AI boosts creativity individually — but lowers it collectively

Researchers Anil Doshi and Oliver Hauser at University College London and University of Exeter, conducted a test.

They had two group of people to write small stories of 8 sentences.

One group wrote with no access to Gen AI, while the second group could consult Gen AI for creative ideas but not for writing.

The results that emerged were interesting.

Within both groups, people who were struggling with the creative side of writing fared better when they used Gen AI.

But people who were already good writers saw no difference in their work after using Gen AI. AI had a zero to negative effect on writers with innate creativity.

The second big discovery was that the more the group used Gen AI, the less creative their stories became.

They found that access to generative AI caused the resulting stories to be closer to the average for their category.

All of these results point to an increase in individual creativity, but at the risk of losing collective novelty.

What are your thoughts?

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