How AI causes humans to lose their creative strengths

AI’s rapid rise in the media challenges education, art, and humanity. If we outsource creativity to cybernetics, what remains of us?

Artificial Intelligence wants to take over the way the world functions, and in some ways, it has already claimed its place over human power and ability. 

This begs the question, who should worry most about AI? 

University professors are looking closer at work submitted by students to verify AI wasn’t used to create it. There are questions about whether students are actually learning because of the advancement of AI. There are also questions about job security across many industries and AI’s negative impact on the environment. 

“It’s evolving so quickly,” said Dr. Jennifer Myers Baran, a professor of film studies at UWT. 

Over the last 2 to 3 years, Dr. Myers Baran began receiving from multiple students the same answers on assignments written with the same faux sophistication, and more recently recognizable cadence from AI language models. 

“It’s this existential question of what’s the meaning of my job anymore?” said Dr. Baran. “Or the meaning of education anymore? Or learning, imagination or critical thinking, if we can outsource that?” 

Imagination and critical thinking are where creativity comes from. The ability to solve problems and even see a problem comes from our human instinct and the soul. When it comes to schoolwork, students who obtain their degree with AI doing the work can’t claim they learned all they could from their degree. 

At the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee of Privacy, Technology & the Law hearing on Capitol Hill, on May 16, 2023, Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI said, “It’s important to think about GPT4 as a tool not a creature. It’s a tool that people have a great deal of control over and how they use it.” 

Yet there is no control over the carbon footprint AI models are leaving. A study done in 2019 by the University of Massachusetts revealed that training a single AI model can emit 5 times the lifetime emissions of a single car. To put it in perspective, that’s the same as taking 300 roundtrip flights from the East coast to the West coast. 

There is also the danger of AI phone scams, as I pointed out in an article I wrote for The Ledger back in April. 

There are many different types of AI models such as text to text, text to image, image to image, image to text, speech to text, text to audio and text to video. 

“GPT4 and other systems like it are good at doing jobs not tasks,” Altman added. 

Language models can do things like grade papers so there is no need for a professor or K-12 teacher to have an assistant or aid. This is spun as positive in the media and by CEOs of those language models because it can save time and money. 

However, taking the example above, only a human can tell what a student actually needs help with when grading schoolwork. That’s the point of teaching, not just seeing if the answer is correct or not. AI does not care or even know what caring is. The algorithm will only check for right or wrong answers, but that doesn’t help the student learn anything. 

When it comes to the arts or entertainment, AI has had a negative impact on the industry. NightsRadiant posted on Reddit that he spent $745 on recreating a live action trailer of Director Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke from Studio Ghibli. Some people could say that’s awesome, but I say it’s stealing something that Miyazaki put his soul into. That is how creative works made by people stand the test of time. 

As a student I’ve been tempted to use ChatGPT. I have used it as a tool and prompted it to summarize something for me when I have readers fatigue. I’ve also tried to use it to help the gears in my head turn when I’m stuck on a subject I’m writing about. In other words, I can see the benefit of being able to write back and forth with a technology that seems to converse with you. 

Still, this to me feels wrong because creative juices should flow naturally rather than through the use of cybernetics. One of my favorite authors, George MacDonald, used to take ice baths when he hit a wall — creatively speaking. 

As a panelist on the Future Investment Initiative 8 Summit (FII8), on Oct. 29, 2024, held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Prem Akkaraju, CEO of Stability AI said, “the problem with the film production is time and money.” 

As a journalist and a creative writer, I must admit, time is the biggest investment in any creative work. I’ve thought of ways AI can help me with proof reading and minor tasks like that. I’ve also had workshops with fellow writers in class and have to say, I find that far more beneficial to my work. 

For my journalistic work, I have two great editors who have encouraged me in my opinion writing and even called me out when I’m holding back, which AI could never recognize. For my creative writing, my classmates and professors, through workshops help me find my voice in my work and make it come to life. AI could never see the soul of a human that way.  

James Cameron, the director of films such as Avatar, Titanic and Terminator 2, who is now a member of the Board of Directors at Stability AI, in a press release said, “AI and CGI image creation is the next wave. The convergence of these two totally different engines of creation will unlock new ways for artists to tell stories in ways we could have never imagined.”   

Cameron is known for using technology in his films and has been very outspoken about that. The problem I see is the current models use already existing creative works to fulfil prompts by users. What’s to stop someone from creating a film in Cameron’s style and calling it their own? The simple answer is nothing and to be blunt, I disagree with Cameron’s position. 

The comic book industry in September came into the world of unclear ethics and copyright laws, when cover artist Francesco Mattina’s variant of Superman for Action Comics issue 1069 from DC Comics was pulled due to it having AI generated imaging. When looking at the image, it’s clear Superman’s logo has a double S, which is a replicating glitch AI generated images often have. DC has pulled all of Mattina’s upcoming covers according to the CBR website.  

Comic Book Artist, Adi Granov, known best for his painted and illustrated work on Iron Man for Marvel Comics, took to Facebook and said, “In my view work like that is hugely damaging to the industry, to the companies he works for, to all of us artists who actually care.” 

Comic book artists Alex Garner, Jeehyung Lee and Walter O’neill have also called Mattina out over the years, which they have the right to do. Especially when considering the long hours it takes in the creative process to make something from the heart with your own voice or the stroke of a pen. 

Granov added “I neither consider him an artist nor can I hide my dislike for the continued blatant plagiarism. Not only is he a hack, but he’s not even good enough to hide the glaring mistake on one of the most iconic symbols in all of pop-culture.” 

Coca-Cola on Nov. 5 released an AI generated Christmas advertisement, which has received much backlash for how obvious it is. They didn’t even need to hire actors because the humans in the video were all generated. Not to mention, the company more than likely didn’t need a full graphics team, showing how big corporations are failing to hire people because of this technology. To me, this proves that money and time matter more to such companies than the product or consumer enjoyment. 

It was confirmed by Akkaraju at the FII8 Summit that the film Avatar had certain shots that took 6 to 7 thousand hours of rendering time. But with the help from Stability AI’s model, Stable Diffusion, which was the catalyst of 80 percent of the world’s generated images in 2023, that time can now be reduced to just minutes. 

“If you fast forward to 5 to 10 years from now,” said Akkaraju. “The vast majority of film and television media as we know it today is not going to be render, it’s going to be generated.” 

Akkaraju added, “We’re going to see a magnitude of 5 to 10 to 20 times more content being created.” 

Those creators aren’t really artists. A painter, writer, illustrator, film maker and all other artists take our time to create artwork because sometimes inspiration hits us when we least expect it. Time and passion is not something you can just generate.  

All artists must hone, perfect and work the craft with which we chose to share from our mind, heart and soul. Prompting an algorithm to generate something will never compete on that level. 

However, AI is here, and not spending money or time seems to be prevailing over quality for big companies. I ask you, what does the consumer and those that appreciate real art have to say? You know my thoughts on the matter. What about yours? Tell us what you think on our Instagram.