Creativity Is Worthless
The future’s all just infinite content.
What’s the tweet? Something like “AI was supposed to tackle our mundane unpleasant tasks so we would all be free to paint, write, and make music or films. Instead, it’s doing those things for us?” You can see the irony: when allowed to train generative AI to do anything, Silicon Valley VCs and tech overlords started by taking dead aim at creativity.
For those of us who stack our cheddar within the loose constellation of creative industries — publishing, journalism, art, film, advertising, music, and TV, amongst others — AI has been all the rage in the take ecosystem. Will it help? Will it cannibalize jobs? What are the IP implications? I want to table those important questions to ask one that cuts closer to the bone: Why would the tech ecosystem come for creativity first, or at all? Then, what can we do to take back our brains and the soul of our work?
People talk of AI as a paradigm shift in creativity, but it’s merely an accelerant. The greater seachange was earlier, more subtle, and more insidious. You’ve probably never stopped too long to think about it. It’s a language shift. In the past decade, we took two stalwart words and twisted them to mean two novel, ultra-specific things. Content. Creator.
