Me thinking about AI and the future of human creativity.
As someone who has always needed creative expression to make sense of my world and to feel connected to myself, the idea of pressing a button to generate a book, a song, or an elaborate work of art makes me shiver in despondency.
At the same time, I have studied history enough to know that every technological advancement was seen at the time of its arrival as the demise of our humanness:
The written word was the end of our human capacity to memorize – and thus – *embody* culturally meaningful texts. The telephone ruined our letter writing skills. Television killed the radiostar. Still, here we are.
For everything that changes, some things are lost. And everything always changes.
A while ago I was amused by Spotify’s AI translation of lyrics to a song by the band Goat. The woman narrating the intro to the song (‘To Travel the Path Unknown’) speaks the words: “constant creation.” But the AI interpretation (because of the echo & reverb) turned it into: “constitute creation.”* And that struck me, – like an instruction.**
It is not the result – the material product of my creative labor that gives me a sense of wellbeing; it is the process of creating itself, – the flow of energy that moves through me in the moment of creative labor. And whatever the piece turns out to become; it is the energy I placed within it that gives me sense of joy or understanding when I later see/read/hear the work I’ve made. I infused it with my own essence, and that’s the true value of it.
The opposite of creation is; destruction, but also, non-existence. So my humanness, my aliveness, is constituted by me BEING creation itself rather than being someone who is creative. The latter is an identity marker I gladly dress myself up in, the first is a fundamental principle of my existence. And I suppose that’s a possible paradigm shift catalyzed by the advent of AI. That we must BE ~ embody ~ merge with ~ our creative capacity, here and now, eye to eye, locally and physically, completely present. Not for profit, not for the sake of sales or competition, or so-called temporary “successes” or “achievements,” no, – for Life.
Could it be that it requires an artificial intelligence take-over to push us completely back into our own creative constitution? So far, the trajectory of these technologies seems to be about disembodiment. Moving from body (physical labor), to mind (mental labor), to machine assisted labor, to, currently, an externally located collective database (posthuman labor). We have nearly cut ourselves out of the equation. If the pendulum swings, do we then ricochet back into our bodies? Where else can we go? The body in the present moment as a ‘last resort’ that turns out to be exactly where we need to be?
It’s a thought I’ve been having. I am pretty sure that such a shift in the way we engage with our human creative potential will allow for a freedom and surge of energy unlike anything we’ve seen before. Because that’s also been a historical pattern. I do generally enjoy reaching for the possible ideal more than I like wallowing in anticipation of every possible dystopia. It is precisely my humanness that enables such a vision and that can proceed to create enthusiastically from that spirit.
* The AI has since (auto?)corrected this typo, making me feel giddy I caught it because it brought me a lot. Typos often bring me a lot. Which is another essay altogether: The fruit of failure and the magic in mistakes.
** By the way: The full intro to the song ‘To Travel the Path Unknown’ by Goat is worth mentioning here. It goes like this: “There is only one true meaning of love, and that is to be a positive force in the constant creation of evolution” – that is also an instruction, no matter how daunting the world around us may feel. Which makes me think of a Massive Attack song that’s been perpetually stuck in my head since 1998: “Love, love is a verb, Love is a doing word, Fearless on my breath.” A solid mantra for that unknown path into the future.
Yvet Youssef 