Creativity Conundrums in the Age of AI
Anusuya Avadhanam (TY Bsc)
Christine Rose Sebastian (TY BSc)
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
You can’t always tell why or when it happens, but sometimes you get a creative urge so strong that it feels like you have been hit by a truck. Surrendering to this call can be a pretty daunting task. You have no idea where it’ll lead you or whether it will amount to anything at all. There’s a lot of fear in that uncertainty. But if you’re creative, you might find yourself giving in to this call. You see, creatives are known for embracing ambiguity, after all. Is it ever enough? How much more is too much? We turn and toss internally every time we start something new. The biggest fears in creative minds are around authenticity and originality. Similarly, innovators fear that their inventions remain unacceptable by the majority of the society. While these two prominent agents in society seem to fear different dooms, they align somewhere with their utopian, optimistic goals about what tomorrow should look like.
Creativity is astonishing in its ways. It emerges from the subconscious, which is where emotion, memory, and instinct converge. Studies in neurosciences, psychology, and behavioral science show that our best ideas often come when the mind is at ease, wandering, or in flow. Studies also show that creativity is deeply human and largely irrational. Therefore, while creativity thrives in ambiguity, it’s a delicate process that’s not completely random. All it does is ask us to trust the unknown.
Creativity and Validation
Why do we ignore our creative instinct, though? Why do we choose to run away from it? Kahneman and Tversky put it simply in prospect theory, which states that we experience loss more intensely than gain. Therefore, when we are faced with a creative compulsion, we don’t give in to it due to the risk of failing that comes with it. We turn to something that feels safer. The more we fall into this pattern, the more we start doing something for validation rather than to quench the inner creative thirst. Adam Smith warned us of the same when he said that external validation can derail inner motivation. When our work becomes about being liked rather than being true, something fundamental is lost. Philosopher Kierkegaard believed that true selfhood can only emerge through anxiety and risk. The same anxiety and risk that come from tapping into our own ideas and creative leads. We must remember that while giving in to our creative impulses is rarely easy, this very leap defines us. The risks we take establish our selfhood. The choices we make are anchored in our originality.
Unfortunately, it is in the pursuit of this validation that our creative drive gets tangled up in a need for validation. We lose our ability to trust our creative instinct, and so we choose a safer option. These days, this “safer” alternative can present itself as an AI tool. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, take your pick. With this option, you don’t need to put a lot of pressure on yourself. You can skip the confusion and dodge the vulnerability. You receive a polished output without the risk of working on something suggested by your subconscious that is completely new and unfamiliar. You’re more likely to receive the praise and less likely to fall flat. So now, what once required vulnerability now takes just a prompt.
Creativity Conundrums:
With modern technology, we’re tempted to outsource these hard parts of the creative process. I don’t need to tell you how AI impacts creativity. While I am grateful for all that artificial intelligence has to offer, the undeniable truth is that AI has done some real harm to creative minds. We have established so far that AI offers itself as a safe option that people can choose when running away from the scarier option of trusting their instincts, as they know that this way they have a higher, safer, and easier chance of seeking validation. In the process of using AI to shortcut the creative process, we lose our originality, and even worse, we start letting our creative muscles atrophy. It becomes a problem when we start using it as a crutch rather than a tool; when we let it become substitutional instead of letting it stay supplemental.
When millions turned their portraits into AI-generated Ghilbli-style art, it may have seemed playful at first, but what got lost in the moment was the years of care and craftsmanship behind the original Ghibli aesthetic. Or that incident where a summer reading list released by a major outlet was found to be AI-generated. The list included books that didn’t even exist. That was a moment where we lost the essence of what makes book recommendations special: someone actually reading something and feeling the desire to share it with you. In chasing the convenience offered by AI tools, we seem to have forgotten that creativity isn’t all about the output; a lot of the time it is about the connection as well.
The Long run (yes, we make it to the long run)
In the age of AI, the fears of creative geniuses are multiplied in number. Of course, I would cry myself to sleep if my intellectual capacity and creative abilities after a three-year art degree can be replaced by a 50-word prompt on an AI tool. But humans matter. Our intelligence, though not as supposedly superior as that of an artificial intelligence, matters. Consider all the work that’s off our hands, the menial data entry, the boring courtesy mails, we got AI for that. To think, to discuss, to debate, you need a group of snobby intellectuals, like you and me, overdosing on caffeine and coming up with obscurely genius ideas that may or may not matter.
An integrated economy with its doors open to every country on earth, we tend to enjoy the advantages of the economies of scale due to technological advantages, something that challenges the basic comparative advantage framework. New economic models consider human agents to be just as prominent as natural resources. In a knowledge economy, the central emphasis is on economic development through knowledge retaining human labour that adapts, adjusts while simultaneously creating knowledge and innovating new techniques of production. Knowledge replaces natural resource abundance. Countries geographically disadvantaged can benefit from the advantages of technological innovations and advancements. The pillars of a knowledge economy not only emphasis on human capital as primary agents in effective market functioning but also depend on innovations and technological advancements. AI plays a prominent role in a futuristic economy like ours, aiding to development if regulated properly. Knowledge tends to be transferable, ideally freely mobile from one country to another.
There was a time when computers took over typewriters and writers and artists alike saw it as their impending doom. The world was shaken, but it didn’t end there. An economic system tends to create new technologies, pushing the older ones in obsolescence. The adjustment period is what pushes humanity into a dark age. The short spell between resistance to new innovations and imbibing the same into creative processes tends to be looked at in magnifying lenses by humans in general. A little time and we tend to adjust and adapt, perhaps even dominate the technology systems.
The debate here is not to point out the risks, they exist, no one can deny that. The actual crux of the problem lies in building a system that allows for innovation to flourish with its creative advantages intact. Institutions, incentives and individuals are the central pillars for creative engagements and technological revolutions.
Road ahead
It is imperative that, with changing times and evolving technology, the creative impulse stays intact. Almost nothing can replace the raw courage of trusting an idea that comes from within. We must protect our capacity to think for ourselves. As we move forward and gaze into the abyss, that’s our future, fear seems certain and the end of generic methods of creation and innovation doesn’t seem far off. But had we stopped ourselves at making fire and wheels, we wouldn’t have bulbs and motor vehicles today. Humanity always finds a way. Once in a while a Paul Atreides rises in all of us, we place ourselves at the center of the universe and tell ourselves, “ If not me, then who?” We think, we talk, we struggle but we make it. Today it is AI, tomorrow it might be aliens, but nothing beats the pain of human thinking and creation. Sometimes we work, not for others, not to make the most original piece in the world, but for ourselves. Because I think, therefore I am.