The Danger in Forbidding Creative AI Work
I love CatholicCulture.org. It was among the first Catholic commentary sites I started following, about 20 years ago. But when I saw the pledge on their site "to avoid the use of AI to simulate or replace activities and productions of thought and creativity," I had to sigh.
Every generation, a debate like this about a new technology comes around. When I was a teenager, the debate was about the internet. Maybe that's why this controversy regarding AI usage brought back a memory from my teen years.
I was volunteering to help renovate a house that was badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. A general contractor who was helping our crew of volunteers took the time to teach us how to paint the new walls. He showed us the meticulous technique of not just slapping paint on the walls, but painting the sheetrock well. He showed how we had to roll the roller slowly along the wall so paint didn't fly everywhere, and how we had apply even coats of paint.
"There's an art to it," he said as he demonstrated how to do all this. Perhaps this was a bit of an exaggeration. We all know there are two kinds of painting, the kind that requires an artist and the kind that just requires a brush, a roller, some paint, and a little common sense. And it's a good thing you don't have to be an artist to paint something. If that were the case, artists would be in very high demand, considering all the paint jobs that need to be done all around the world. So, this contractor was just using hyperbole to make a point, right? Surely, there's no art to just painting a wall, right?
It is a popular idiom, after all. Whenever someone is trying to demonstrate the meticulousness of a technique, they say, 'there's an art to it,' or 'a science to it'. It's a way to point out that we have to intentionally engage our minds if we want to do the task right, and I get that. But, when we use those expressions, do we really mean the task requires artistic skills or empirical scientific study and research? Well, maybe it wouldn't hurt. But when we say 'there's an art to it', or 'a science to it,' I think we simply mean that the task is human. Therefore, since it is a human activity, there is an inherent creative aspect to it.
So, perhaps there is an art to painting a wall. Perhaps there is an art and a science to every human task. At the very least, it wouldn't hurt to put my heart into everything I do, like artists do in their artwork. And it wouldn't hurt to be fastidious in my everyday tasks, like scientists are in their research. The problem is when I don't love what I do, because that leads to not caring how I do it. St. Teresa of Calcutta's advice to "do small things with great love" is a helpful reminder here. Washing dishes, mowing the lawn, there's an art to all of these tasks if we do them with love.
What is Creative? What is Non-Creative?
How do you distinguish creative activity from non-creative activity? Even tasks of utility, like painting a wall, have a certain art to them. Does painting all of a sudden become a creative activity when we decide to paint some kind of image or design? What other species can even paint a ceiling a solid color? And if humans are the only creatures that can do it, that makes it a creative activity since humans are the only creatures who are creative.
For decades, computers have been doing activities that were performed only by humans beforehand. They could do math, draw letters, predict the weather. Then came the internet, and it did even more stuff that only humans did before. It could answer questions, share information across the world, and give you directions to real places.
Saying we should avoid delegating "creative activities" to AI is like saying we should have never let computers do math, or we should have never let the internet send emails. Before computers and the internet, only humans did math and sent mail. This is all very obvious, so why all the fuss about a new technology that could also do human things?
Every job performed by humans is a creative activity. Distinguishing creative work from non-creative work is condescending. This distinction could lead to discrimination between workers who perform 'non-creative' activities and workers who do work that we think only humans should perform. Whatever work we think should be left to humans alone is going to cause a divide between those who do that work and those who don't. I understand and support the division of labor to an extent, but this kind of division is built against the dignity of work itself.
Also, the distinction between non-creative activity and creative activity sounds eerily similar to the distinctions between essential and non-essential workers that we had to endure during the Damn Panic.
It also has a hint of jealousy to it. It sounds like we don't want AI doing things we thought only we humans could do. That sounds more humanist than Christian. It's like we don't want to share our creativity. But didn't God share his creativity with us, inviting us to be sub-creators? One of the things I love about Catholic spirituality is the concept of theosis, becoming more like God. As Catholics, we've been given the grace to understand that God is inviting us to become more like him.
The pledge linked above mentions that AI's creativity is parasitical because it only takes from human creativity. I agree, but infants are the same way. They are sustained by the sacrifices of their parents. Every new technology goes through an infancy stage. It needs this time to develop, but we support the technology because we see its potential. It then develops into a blessing for humanity if we properly nurture it.
For instance, image and video generators make it possible for anyone to be an artist. That is a good thing, because we all have imaginations and some of us just don't have the means to share our imagination. If a prompt engineer sees himself as a new kind of artist, they should know that they do not have the same skill as Rembrandt or Michelangelo. Nonetheless, we should also see the art in prompt engineering. It requires precise word choice to get it right. It requires finding a harmonic balance between two different kinds of intelligence, the natural kind and the artificial kind.
AI Can Help Hone Writing Skills
When AI was first getting popular a few years ago, it really deflated my ambition to be a writer. When I saw what language simulators could write, I knew there was no way I could write that efficiently. I knew there was no way I could match Chat GPT's breadth of knowledge or mastery of words. Then, as time went on and as I learned more about what AI could do, I noticed how much it still needs humans, and always will.
Knowledge and mastery of words are just a few tools in a writer's toolbelt. A writer also needs heart, passion, vision, imagination, personality, love for his craft, a sense of purpose, and a philosophy of life. Knowledge and mastery of words could help bring those essentials to life, but AI cannot forge them itself for a writer. They all have to come from a writer's own soul. What AI can do, however, is perform some heavy lifting, which can free up the mind to be more creative and imagine even greater possibilities. As a writer, I do not see AI as an obstacle anymore. I see it as a renaissance.
So, if we want to forbid AI from performing creative activities, then we might as well forbid the use of it altogether. If we are going to do that, we might as well join the Amish and reject all technology invented within the past 150 years. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think the Amish play an important role in our civilization, preserving and passing on skills that might have been forgotten by now. However, the wiser approach for us is a both-and philosophy. It's wise to moderately resist AI while we think of ways to use it properly and ethically. It's foolish to make a pledge to avoid using AI for anything "creative", because all human work is creative.
There has been an unhealthy infatuation with creativity in recent generations. This infatuation is the stigma behind the Modern Art movement. Modern artists look at the awe-inspiring art produced in the past, and are probably intimidated by its breadth and scope. They struggle to surpass the creativity of classic artists, so they try to invent their own unnatural kinds of creativity. They struggle to create any real art that isn't derivative of classic art, so they resort to abstract, chaotic art styles that are defiant toward the beauty they fail to capture. It's all done out of a disordered desire to be creative, not out of love for their artform.
The thing that distinguishes human work from artificial intelligence is not creativity. It's love, passion, and heart. Whenever we make something creative with AI, it still needs human love to make it authentically creative.
I know this from experience. When I try to lazily make an image with a prompt that just isn't right, the image isn't right either. But when I take the time to precisely describe the image I need, and work with AI to get it right, I'm pleasantly surprised by the results. Through the process, I learn about the human creative side of prompt engineering. This is what makes every artform so intriguing: as we learn it, we learn more about not only the artform but also about the truth and beauty that make it an artform. Prompt engineering lacks none of this quality possessed by all other artforms.
Using AI for creative tasks has put me on an intriguing path of discovery. I love the possibilities it has opened up to those who have great ideas and visions, but don't have the skills to bring them to life through more traditional mediums. Think of how many more human imaginations will find an outlet thanks to AI's creative abilities. A new artform is developing right before our eyes. Caravaggio might have scoffed at modern artists' use of Adobe, the same way today's artists scoff at prompt engineering.
What do you think? Should an amateur like me dabble in new AI creative technologies? If your answer is yes, you may be interested in this new app I'm developing for gig workers, called Rambler.
Comments