Reviving the Human Spirit: The Renaissance of Generative AI and Creativity

TLDR; As many in AI, I had serious misgivings about the unhinged way that mass AI models were released “free for hype” like ChatGPT. Without awareness building, regulation or training. And I still do. It might sound counterintuitive for someone in Innovation design/delivery. It is not. AI represents a unique opportunity to free our fellow humans from soul-destroying repetitive, dull tasks. It can clearly raise quality, effectiveness and efficiency in many wasteful resource-consuming scenarios. However it comes with risk, mostly in “unknown unknowns” territory. And our mandate, AI professionals will be to:

a) ensure safety/privacy around our solutions

b) ensure manual decision-making and fact-checking at critical touch points

c) ensure AI contributes to meaning, creativity and humanity

d) keep awareness of unintended consequences, adopt precautionary principle

And frankly now that the cat is out of the bag, I do not see it bolting back in. The best we can do is to harness it “for good”.

The paradox around tech innovation, and the difficulty regulating it

Humans are famously slow to realise unintended consequences. Social media did not make us closer as communities or healthier of mind. High speed internet also heralded the dark web, hardcore pornography, hacking of critical systems, etc. Data, the latest meta-tech we all adulated also potentially carries sinister glimmers of human control and existential threats. El Dorado is never far from Dystopia.

I often hear words such as “But surely our politicians and policy makers are over it?” Well, yes and no. They try, but without getting waylaid into system logic and game theory, it is not that simple. Often this “unknown unknowns” complexity takes years to pan out, we just cannot anticipate it. Legislation can be slow to architect giving early adopters even more impetus to go all-out in their overuse of a new technology.?

We struggle as humanity, to collaborate fully. Look at the industrial revolution still propelling us towards climate change, slow that we are to agree proper regulation and to trust each other to implement it. We as a species do not have the collective intelligence of ants. Another example: Silicon Valley has long used the tired trope of “If we don't do it, China will!” to push through the most aggressive, least fleshed-out tech.?

We are looking at a wicked, non-linear problem, that borrows from sciences, politics, psychology and much more.?

AI Mon Amour

AI is so powerful that it raises, to me, these questions in even starker light. AI replacing and faking some of our most intimate relations, those that make us human and teach us most about ourselves, like AI romanticised avatars. People often worry about "Skynet" a deliberate self-organised malevolent AI, but in my view "The Matrix" is more of an immediate concern. We need to keep regulating and bring awareness.?

And yet, here again it seems a matter of how we use it, rather than AI itself. AI has been used to great effect already by psychotherapists to treat some patients. Some therapeutic protocols (like CBT for ex.) are repetitive, and can potentially be done better by an animated AI.?

AI, Creativity & Humanity

Generative AI already supports creative initiatives. Audi for example uses GAN’s (Generative Adversarial Networks) to generate many wheel design options, that a human designer can then edit, upgrade, select, combine, etc. Taking this step into the unknown, humanity rediscovers its inherent ability to adapt, evolve, and reinvent itself.?Because after all… What is humanity, that enigmatic essence? It may sound like a nerdy question but it is one I think we will all need to think more about in the future. There will be ever more need for design, for reflection about long term impacts and consequences. AI might actually resurrect concepts seemingly dated now, such as everyday psychology or philosophy.

Paradoxically, Generative AI unveils profound insights into our nature. It learns from vast datasets of human creations, gains glimpses of our collective soul—our fears, dreams, joys, and sorrows. I wonder what Carl Jung would say about that kind of “collective unconscious”.

On history and nature

AI operates based on pattern recognition and learns from data, mirroring the processes through which living organisms grow, evolve, and adapt in their environments. An odd reminder that, in the grand tapestry of existence, human creations are but a thread woven into the intricate fabric of life.

The AI becomes a digital historian, preserving and reinterpreting the beauty of human expression, reflecting deepest desires and timeless longings.?

Inevitably, the rise of Generative AI raises concerns about the loss of human touch and authenticity in our creations. Will it sterilise art, rendering it lifeless and devoid of genuine emotion? Probably, if it is used centrally, but not if it is used as a research foundation. Technology, at its core, is but a tool, a means through which we amplify our capabilities.

In conclusion

It is hard to have a definite view on such a hyperflexible, game-changing tech. A bit of humility will never be lost, all we can do is take high-level guesses.

The merits of Generative AI lie not in the artificial replication of our humanity but in its ability to free us from repetitive tasks, and to support our creative essence. Fact-checking, decision-making and creativity should remain in our realm, not AI.

AI could bring yet another batch of unintended consequences, as well as a Renaissance of Humanity, where Generative AI and the human spirit embark together on a new chapter of harmonious co-creation. We should not be naive though to its potential for catastrophic misuse. Directly (cheating, fraud, deep fakes, etc.) and indirectly (dehumanisation through tech, dangers of exponential technological innovation because of this game-changer in terms of intelligence sharing etc.)

AI is also, almost pure design and compute, pure regulation and code, it is largely unmoored from previous innovations requiring at least some hardware and manual work. This means that we will need to give even more attention to design, to policy making, to intellectual property, to psychology, to strategy, to philosophy, to complexity modelling. Exciting, yet daunting times.?

PS: I augmented one paragraph with AI in this blog, can you figure out which?