To Create or Not to Create

Last Friday, Geoffrey Colon , a longtime connection and a man whose accomplishments and opinions I respect, published this article on LinkedIn:

The article says this, in part:

The eradication of what makes us human is more likely to come from other threats ... the belief that all human creativity is eradicated in an age of AI is basically a better plotline for a dystopian science fiction novel than reality.

It's possible I'm one of the non-imaginative folks who don't see the ultimate benign (let alone creative) possibilities or opportunities of generative tech. And my skepticism prompts some questions.

Curiouser and Curiouser

Here's the short list:

• What other threats might eradicate what makes us human?
• I see music sampling and generative tech as varying degrees of aggregation and amalgamation. Both use existing work. Sampling just requires a little more human intervention. What am I missing?
• Is a line crossed when people use AI to generate creative work for which they charge as if they'd actually created it?
• If not, where is that line?
• If AI has the capability to make its users appear to be smart without being smart, how is that not a further manifestation of our intellectual and cultural dumbing down?
• How much — or how little — will we settle for?

I hope you take my questions in the spirits of sincerity and genuineness with which I ask them, Geoffrey. I'm not the only one who's going to have to figure this shit out.

Thank you for your consideration.