Our quirks and dysfunctions make transformative creative breakthroughs possible far more than our fragile efficiencies
This month marks the 20th Annual World Creativity and Innovation Week (WCIW). It runs from April 15 – 21 every year, culminating on World Creativity and Innovation Day, a UN-recognised Day of Celebration.
Why is there a whole week dedicated to innovation and creativity? More importantly, why should you care about it?
Well, WCIW begins on Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday and ends the day before Earth Day. It is designed to highlight the importance of applied creativity – meaning the use of creative thinking for something practical, in this case, “saving the planet”. That’s fun and important, but it’s not the main reason you should care, at least not this year.
This year’s theme is “INSPIRE”, which is, well, inspiring. But that’s not the big why either.
In 2023, there are celebrations in 150 countries, including more than a dozen in Africa. And nope, not the central reason.
It’s also not because creativity and innovation have been named by many sources ranging from LinkedIn to IBM to Forbes to the World Economic Forum as the world’s most important business skills for the 21st century. And it’s not because creativity and innovation are fun and engage your potential.
All those points are true and are good reasons to commemorate this week. But I suggest you should really care, this year, because of Artificial Intelligence. Yes, I mean Chat GPT, Bard, Bing, DALL-E-2, and all the other bots that big tech has unleashed, as well as those still en route.
The recent rush into operationalism of AI generative tech over the past few months has terrified many creatives. And why should it not? No less than the CEO of Google, Sundar Pinchal, predicted: “AI will … replace artists, writers and musicians with algorithms.”
Replace human creativity with algorithms! The CEO of GOOGLE! Scary, yes. But justifiable, too, no? These bots can create rap songs with lyrics that would make Eminem blush with pride, pass exams at top law schools, generate false photos we believe are real and paintings that fool us as the output of masters. What innovator wouldn’t panic?
But here’s the important thing — by innovator, I mean you. Whether the words “creativity” and/or “innovation” are in your job title, they are a key part of your birthright — the birthright of every human being.
There are hundreds of accepted definitions of “creativity”. Look it up. Mavens especially love to make innovation complicated, breaking it down into dozens of types and specialisations and bolting it to technology and science to make it harder to deal with.
In my training, I like to simplify this. Creativity and innovation are two parts of one process that begins with confronting a challenge and ends with sorting it out. They define and drive and derive from one another. They are largely inseparable except for one key point – in that process, creativity is the thinking part and innovation is the action part.
And this is the definition I use: creativity is thinking differently from yourself and innovation is acting differently from yourself. Every time you improve the way you do something, you are innovating. It can be as simple as finding a new route to work to compensate for dead traffic lights due to load-shedding.
Being driven to make things better is at the core of what makes humans human. What separates us, at this point, from machines.
And this is why other tech CEOs have contradicted Pinchal. The former CEO of IBM, Ginni Rometty, has said AI can enhance human creativity but can never replace it. And the current CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Oren Etzioni, has averred that while AI can replicate and refashion what humans have already done, it cannot create anything new.
The vast majority of experts, it seems, believe that AI can only support our innovation and will never be able to undermine it. This is surely why both the World Economic Forum and McKinsey have issued reports predicting that automation in its various forms will create twice as many jobs as it will eradicate.
So amid the radically divergent opinions about our creative future, what is the truth? I decided to go into the belly of the beast itself to hear its tummy rumblings. Inspired by my natural passion for contrast and contradiction, I asked Chat GPT itself to give me 30 reasons “why you and other AI will never replace human creativity”.
Within three minutes it obediently created a thorough list. Here are the first five arguments it offered:
A survey of tech experts shows widespread agreement with this list. In fact, the alliance is so close that it is quite possible that the bot “stole” the list items from these people. For instance:
Point 1: Andrew Ng, co-founder of Google Brain and Coursera, has stated that intuition and emotion, at the heart of creative thinking, are totally absent from AI at this point.
Point 2: Margaret Boden, AI Researcher at the University of Sussex, says AI “lacks the unique perspective and personal experiences that inform human creativity”.
Point 3: Ken Goldberg of UC Berkeley adds that creative breakthroughs require unusual connections — and that AI is capable, so far, of only quite predictable connections.
Point 4: Gary Marcus, a professor at NYU, points out that AI’s creative output is dependent on pattern recognition and repetition — yet true creative breakthroughs require breaking patterns and being willing and eager to do so.
Point 5: All of the above, plus many other scholars, have said that machines are not capable of any of these qualities.
This last point is really worth appreciating, so I want to draw it out here a minute:
Imagination.
Intuition.
Spontaneity.
Curiosity.
Four essential qualities at the root of creativity. And also the basis of the messy confusion that makes us successful as everyday human innovators.
It is our flaws, rather than our perfections, that most drive our creativity. Our quirks and dysfunctions make transformative creative breakthroughs possible far more than our fragile efficiencies. The glitches in our own unprogrammed “algorithms” are the secret spice that makes human creativity distinct.
AI is not curious or spontaneous or intuitive. Not yet, anyway. So far, AI systems do what they are programmed to do. And so far, we have not managed to program personality, character, individuality, mindset or identity. We have not managed to season bots with emotional damage from a lifetime of traumatic experiences demanding creative therapy.
Of course, we cannot predict the future with anything like clarity (and AI can’t either). But for now there is at least one more fundamental creative quality artificial intelligence lacks: INSPIRATION. Yes, the theme of this year’s party!
Chat GPT does not wake each morning juiced up to explore solutions. Bing is not driven by inherent passion to overcome its own personal challenges or help others triumph over theirs. Bard doesn’t get excited about a beautiful sunset or get insight over a glass of red wine or prefer morning to evening to do its work.
And that is why I say you should celebrate creativity and innovation this week and, actually, every week. Because if creativity and the ability to innovate are qualities that machines can never replace, that is worth commemorating, no?
And if it turns out that the majority of experts are wrong, and AI will someday transcend human creativity, we still have some years left before these currently blunt techs manage that feat. So, let’s get inspired to celebrate our creative supremacy while we still can!
You can learn more about WCIW and the many celebrations at www.wciw.org.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.
