Transcription
I'd like to thank you for clicking on that thumbnail, because I worked pretty hard on it. Here's a bit of behind-the-scenes footage of the process of making it. And my primary goal with this thumbnail was to capture the idea that artificial intelligence is detrimental to the creative process rather than constructive. So, to that end, I decided to create a thumbnail that was very clearly made with my own hands in the real world. I wanted to make it as obvious as I possibly could that this image was not just generated with AI.
Now, it's that process of making things that is the subject of this video. And what I want to show you is something that I think a lot of artists and creators feel really intuitively, but that can sometimes be hard to articulate. And that is the fact that despite all the technological leaps made in AI, it's actually not as helpful to the creative process as it's often claimed to be by its creators. In fact, when you explore this subject deeply, you realize that AI is actually downright poisonous to the creative process in subtle ways, even if you're only using it very minimally.
So, I'd like to make one thing really clear right up front. Unlike a lot of the criticism of AI that you're probably hearing right now, the argument I'm making here is not primarily an ethical one. Nor is it an argument that AI is altogether evil. There are many valid concerns about the ethics of AI, not least of which is the non-consensual harvesting of basically all creative works on the internet. To say nothing of data centers or the hyper-concentration of wealth. But that criticism is for another video.
We're going to leave that aside for now and simply ask, as an artist or creator of any kind, whether you're a writer, musician, filmmaker, designer, photographer, painter, dance choreographer, what are the downsides of introducing AI into your workflow to any degree? Well, if you do any kind of creative work either personally or professionally, this question is probably foremost on your mind. And despite the increasing unpopularity of generative AI in the arts, this question is genuinely difficult to answer. And let's be very honest here, just about everyone has at least experimented with AI to some degree. Even if it's no more than you know, using a chatbot instead of Google search. Although I guess Google search kind of is a chatbot now. AI is just something you kind of need to opt out of more and more these days rather than opt into.
Now, even if you abhor generative AI on firm moral principles, chances are you allow this little sparkle icon into your workflow to some minimum degree. Perhaps justified by the idea that it's not really part of your creative workflow, but instead part of some lesser process that's maybe not as enjoyable or rewarding as the real creative work. So let's say you're editing a photo, you realize there's something unwanted in the frame. Where in the past you might have needed some skill with photo editing software to do the job, you can now just click the sparkle icon and, you know, make it go away. Or maybe you're editing a video and you want to clean up the audio. And not long ago you'd have to know a little bit about how sound is recorded and some basic techniques for processing digital audio. Today, click the sparkle and bingo, perfect audio.
Now the risk of course is that this becomes a slippery slope in which you, the creator, begin to justify the increasing encroachment of AI into your workflow as an efficiency. But then gradually more and more of your creative touch points are delegated to the machine. And taken to its extreme, you get work that is entirely generated using AI. And this, I think, is what we generally mean when we use that familiar pejorative slop. There's of course a very clear betrayal where the entire creative process is bypassed with the sparkle. I mean, the leap from typing text to having a fully generated piece of music can't even be called a process, let alone a creative one.
>> [music] >>
So, I guess this raises the question, where is the line between those tasks that are mere tedium and those that are essential to a healthy creative workflow. Now, the tech billionaires have made their perspective clear. They see AI as an accelerant in the creative process. Sort of like gasoline, I guess. They seem to believe that the creative process looks something like this. An idea is had, then that idea is executed. The process merely is an obstacle between the initial thought and the end result. It's one to be removed. The creative process is just optimized for the most efficient transit from point A to point B.
Pretty much all of the marketing that I see for generative AI frames the creative process as, you know, starting with your imagination, but then there's a bunch of pesky work in the way, and then you get the final thing. AI just helps you skip that annoying work part and jump straight ahead to the thing. Bring your imagination to life, they say. Your ideas in motion. Just imagine it.
Now, if you've ever actually worked on a creative project of any kind, then you know that this is a very narrow and superficial view of creative work, one that you could only have if you've never really done it yourself. The creative process is much more like a choose your own adventure kind of thing. You make several important creative decisions along the way, and most of the time you actually end up with something totally different from what you first imagined. And if you're doing it right, then that final thing is even better than your initial idea. And it's better because at each step along the way, you paused, you reevaluated, iterated, learned, collaborated, and struggled in some way. The end product is kind of just like a projection of what happened during the process, and the value and originality of a creative work emerges much more so from the process than the original inspiration or idea that started it. You know, the more you learn about the great creative works of the past, the more you realize that this is pretty much always the story.
So, did you know that the original lyrics for the song Yellow Submarine were in the place where I was born, no one cared, no one cared? John Lennon's early demo of the song is actually really sad, but instead of it clicking the sparkle to bring his imagination to life, he instead had to work it out with the other three Beatles. The end result is not at all what John was initially thinking, but turned out pretty cool, I think.
Did you know that Leonardo da Vinci never actually finished the Mona Lisa, nor many of his other paintings for that matter? Instead, he famously abandoned them, maybe because he was a perfectionist, or maybe because he had to painstakingly apply many thin layers of paint over many months, or maybe it's because painting for him wasn't primarily about producing a final work. It was about studying the things that interested him, so color, illumination, anatomy, and so on. So, as far as the master was concerned, the process was the point, so much so that we can't even say with confidence that the final Mona Lisa is the finished version. It's just the version that was in his room when he died. Gosh, what a tragedy of history that he couldn't just click the sparkle and bring his imagination to life.
Another great one, did you know that Casablanca went into production without a finished script? So, the actors didn't know whether Ilsa would stay with Rick or leave with Laszlo at the end. And the script was continuously rewritten during production, so Ingrid Bergman's undecidedness is actually genuine. Now, in the end, they realized what the more mature and morally sophisticated ending was. But, that was only discovered through the process of filming the story. A problem that the Sparkle surely could have solved for them.
Actually, this sounds like a good idea for a future video. So, check out my Patreon if you want to support. I've officially gone full-time YouTuber, by the way, so it's more appreciated than ever.
So, given that the process is where the creativity actually happens, where does that leave the argument that AI accelerates creativity? Well, I don't know. To me, it's pretty self-evident that AI undermines the most important part of the process, the hard part, the part that challenges you in some way, the part that maybe requires you to stop and learn something, or maybe take a few steps back because you're on the wrong track, or maybe ask someone else to help you because you've reached some personal limitation.
>> [music] >>
Those aren't just necessary parts of the creative process, they're the most important part of the creative process. They are, by definition, where you need to get creative. Now, I'd imagine that most people are on board with the argument that Da Vinci probably couldn't be improved with AI. But, what about the more mundane creative tasks? The PowerPoint slides your boss wants, the garage sale poster, low-stakes creative work. Am I saying you should not use AI in these tasks? Well, remember, my argument here is not that you should never use AI in the creative process. What I'm saying is that your decision about whether or not you do so has more far-reaching implications than might first appear.
The point is that to the precise degree that you introduce AI into your workflow, to that same degree, you damage your own creative potential. I think the bottom line is that your personal ethical disposition on this issue will likely determine your future success in a creative field. There will be at many points in your creative process opportunities, or should I say slopportunities, to bypass the struggle of working and learning, but availing yourself of those shortcuts will gradually undermine your work in subtle ways that you cannot foresee.
So sure, go ahead and use generative fill to clean up your image. No one's watching. I won't tell anyone and no one will ever know. But you will pay a very small price in relieving yourself from the duty of learning some new Photoshop skills. You might not need those skills in this precise moment, but as you grow into your craft, those skills might come in handy in other ways that you do not presently anticipate. And it goes even deeper because knowing you have the ability to merely generate a fix to your photograph, well, you've now eliminated any incentive to get better at taking a photograph to begin with. If the pathway from snapping the photo to the completed image has been lubed up with sparkles, then what countervailing friction will challenge you to learn and improve? Without the grindstone of that tedious creative labor, you'll never sharpen your blade and the consequence of that is that even your ability to articulate your ideas in a prompt will gradually erode because you'll become so out of touch with the craft that you won't even have the language to even articulate your intention. And perhaps even more damaging, your creative work will probably also suffer from an overall regression to the mean, that general tendency towards sameness that is the lowly stamp of generative tools.
Now, if you look back on the history of art, you see that creative work has always been evaluated on the basis of authenticity. And I think AI is only going to dial up that pressure. You might have noticed I actually physically show my sources in my videos sometimes, which might seem a bit silly, but I do it because I want to do everything I can to assure you that I didn't just generate the ideas I'm sharing. I did actually read this book about Da Vinci, and he genuinely popped into my squishy brain while I was making this video. Sometimes I even say or do things that are unexpected just so that my videos don't feel statistically predictable. Yeah, see you didn't see that coming. And that proof of authenticity is almost certainly going to become more important as generative tools encroach even deeper into the creative process, sort of invisibly infecting it with a kind of algorithmic homogeneity. We'll probably all start noticing that we pay more attention to creative work that makes a definite point of not being AI. Like, whatever this is definitely wasn't statistically predictable. And that makes it even more cool and artistically relevant than it might have been 5 years ago.
So, my friends, if you do creative work of any kind, here's my message to you. AI is the classic Faustian bargain, a deal with the devil. No one can tell you where the line is except for yourself. But in exchange for the ease and convenience of a generative shortcuts, Mephistopheles will collect his due in the form of the soul of your art. Maybe even from your actual soul. You may not feel or recognize the damage you're doing to yourself in the short term, but the more you admit this sparkly icon into your creative process, the more your creative mind will atrophy like Neo's muscles in his prison of goo. Make no mistake, the slopocalypse is here, and only the strong will survive. But strength means resisting the temptation to find quick and easy solutions in your own journey of discovery and creation. That is a personal decision we all must make, and of all the creative decisions you'll make in your career, big and small, that decision may yet prove to be the most consequential. Choose wisely. Thank you for watching. Check out my Patreon if you'd like to support this channel, and I'll see you on the next one.