Are We Developing AI at the Expense of Our Own Development?

A few thoughts and highlights from this week

💡 If you’re interested in exploring the creative process, or debating AI’s impact on our development as artists, creatives, and people, keep reading.

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If you’re reading this article in your email inbox when it’s first published, that means you’re one of my first 20 subscribers.

First and foremost — thank you so much. I really appreciate the support.

Being a founding subscriber also means you’ll see bit of variation in these articles over the next few weeks, as I try out a few different formats and styles. An important aspect of these early days is experimentation.

For instance, this week, I’m not offering any real advice to help you with storytelling or writing. Instead, this is more of an attempt to get you thinking and hopefully generate some discussion in the comments.

Is that good enough on its own, or do I need to provide some sort of writing lesson each week?

I guess we’ll find out sooner or later!

Exploring AI’s Impact on the Creative Process

Advertising expert, author, and Ogilvy UK Vice-Chairman Rory Sutherland shared some thoughts on using generative AI to do creative work this week.

I won’t copy the whole post, as it’s mostly promoting a course he’s selling.

But I’ll paraphrase what he said for you here:

AI could write a great essay for you. But the real value isn’t in the content of the essay, it’s in the process of writing it.

Making ads is no different. The various by-products of making an ad may be more valuable than the spot when it finally emerges.

The journey of getting from A to B is important, and should be embraced. If you use AI as a shortcut, you skip that journey altogether, and lose a lot of potential learning along the way.

This highlights one of the biggest concerns with AI, in my opinion.

And it’s also a fascinating lens through which to examine the people going all-in on AI to do most of their work for them.

I’m far from an expert on AI, but I have interviewed over 20 AI experts and IT leaders on the topic over the past six months.

Almost every one of those people expressed some concern — or warning — about people becoming too reliant on AI at the expense of keeping their own skills and minds sharp.

Let’s stick with writing as an example of a creative skill AI can supplement, while we explore Rory’s point further…

Using AI to complete the task of writing something (obviously) removes the process of writing it yourself.

But, like most things in life, working through the process is often far more valuable and important to us than achieving the outcome of the task.

One of the greatest philosophers of all-time, Alan Watts, used to make a similar point:

“Music, as an art form, is essentially playful. We say you play the piano. You don’t work the piano. Music differs from, say, travel. When you travel, you’re trying to get somewhere.

One doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest, and there would be composers who wrote only finales. People would go to concerts just to hear one crashing chord, because that’s the end.

Same with dancing. The whole point of the dancing is the dance.

We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead.

But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”

Watt’s point was that people often think about most things in life, like writing a book, or learning to play an instrument, or pursuing a certain career, like a journey.

Of course, the whole point of a journey is to get to the final destination as quickly as possible. This mind-set makes the mistake of rushing through the process to get to the end.

Instead, you should try to enjoy and appreciate every moment of the process as much as possible while it lasts.

Using AI to write for you is essentially focusing entirely on the output, or the final destination.

But there’s so much learning, development, and inspiration to come from the simple act of writing the thing you need to write. That’s without even mentioning the enjoyment and fulfilment you should be getting from it.

Ok, you may do some editing on the AI’s writing, but all the thinking and exploration of the subject, the iterations, the tangents, the related ideas – none of those happen.

For example, I’ve been working on my novel for over six years. I’m still on my third draft, so the finished product doesn’t exist yet.

But writing that novel has been one of the most important experiences of my life.

Going through that process has taught me so much about writing craft, storytelling, people, psychology, empathy, and myself. If I’d supplemented even half of the process with AI, I’d be a completely different person today, and would probably be a far worse writer than I am.

Granted, the issue here is mostly related to people using AI to do their work in a professional context, rather than to help with their artistic passion projects. But the same points apply there as well.

People using AI to do important work for them are choosing to not keep their creative skills sharp, and missing out on crucial learning and other benefits from the process of doing the work.

The more reliant on AI you become, the more difficult it will be for you to do those tasks manually in future, won’t it?

There are people who have begun using AI to do the majority of their work for them. Eventually, they’ll struggle to remember where to begin if they need to do those tasks manually.

Sure, they’re developing new AI-related skills, and spending the extra time gained on other valuable tasks, but they’re still missing out on important parts of the process.

If you depend on AI to do your work (and thinking) for you, how long will it be until you forget how to think for yourself?

The question I can’t help lead myself to when thinking about this issue is:

What are the implications of this for future generations who haven’t learned to write, or draw, or think yet?

If AI will be able to do everything for us soon, as experts say it will, what incentive will children have to learn how to do anything 15 years from now?

I’d love to hear people’s opinions on this in the comments.

I’m not against using AI as a tool to augment certain tasks, and I agree with Mr. Sutherland that it can produce great work. Of course, its speed and efficiency can’t be ignored either.

But I worry that AI is going to drastically harm people’s aptitude for critical thinking, problem solving, and coming up with unique ideas.

It’s important for us to remember that speed and efficiency aren’t always positives within the creative process.

This Week’s Sunset of the Week

The weather has been miserable this week, and I haven’t been out much, so you’ll have to settle for one from the archives this week.

Selsey Beach, September 2023:

This Week’s Song-on-Repeat

One of the worst things about YouTube is the ads (sorry, Rory). But every now and again, they do offer some value.

While listening to a playlist on YouTube in the shower recently, an ad came up between my songs that played a random song all the way through. Because I was in the shower, I was unable to skip it, and I’m so glad.

I’ve had this song on repeat pretty much every day since.

Thanks so much for reading!