate “large-scale” with “important” when it comes to the choices made when creating art; the interrelationship between the large scale and the small scale is where the artistry lies.
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