Lately, it seems as if there are new headlines every day about the dangers posed by artificial intelligence — everything from the technology ruthlessly taking our jobs to it perilously increasing our carbon footprint to fuel the necessary computing power. The headlines are concerning, and some even predict doomsday-like scenarios in the near future. Just like many of humankind’s inventions, AI will surely prove to be both beneficial and harmful depending on its application, but it won’t be the substantial power it will consume or the jobs it will take that pose the biggest risks. It’s the threat to our creativity and thereby our humanity itself.
Our innate creativity is what sets us apart from all other living beings. It helps us relate to our world and to each other. From the earliest forms of communication, which can be traced back 64,000 years ago through cave paintings made by Neanderthals found in Spain, to the earliest forms of stories that were told through drawings going back 30,000 years ago, to the earliest fragment of musical notation found on a 4,000 year old Sumerian clay tablet, the creative process has been an integral part of our collective human experience. It helps us relate to our world and to each other.
As our societies became more complex, so did our creativity and our storytelling. We started venturing more deeply into the unknown and imagined far-out stories that envisioned our future. Think of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey predicting sentient computers or Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One imagining the Metaverse and Spike Jonze’s Her exploring the outrageous idea of computers as our companions.
But let’s remember that the computer was originally invented by Charles Babbage to automate mathematical calculations that were previously computed by people. It was human beings who imagined what else the computers could possibly do. We, in the creative community, let our creative minds run wild and imagined a future in which computers could not just exist like humans, but could replace us. Think of Edward Neumeier’s RoboCop or James Cameron’s The Terminator.
And while we were telling our fantastical stories about life in the future, our colleagues in the tech industry set about making those worlds a reality. Did writers who imagined a science fiction future truly believe it could ever happen? Did engineers believe what they were reading as science fiction could be a reality? Who knows? And yet, here we are, taking those stories even further than ever imagined. We envisioned it, and then they figured out how to build it. And today, we have machines being the creators — coming up with ideas, stories, art, music and other forms of creativity and imagining a new future. This is certainly revolutionary, and in many ways, very difficult to comprehend.
But if humans no longer have to do the creating, where does that leave us? While there is no doubt that AI has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of our lives, we must not forget the importance of the creative process in shaping our society. Our creativity allows us to express ourselves and fulfill our uniqueness. It allows us to tap into our deepest emotions, to connect with others, and to share our ideas and perspectives with the world. It is a way of leaving our mark, of making a lasting impact that will be felt long after we are gone. And as we’ve seen, for better or worse, our creativity even helps shape the future.
The potential applications of AI in the creative field are endless and exciting, but they raise critical questions about the future of human creativity and innovation. What happens when machines can create faster and better than we can? How can we guarantee that AI won’t strip away our fundamental human traits of curiosity, imagination and intuition? We have always been driven to use our imagination to see what doesn’t exist yet, to envision a society on a new planet, to see the best and worst of mankind in the future, to create the next masterpiece. What happens to humanity if we are no longer the composers of our music, or the artists behind our creations, or the tellers of our own stories? Should the future of creativity be left up to the machines we ourselves created?
It’s a larger existential threat, but the future that we imagined has arrived, and with it come the economic realities of AI. As we chart our path forward, we are all best served to start from a place of mutual respect for one another’s work. Our colleagues in the tech industry patent every aspect of their inventions to ensure that the inventor or company is protected and compensated every time their tech is used. Similarly, artists, creators, talent and IP owners expect to be paid every time their content is used by others. Recognizing that the contributions on all sides deserve a compensatory value and consent to use is a great place to start.
We’ve been at the brink of existential threats before. And while our imagination and creativity often brought us there, it also brought us back. Finding the ways to use AI to make us better at what we do is the path best chosen. Otherwise, AI will do it without us.
And for the record, AI had no role in the creation of this piece.
Dawn Ostroff is on the board of Paramount Global and Mattel. She previously served as chief content and advertising officer at Spotify.