August 4, 2024 • 13 mins
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.
To sign up for the weekly Creative Space newsletter, visit: eepurl.com/h8SJ9b.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jennifer Logue (00:11):
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode
of Creative Space, a podcastwhere 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 sofascinated by the more I learn
(00:31):
about AI, but I wanted to dothis episode to address three
key questions we should consideras a society as it relates to
AI and our precious gift ofhuman creativity.
This podcast comes from anessay I wrote on my website of
the same name, and if you'veread that, you'll know that I'm
(00:53):
in the middle when it comes toAI.
I think it's an incredible tool, an incredible tool that can do
so much good, but I also thinkwe need to address its impact on
artists and the creativecommunity.
So here it goes.
I'd love to know your thoughtsas well once you're done
listening to the episode.
Ai and creativity questions wemust consider.
(01:20):
As a musician, writer andjournalist, I find myself in a
very unpopular place these dayswhen it comes to talking about
AI and creativity the middleAlthough before I did my own
research into it, my initialreaction to AI was similar to
most artists I felt stolen from,threatened, violated.
(01:42):
Now that statement might seemlike a stretch to a non-artist,
but imagine for a second thatyou're a writer.
You've been devouring bookssince you were four years old
and writing short stories sinceyou were five.
You've spent a lifetimededicated to your craft,
(02:03):
lovingly tending to it as itblossoms from a tiny seed into a
forest of words and ideas andheartfelt prose.
The very foundation of yourlife, your very identity on this
planet is rooted in your giftand commitment to writing.
Now flash forward to Novemberof 2022, and you're having
(02:27):
dinner with some tech friendswho bring up ChatGPT.
You ask what it is and your onefriend responds it can write
better than most writers.
You better find another job Now.
He meant it as a joke, but thisis your vocation he's talking
about it's more than a way topay the bills.
(02:48):
It's who you are.
And now, just like that, youfeel irrelevant.
You feel like your world iscrashing down all around you, as
if all the years spentfinessing your craft was for
nothing.
Why spent finessing your craftwas for nothing?
Why?
Well, because now, with theright prompt, anyone can write
(03:16):
right.
That same friend soon beginsposting lengthy articles on
LinkedIn when you know very wellhe'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 passthem off as his own, getting the
result that's taken you alifetime of dedication to your
craft to achieve.
Maybe it is time to figure outanother career path, but before
(03:38):
we cue the violins signaling thesad demise of writers and
creatives everywhere, let's askourselves some important
questions about AI andcreativity, shall we Great?
Number one is AI actuallycreative?
Now, creativity is a bigsubject, so much so that I've
(04:01):
dedicated a whole podcast toexploring it from different
perspectives.
So in business, we often boxcreativity into problem solving
and strategy, but it's so muchmore than that.
For most artists, it'sdownright spiritual.
It's something bigger thanourselves, and so much of it is
(04:21):
unexplainable, although we trywe try really hard in this world
to explain it.
Anyway, for me, creativitycomes down to choice the choice
to say yes or say no to an idea,a direction, a possibility, a
brushstroke, and that choicecomes from within us, our
(04:42):
conscious selves.
So, on the subject of AI andcreativity and deciding whether
or not AI is actually creative,we need to examine if AI is
conscious and able to makechoices of its own.
There are many brilliantresearchers hard at work
figuring out if artificialconsciousness is possible, but
(05:05):
at the time of me writing this,ai, large language models like
Chatship, et they're simplypredicting the next best
possible word.
Some have described it aspredictive text on steroids.
You know, when you're textingsomeone or sending an email and
you get suggestions on what towrite, that's predictive text.
(05:26):
Is AI choosing of its ownvolition?
No, it's simply doing what it'sbeen programmed to do.
Chatgpt has been trained on theentirety of the Internet, so
has a lot of data to pull from.
It's also important to notethat, since AI is simply
predicting the next thing towrite, it's not actually coming
(05:47):
up with ideas of its own.
The work is not original.
It's simply rehashing what'salready been produced by real
humans before, although perhapsin 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 tobring up the concept of AI
(06:10):
model collapse.
Basically, experts are warningthat as more and more
artificially generated contentclogs up the internet and what
AI is feeding on, it couldeventually produce outputs that
begin degrading in quality overtime.
So human creativity is stillneeded, unless we become so used
(06:33):
to low quality creative outputthat 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 tothat point.
That would be really sad.
Another question to examine isare you an artist?
If you made it with AI?
That depends.
(06:55):
Did you play a role in theproduction of the work, apart
from writing the prompt?
Something that I've learnedabout creativity over the years
is that it's not about theresults.
The process is the mostimportant part.
If you remove yourself from theprocess completely, I'm sorry.
(07:15):
Ai is the artist, not you.
Ai is the writer, not you.
But when it comes to AI andcreativity, this gets more
complicated if we haven'tdecided if AI is conscious or
not.
Art is the result of consciouschoices made by the person
creating the work.
These conscious choices arecomplex because they're
(07:39):
influenced by so many thingsthat go beyond even artistic
influences how a person wasraised, the city they grew up in
, where they live now.
Every second of their life hasthe potential to create an
imprint on the creative choicesthey make.
So, calling yourself a writerafter using ChatGPT to write a
(08:00):
book, calling yourself a visualartist now that you've used DALI
to generate a few images.
That's not art to me and itdoesn't make you an artist.
However, on the flip side,let's say you're writing a
screenplay without ChatGPT andyou want to generate images to
(08:20):
show your producer whatdifferent scenes look like in
your head.
Ai can be a great tool in anartist's palette when used as
part of the creative process aspart of the creative process,
but it cannot circumvent theentire creative process itself.
Eventually, we'll run out ofjuice.
(08:42):
Remember AI model collapse.
We still need human creativity.
And this last question I want toexamine is can AI potentially
harm our ability to create?
And I'll begin this sectionwith the question how many
people listening to this podcastremember phone numbers?
(09:04):
When I was growing up, I hadall of my best friend's phone
numbers memorized.
Why?
Because, growing up with arotary phone, I had to.
There wasn't much choice.
Today, the smartphone storesour contacts for us, so, apart
(09:25):
from our own number, therereally isn't a need to memorize
phone numbers, and if you try tomemorize a few, it seems a lot
harder than it used to.
Am I right?
I don't know, maybe it's justme.
Here's another one.
Can you do basic math in yourhead without a calculator?
You'd be surprised at thenumber of people today who can't
(09:49):
, especially if they went to aschool that didn't require
memorizing things like timestables.
Now, these are just a few dailyfunctions that we've handed
over to technology to do for usand, as a result, whatever
cognitive muscles we were usingto do them before inevitably
become weaker.
You wouldn't have chat GPT goto the gym for you, right?
(10:13):
You can't circumvent theprocess when it comes to
six-pack abs or training forthat 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.
With AI and creativity, my fearis that we become so dependent
(10:35):
on artificial intelligence to dothe heavy lifting creatively
that we harm our ability to notonly create but to think
critically.
What kind of world could we beliving in if creativity becomes
reduced to writing a five-wordprompt for a machine, a machine
that's been specificallyprogrammed to operate within
(10:58):
certain parameters?
These are issues we need tostart talking about now.
Ai is becoming more advanced bythe second, and we don't want
the creative process to becomeas irrelevant as doing basic
math.
This technology has the powerto do so much good so much good
in the right hands, but we alsohave to safeguard our precious
(11:21):
human ability to think forourselves and create.
That begins with protectingartists and recognizing the
sanctity of the creative process.
Now I want to hear from you whatare your thoughts on AI and
creativity.
You can email me at info atjenniferlogecom.
(11:42):
I would love to hear your POV.
Anyway, that's all I have forthis 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 timeto tune in.
Until next time, thank you.
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode
of Creative Space, a podcastwhere 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 sofascinated by the more I learn
(00:31):
about AI, but I wanted to dothis episode to address three
key questions we should consideras a society as it relates to
AI and our precious gift ofhuman creativity.
This podcast comes from anessay I wrote on my website of
the same name, and if you'veread that, you'll know that I'm
(00:53):
in the middle when it comes toAI.
I think it's an incredible tool, an incredible tool that can do
so much good, but I also thinkwe need to address its impact on
artists and the creativecommunity.
So here it goes.
I'd love to know your thoughtsas well once you're done
listening to the episode.
Ai and creativity questions wemust consider.
(01:20):
As a musician, writer andjournalist, I find myself in a
very unpopular place these dayswhen it comes to talking about
AI and creativity the middleAlthough before I did my own
research into it, my initialreaction to AI was similar to
most artists I felt stolen from,threatened, violated.
(01:42):
Now that statement might seemlike a stretch to a non-artist,
but imagine for a second thatyou're a writer.
You've been devouring bookssince you were four years old
and writing short stories sinceyou were five.
You've spent a lifetimededicated to your craft,
(02:03):
lovingly tending to it as itblossoms from a tiny seed into a
forest of words and ideas andheartfelt prose.
The very foundation of yourlife, your very identity on this
planet is rooted in your giftand commitment to writing.
Now flash forward to Novemberof 2022, and you're having
(02:27):
dinner with some tech friendswho bring up ChatGPT.
You ask what it is and your onefriend responds it can write
better than most writers.
You better find another job Now.
He meant it as a joke, but thisis your vocation he's talking
about it's more than a way topay the bills.
(02:48):
It's who you are.
And now, just like that, youfeel irrelevant.
You feel like your world iscrashing down all around you, as
if all the years spentfinessing your craft was for
nothing.
Why spent finessing your craftwas for nothing?
Why?
Well, because now, with theright prompt, anyone can write
(03:16):
right.
That same friend soon beginsposting lengthy articles on
LinkedIn when you know very wellhe'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 passthem off as his own, getting the
result that's taken you alifetime of dedication to your
craft to achieve.
Maybe it is time to figure outanother career path, but before
(03:38):
we cue the violins signaling thesad demise of writers and
creatives everywhere, let's askourselves some important
questions about AI andcreativity, shall we Great?
Number one is AI actuallycreative?
Now, creativity is a bigsubject, so much so that I've
(04:01):
dedicated a whole podcast toexploring it from different
perspectives.
So in business, we often boxcreativity into problem solving
and strategy, but it's so muchmore than that.
For most artists, it'sdownright spiritual.
It's something bigger thanourselves, and so much of it is
(04:21):
unexplainable, although we trywe try really hard in this world
to explain it.
Anyway, for me, creativitycomes down to choice the choice
to say yes or say no to an idea,a direction, a possibility, a
brushstroke, and that choicecomes from within us, our
(04:42):
conscious selves.
So, on the subject of AI andcreativity and deciding whether
or not AI is actually creative,we need to examine if AI is
conscious and able to makechoices of its own.
There are many brilliantresearchers hard at work
figuring out if artificialconsciousness is possible, but
(05:05):
at the time of me writing this,ai, large language models like
Chatship, et they're simplypredicting the next best
possible word.
Some have described it aspredictive text on steroids.
You know, when you're textingsomeone or sending an email and
you get suggestions on what towrite, that's predictive text.
(05:26):
Is AI choosing of its ownvolition?
No, it's simply doing what it'sbeen programmed to do.
Chatgpt has been trained on theentirety of the Internet, so
has a lot of data to pull from.
It's also important to notethat, since AI is simply
predicting the next thing towrite, it's not actually coming
(05:47):
up with ideas of its own.
The work is not original.
It's simply rehashing what'salready been produced by real
humans before, although perhapsin 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 tobring up the concept of AI
(06:10):
model collapse.
Basically, experts are warningthat as more and more
artificially generated contentclogs up the internet and what
AI is feeding on, it couldeventually produce outputs that
begin degrading in quality overtime.
So human creativity is stillneeded, unless we become so used
(06:33):
to low quality creative outputthat 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 tothat point.
That would be really sad.
Another question to examine isare you an artist?
If you made it with AI?
That depends.
(06:55):
Did you play a role in theproduction of the work, apart
from writing the prompt?
Something that I've learnedabout creativity over the years
is that it's not about theresults.
The process is the mostimportant part.
If you remove yourself from theprocess completely, I'm sorry.
(07:15):
Ai is the artist, not you.
Ai is the writer, not you.
But when it comes to AI andcreativity, this gets more
complicated if we haven'tdecided if AI is conscious or
not.
Art is the result of consciouschoices made by the person
creating the work.
These conscious choices arecomplex because they're
(07:39):
influenced by so many thingsthat go beyond even artistic
influences how a person wasraised, the city they grew up in
, where they live now.
Every second of their life hasthe potential to create an
imprint on the creative choicesthey make.
So, calling yourself a writerafter using ChatGPT to write a
(08:00):
book, calling yourself a visualartist now that you've used DALI
to generate a few images.
That's not art to me and itdoesn't make you an artist.
However, on the flip side,let's say you're writing a
screenplay without ChatGPT andyou want to generate images to
(08:20):
show your producer whatdifferent scenes look like in
your head.
Ai can be a great tool in anartist's palette when used as
part of the creative process aspart of the creative process,
but it cannot circumvent theentire creative process itself.
Eventually, we'll run out ofjuice.
(08:42):
Remember AI model collapse.
We still need human creativity.
And this last question I want toexamine is can AI potentially
harm our ability to create?
And I'll begin this sectionwith the question how many
people listening to this podcastremember phone numbers?
(09:04):
When I was growing up, I hadall of my best friend's phone
numbers memorized.
Why?
Because, growing up with arotary phone, I had to.
There wasn't much choice.
Today, the smartphone storesour contacts for us, so, apart
(09:25):
from our own number, therereally isn't a need to memorize
phone numbers, and if you try tomemorize a few, it seems a lot
harder than it used to.
Am I right?
I don't know, maybe it's justme.
Here's another one.
Can you do basic math in yourhead without a calculator?
You'd be surprised at thenumber of people today who can't
(09:49):
, especially if they went to aschool that didn't require
memorizing things like timestables.
Now, these are just a few dailyfunctions that we've handed
over to technology to do for usand, as a result, whatever
cognitive muscles we were usingto do them before inevitably
become weaker.
You wouldn't have chat GPT goto the gym for you, right?
(10:13):
You can't circumvent theprocess when it comes to
six-pack abs or training forthat 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.
With AI and creativity, my fearis that we become so dependent
(10:35):
on artificial intelligence to dothe heavy lifting creatively
that we harm our ability to notonly create but to think
critically.
What kind of world could we beliving in if creativity becomes
reduced to writing a five-wordprompt for a machine, a machine
that's been specificallyprogrammed to operate within
(10:58):
certain parameters?
These are issues we need tostart talking about now.
Ai is becoming more advanced bythe second, and we don't want
the creative process to becomeas irrelevant as doing basic
math.
This technology has the powerto do so much good so much good
in the right hands, but we alsohave to safeguard our precious
(11:21):
human ability to think forourselves and create.
That begins with protectingartists and recognizing the
sanctity of the creative process.
Now I want to hear from you whatare your thoughts on AI and
creativity.
You can email me at info atjenniferlogecom.
(11:42):
I would love to hear your POV.
Anyway, that's all I have forthis 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 timeto tune in.
Until next time, thank you.
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