What if we cannot sing? What if we cannot draw a straight line or a perfect circle? It does not stop us from imagining a new musical composition or a totally new building design. We can always hire a talented singer to perform our songs or a skilled draftsman to render our architectural concept. We may not all be talented prodigies. We can, however, be the creative geniuses behind the talent.
~Joseph A. Kayne/”Creativity vs. Talent” 2014
As I approach the 10th anniversary of the initial post on Deprogramming101, I took a new look at that first effort. Titled “Make Up Your Mind” (October 28, 2015), it contained a satirical conversation between the pastor of a faith-based university and God. The pastor thanks the Lord for much needed rain after an extended drought, but then asks for a respite during the homecoming weekend football game. God, who was dealing with more substantial requests, obliges, telling the pastor, “Okay. It won’t rain tomorrow. Or for the next two months. Enjoy the game.“
At the time, I did not think twice about complementing the text with this accompanying nondescript picture of rain. Hardly the contribution of the mold-breaking creative genius I urged my students at Miami University or clients at ImagineIt Today to become. Instead, having just entered the world of WordPress, I probably patted myself on the back for having successfully embedded an image in the article. If I had followed my own advice, I could have imagined the consequences of the climate debate between God and a member of his flock, then hired a skilled artist to turn my idea into a visual representation. But it would have been untimely and expensive. After all, the first rule of Blog Club is, “Publish before you forget what you wanted to say.”
Ten years later, at the dawn of an artificial intelligence revolution, there is concern this new technology may rob individuals of their creative impulse. Using that October 2015 post, I conducted an experiment. I entered the text into Microsoft Copilot and added, “Create a cartoon based on this article.” The AI engine produced the following comic strip.
It used the dialogue I had created verbatim. And the last panel misappropriated God’s closing comment to the pastor. More importantly, it added nothing to the message that I had not already covered in the text. For better or worse, maybe that will change as the AI engine continues to “learn” from similar requests.
This first stage of my experiment reminded me of what economist and Nobel laureate Paul Romer said at the beginning of the internet era, “The NEW economy will still be governed by OLD economy rules.” Was the same true of the creative process? For example, creativity often begins with an observation. Copilot had not driven from the Little Rock Airport to the college in Hendersonville, Arkansas. Therefore, it did not know that the university was located in a largely rural environment, surrounded by farms. Furthermore, Copilot had never experienced the normal tensions between university communities and “townies.” Nor, without prompting, did it now know my interest focused on the unintended consequences of the pastor’s plea nor did it think of this situation in terms of an analogy.
Stage two of the experiment was akin to my 2014 quote. I still had to come up with the idea. Copilot could then provide a more “professional” rendering of my vision than I was capable of. Based on my observations about the university and the surrounding community, I realized it was analogous to the Frankenstein story. The pastor, instead of playing God to reanimate dead bodies, believed he could manipulate the weather through prayer. The “villagers,” always suspicious of the men and women in those ivy-covered towers, decide he must be stopped. Instead of torches, they wave their farm implements. I asked Copilot to “…create a cartoon of angry farmers waving their equipment at a pastor who is telling them it won’t rain for two months because he asked God for fair weather for the homecoming football game.” Less than two minutes later, Copilot rewarded me with this image.
With an “n” of 1, it is hard to tell from my experiment if this symbiotic relationship between humans and artificial intelligence is indicative of the future or a “flash in the pan” moment before the singularity. Either way, it feels like our minds are in a centrifuge, subject to artificial gravity, whirling through space and time at high speed. Much like we experience on a Gravitron, the carnival ride that subjects its riders to centrifugal forces, the encounter can be both scary and exhilarating. Or as my new blog partner Copilot might say…
For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP
AI often helps me unscramble my recollections. Today I was sure that the the Wright Brothers’ aircraft was named the Dayton Flyer. AI unscrambled me. I did not previously know that the Dayton Brothers attended Wright University.