Generate This: generative AI and the outsourcing of our creativity

It’s been a while since I’ve written about a topic that’s trending in the headlines, so today I wanted to dive into Generative AI. Like Crypto last year, you can’t seem to go anywhere on the internet without running into it. The tech giants are all betting on it as the latest innovation that will help cement their dominance over their rivals. With that, they’ve entered a battle against each other to see who can launch a viable product first. Once again though, just like social media, or ad-based business models, we don’t seem to be asking the right questions. What will the launch of these products do to society?

For those of you who don’t know, Generative AI is artificial intelligence software that can generate text or images based on a prompt from a user. The most famous of which is ChatGPT developed by OpenAi. You write a prompt like “Tell me a story about a cat in the style of David Fincher and the cat is a serial killer” and the AI will do its best job to write one. (I did just this, and admittedly the story was somewhat compelling and alarmingly detailed.) It can do this because it has been fed extremely large amounts of data from the internet and this allows it to make connections between that data and generate something new based on your prompt. That’s an extreme oversimplification but I’m not going to do the corny-as-hell move that CNN has been doing where they have ChatGPT explain how it works. Obviously, it can do a lot more than just write entertaining stories. It can write code, create resumes, and even help automate certain parts of your job. All of which is honestly pretty useful. I’m not going to pretend like there isn’t utility here. There are parts of my job that I wish I could automate and I’m waiting patiently for Microsoft to add its OpenAI capabilities to Office. This is what technology should be used for, as a tool that lets us make our lives easier. What I’m worried about is when we start using it to replace ourselves. 

This worry stems from where I see this technology going. The direction of these AI tools can be seen in the largest tech companies’ first steps to commercialize them, reinventing search. They want you to be able to type in a question and have the AI give you an answer without needing to go to any website. This is great for simple questions where there is a definitive answer but that’s not what they’re showcasing. Well, they have shown that but it’s been wrong numerous times. What they’re highlighting are answers to prompts like “Plan a trip to London” or “What should I do this weekend?”. The reason these types of use cases are concerning is that you have no idea why the AI is showing you the things it is. The algorithm is a black box, and these suggestions are just the product of that algorithm. An algorithm that has evolved on its own. There’s bound to be some unknown bias in it that could overpromote or underpromote recommendations for events or attractions when traveling. This can be applied generally to anything you’re asking of it. Even if it shows you sources, you still have no idea why it’s promoting the things it is. Authors and content creators are at the mercy of the algorithm. We’re at the mercy of the algorithm.

One of the things that make us human is the ability to take disparate information, synthesize it, analyze it, and then make a decision. It’s what we do when we do things like browse the internet and look for information. If we replace traditional search with Generative AI, we’ll no longer be engaging in that process and won’t be exercising that part of our brain. It won’t just be search either. One of the inspirations of this piece is that I saw an article where someone had essentially outsourced their entire day to AI. They used it to plan their schedule, summarize their meeting notes, write a report, and much more that I can’t remember because I was already reeling from the whole idea. That’s precisely what I’m worried about, the AI using us and us not using it. This is why I wrote the piece “Reclaiming our Humanity” at the end of last year. I was worried about algorithms dictating what we see, read, and listen to. With Generative AI, algorithms aren’t just dictating what we take in but it’s dictating what we do. By having it essentially take over thinking for us, we’re outsourcing our autonomy and humanity. 

This outsourcing of humanity isn’t just going to hurt us by automating what we do. It’s also going to hurt all of the people who make a living by creating content. It will do this in two ways. The first of which is that Generative AI needs something to generate from. Despite technically whatever it creates being “novel”, it’s still using writing and art from real people to create that thing. So every piece generated is in some part ripped from at least one person and that person doesn’t get the credit. Now I agree to an extent that that’s how art has always worked. We never create anything in a vacuum or wholly original. Art is an iterative process, where we build on what’s been done before. That process though is a lot more nuanced. We learn from others and our work is influenced by them. Generative AI it’s directly taking that information from across time and space, then using machine learning to rework it. It’s like your friend in college who copies your paper but promises to “rewrite” it in their own words. Creatives are also going to get hurt because as these models get better we’re going to outsource more and more to them. It will be a lot cheaper to have an AI write an article than pay a real person. The same goes for graphic design and infographics. Eventually, we’ll see AI-generated books and movies. While they may bear a close resemblance to the things we read, watch, and listen to today, they’ll ultimately just be cheap impressions of what humans create today.

I’m not scared of AI itself. I don’t think we’re heading toward Skynet and some killer AI is going to wipe us all out. In fact, I believe it’s going to change the world by helping us solve some of our biggest crises related to things like healthcare and climate change. It’s probably going to help make my job and yours easier. What we should be scared of though is letting it take over what makes us human, like our ability to make decisions or create things. We must carefully consider if we want to let it take over those aspects of our lives. Do we really want an algorithm to automate every part of our day? Do we want it to choose and create the things that we engage with? At that point what separates us from it? So as we move forward into this new era of innovation let’s make intentional decisions about how we use these tools. Instead of just becoming machines ourselves, let’s use them to make our lives easier, more fulfilling, and complement the things that we do best.