Generative AI can do many things but replicating human creativity isn’t one of them. Here’s why.
I won’t deny the huge potential of generative AI. It can help you do things faster and more efficiently, or even create completely new capabilities. That’s exciting.
Yet people fear the technology will replace them or – at the very least – make their jobs more expendable. I don’t know if that’s true but I do know one thing: generative AI cannot substitute human creativity. Why?
Because there’s something mystical about our minds. Something intangible that algorithms can’t replicate. Something that gives us a special ability to create ideas out of nothing. An energy that’s scarcely explained or understood.
I find creativity fascinating. And to explain why generative AI can’t replace it, let’s dig into what creativity actually is.
What is creativity?
That's the million-dollar question.
Scientists have lots of interesting ideas. For example, research points to scarcity and curiosity as driving forces for creativity. Then there’s this idea of gradual growth. That individuals learn slowly from others as society progresses – as if “human society functions like a collective brain”, as one evolutionary biologist put it.
Neuroscientists have tried measuring creativity too. But they struggle to actually define it. Is it honest expression? Divergent thinking? Problem-solving skills? Artistic ability? All of the above?
John Kounios, an experimental psychologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, measured it as artistic ability. His team examined jazz musicians’ brain while they improvised on the piano and found something expected but interesting. More experienced musicians generated creative ideas unconsciously. Less experienced ones relied on more analytical brain processes. In short - the better you are, the more you can do it without thinking.
Research also points to a duality in the creative process: coming up with the idea then putting it in action. Creating a raw concept then crafting it into a final product. This is what creatives do every day – and there’s a reason creatives will bite your hand off if you look at their rough notes. They’re often gibberish. But precious gibberish they need to build the final product.
But where do these raw concepts come from? Science might be able to tell us what part of the brain that artists use to create an idea, but that surely isn’t the full story.
That’s why I prefer philosophical explanations to scientific ones. And interestingly enough, scientists seem to confirm what the likes of Freud and Nietzsche said over a century ago. Especially with this concept of duality.
Freud, Nietzsche and the duality of creativity
Okay, quick philosophy lesson. Stay with me.
Friedreich Nietzsche, a 19th Century German philosopher, split our minds into two parts: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian is the rational side – the cool head responsible for logic and intellect. The Dionysian is the wild side that sits underneath, full of passion, chaos and raw emotion.
Creatives need both to do great work. If you’re too Apollonian, your work will be boring and unoriginal. If you’re too Dionysian, your work probably won’t fit the context or brief. But you need that Dionysian impulse, that dip into the unconscious, that “intoxication” as Nietzsche puts it, for your ideas stand out. That’s what clients pay you for.
Sigmund Freud’s take is spookily similar. He spoke about the conscious and unconscious – and how art stems from repressed needs we aren’t aware of. I don’t know about the repressed needs, but ideas coming from parts of our mind we don’t fully understand makes sense.
For example, the last time a movie made you cry, were you able to explain why? Why are we sometimes just not in the mood to write or create? Why do some things make us laugh out of nowhere? Why can’t we remember our dreams? Or at least why do we instantly forget our dreams as soon as our conscious muscles in?
My point is that creativity – and pretty much everything we do – comes from somewhere we don’t understand. That has huge implications on the creative process.
What this means for the creative process
The job of a creative is two-fold. Let’s frame it like Freud and Nietzsche:
1) Tap into your Apollonian / Conscious
This is understanding the brief. Whether that’s from a client, your manager, or yourself. What are you doing? Why are you doing it? What do you want to achieve? This is the nuts and bolts of your project.
2) Trigger your Dionysian / Unconscious
This is where the real creativity happens. Where we search for the spark of a great idea. A spark that can’t be forced, only prodded and nurtured until something comes. Every creative has their own triggers to do that. But it normally includes reading the brief, scribbling, ruminating, looking at similar examples, anything to get your mind moving and (hopefully) tease a great idea to the surface.
Triggering your Dionysian is not an exact science. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen. And that’s when creative block and self-doubt happens. The only solution is experience – learning what works, what doesn’t and how you can get great work out of your head in any mood.
So what about generative AI?
Creativity is poetic. Complex, mystical and uniquely human. Something you can’t replace with technology like generative AI.
All that tools like ChatGPT do is aggregate massive amounts of information and give responses that best fit queries. It is all fact, all reason and all Apollonian – with none of the discernment or authenticity of a human.
Maybe our brains are just super computers that process massive amounts of information too. And that might tell 99% of the story. But what about that 1%? What about the poetry Freud and Nietzsche were talking about? We all experience that, whether science can explain it yet or not.
Sometimes poetry and philosophy can help us understand abstract ideas before science can. I believe that’s the case with creativity. To that end, while I see how generative AI can support the creative process, I cannot see how it can replace it entirely.
At least not yet…
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