AI is fast becoming the tool of choice for many people and companies to expedite their workloads for better efficiency. Many of us have heard the motto in relation to AI: keep up or get left behind. But what price are we paying?
With the future of AI uncertain, we want to share how you can maintain your creativity in the age of AI.
Why does creativity matter?
First, let’s start with a definition. The Cambridge Dictionary defines creativity as:
“the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas.”
Creativity is about connecting seemingly unrelated ideas and concepts to generate something new. There are various components that make up a creative process and it was most notably studied by American psychologist Joy Paul Guildford who characterised creativity by these four principles:
- Fluency – producing lots of ideas
- Flexibility – giving multiple solutions to a single problem
- Originality – coming up with new ideas
- Elaboration – combining and organising ideas for a solution to be carried out
Our lives depend, among other things, on being creative. It’s innovation and original thinking that helps us problem solve and move through challenges to improve our outcomes. But with the advent of a more technologically advanced society, spending more time on our phones and in front of the TV has been shown to reduce our capacity for deep thinking and the exploration essential to creativity.
As a society, the more creative we are, the better we can adapt and solve for current challenges, such as climate change-related occurrences like flooding, biodiversity loss and carbon sequestration techniques.
Creativity is essential for all walks of life, from simple personal problems to larger business challenges.
How does AI affect our creativity?
The beauty of AI, particularly for business, is the efficacy of its work. Write a simple query and the model will spill out a detailed and mostly accurate answer in less than a few seconds. Not only does it speed up laborious admin tasks but it’s also now being used by creatives to help elevate ideas.
Because of the speed of its processing power, AI can connect seemingly unrelated ideas at speed, tapping into Guildford’s principles of fluency, flexibility and, to an extent, elaboration. What AI cannot do effectively is come up with new original ideas. As a model, it’s collating information from various sources that already exist. What creativity commands of the human brain is to come up with something which has not been thought of before.
That’s how we have the edge over AI as creatives. But we can’t just wake up one day and decide to be creative or solve major problems with creative solutions if we’ve not been flexing that muscle. Creativity is a skill that needs to be nurtured.
While AI cannot come up with original ideas, it can be used to help us connect existing ones and form creative solutions. When we rely on it too heavily, our own creativity may dwindle.
In a recently published paper, entitled ‘Does using artificial intelligence assistance accelerate skill decay and hinder skill development without performers’ awareness?’, a study found that:
“The available evidence suggests that frequent engagement with automation induces skill decay.”
Its discussion went on to suggest that:
“If the AI routinely aids performance at a high level, even well-trained experts may gradually lose their task-based cognitive skills, instead relying on the AI to render decisions. Additionally, it may be that trainees do not build their own cognitive skills at the task effectively when the AI serves as a learning aid.”
While this study was carried out to measure the impact of AI on radiologists’ ability to search for abnormalities in scans, it translates to all of our skills. If we don’t use them, we lose them. But not only do we lose our creativity, in our case, but we also lose our ability to judge how creative we are.
“Further, because AI tools are likely to enhance performance and make the task feel easier, learners may be less able to judge the true status of their skills and experts may be unaware of their deteriorating skills, resulting in performance degradation when relying on the AI is not optimal.”
What’s the solution?
The good news is that, just like any skill, the more practice we have, the better we get. And creativity is a skill that can be honed. It’s also worth remembering that AI is not the enemy, it can be used in a way that is creatively mindful to generate ideas – and fresh ones alongside the input from a human brain.
As a creative, using AI to help with solution generation is still valuable so long as the output is not taken as gospel. One way of developing your own creativity alongside the help of AI is first generating your own ideas with its input. Only then can you turn to AI to help you refine or challenge ideas that you have created. After receiving its answers, return to your own thinking to expand and make connections between some of the ideas that AI may not have connected for you. It’s a process that takes practice and is longer to do than relying on AI for idea generation from start to finish. Work with AI, prompting it with provocative questions to generate more output and then collate and combine the ideas yourself.
According to Psychology Today,
“By presenting data, patterns, associations, and possibilities that may not be immediately apparent, AI stimulates divergent thinking, a key psychological component of creativity. The ability to think in a non-linear, multidimensional manner can encourage individuals to explore beyond their usual cognitive biases and horizons, fostering innovative thinking and problem-solving.”
Another way to use AI is prioritising it for more logistical and admin-heavy or data-based tasks. For example, as a marketer you could use it to find current consumer trends or to source studies related to a particular topic. These uses of AI can really save you time and allow more to be spent on independent creative thinking.
Though the future of AI is uncertain, what’s for sure is that it’s not too late to double down on our creative minds. With the vast potential of AI in front of us, using it can work to our advantage but it’s important not to get complacent. We must remember that AI is a tool, not a replacement and that our creativity is a skill which must be consistently worked.
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