Creativity and the role of AI in the arts
In a recent discussion on the role of AI for artists and how it can boost creativity, a comment was made about how AI would make creativity ‘easier’ for artists.
It struck me as a profoundly odd thing to say, and so far away from why most artists engage in creative work. To create is first and foremost a deep, inner calling moved by a desire within to communicate an idea and put it into the world, the process invites each one of us to ‘dig deep’ into ourselves in order to express our highest ideals and share them with others.
But I guess the question of the relationship between AI and creativity represents a fundamental difference in opinion as to what creativity is FOR. Is it just the output and development of more ‘product’? I guess if your purpose is to make money, quite possibly. But most creators I know are not striving purely for an output — but for the the extraordinary experience of the creative process. We are, fundamentally, spiritual beings. Our self-actualisation — the purpose of our time here on the planet — is to become the very best versions of who and what we can be. It is to so uncover the limits of human experience so as to be able to step into a higher purpose that truly unleashes potential. The experience of creating a piece of art work, building a company, writing a book, raising a family, these are all experiences that cannot, and should not, be automated for their ultimate purpose is to challenge our own growth, and, ideally, the growth of others too.
One thing I have often noticed in the discussion around creativity, particularly as it pertains to AI, is what appears to be an idea of creativity as a purely intellectual pursuit, with a material outcome, rather than a deeply personal and intuitive journey that centres on both product AND process. Creativity as a deeply-rooted part of our growth that spins out into so many different areas of our being, than simply a ‘result’. The creative journey can be a tough one but it’s essentially usually followed by those who are not just intellectually curious but spiritually hungry. To create is to open yourself up to an out-of-this-world experience, not just a human one, an expansion of your universe, not a reductive one simply reduced to input equals output. As an artist or creator, you need to be able to open yourself up to the unselfish need to give, to be outwards focused, without too much focus on result.
Steve Jobs was a brilliant innovator who famously gave people products they didn’t know they needed. Doubtless it would have been futile to engage in brain-oriented, ‘data-driven’, market research for someone like him, the size of his vision beyond what most people realised they wanted. But something marked Steve Jobs out that made him the genius that he was — his deep respect for the artistic and the aesthetic experience as a driver of true innovation and creativity. His famous Stanford commencement speech focused on how important the study of calligraphy had been to the creation of typeset and fonts, and laid the foundation for the beauty of the entire Apple experience. He was a master in understanding the intersection of arts and science, taking people to a whole new level of thinking about what was needed.
There’s a lot of talk about the need to invest in the more human-centered, creative development of people. But we still see much larger conversations — and investment — going into STEM approaches, rather than STEAM. The arts are pretty much the most human thing we can do, the drive to create innate from birth yet sadly squeezed out of us at an early age as ‘more important’ things, such as taking standardised tests, finding a job, buying a house, come to the fore. We need to radically and urgently change this.
As parents, we are keen to sign our children up for art classes (but only until secondary school when they will have more important things to do of course) but often with a singular focus on how they become a good painter, rather than with a richer understanding of what engagement in the arts can do to the larger questions of our mental well-being, our cognitive and intellectual abilities, our physicality, emotional and spiritual development. The arts so beautifully encompass the entire multi-faceted elements of our human experience and a reductive view of creative expression doesn’t serve either our children or us as adults too.
What we need is a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of creativity, a more profound and richer understanding of the role of creativity and the arts in our experience. It is to acknowledge that if we are to harness the power of machines, we simply cannot afford to become like one.
AI is demanding of us that we now turn our attention to truly unleashing the creative capacity of humans and, I believe, we need greater investment now in the arts and more human-centered ways of learning that involve all of our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual capabilities.
The arts are often at their most powerful when they are offered up as a ‘whole body’ experience. Painting does not just use our hands but requires a powerful collaboration between multiple part of ourselves to bring out the desired result. With graffiti artists, for example, the ‘dance’ and interplay between the materials used and the ‘canvas’ onto which the ideas are communicated resemble a more process-oriented way of thinking that liberates the artist to express themselves in multiple ways. The performing arts are, of course, even more so.
How then to think of creativity when expressed through a machine? It can of course yield ‘results’ in the simple context of framing an input versus an output, as is the wont of machines. And I’m sure AI has some uses in that process. But it is reductive in it’s understanding of what creativity truly is in it’s entire experience and, fundamentally, fails to ask those bigger questions yet again — what is creativity FOR?
I’m not sure we need to worry about robots taking over our lives. But I am concerned that human beings are failing to engage in the questions that matter. When we are incapable of thinking deeply anymore about the fundamental experiences of being human, we will have become the very robots we were afraid of.
Caroline Watson is the founder of The Centre for the Arts and Global Leadership, and a disruptive thinker, speaker and writer on issues of global governance and leadership.
