Great issue. I especially love the proposal that creativity might be connected to longevity and also your reaction to Rubin’s book. I want to love it, but I keep giving up on it. Maybe the way to read it is in small bites at long intervals.
I think it is definitely a book taken best in small doses. I haven't even been reading it in order. I look at the TOC, grab a title that seems to fit the moment and read the entry. It's more like how I'd read a book of poetry or short stories. It's not a how to in any sense of the word.
In a way, it's even odder considering (as you know) the vast majority of teachers are women and that Picasso painted women much more often than men. Whatever is churning away in the algorithm seems to have all kinds of unknowable biases.
This is a very reductionist view of creative work with AI:
"The reason why typing prompts into MidJourney or DALL-E and looking at the result and thinking “that’s cool” is not a creative act is because there is no practice behind it."
People made the same argument about photography ... it is just pointing the camera and making a few tweaks with lighting. Baudelaire said it would ruin art forever.
Creativity isn't in the tool ... nor is it in the person ... it is in the interaction between the two. You can use any tool creatively ... or not. But you are right, it does require a practice.
I don't entirely disagree, and over time, I imagine some kind of creative practice using the tool will emerge, but given that the tool itself is not stable, I wonder what that would or could even look like. For now, I see a lot of people who are truly reductionist by mistaking the product for the creative process.
One important aspect of creativity that I didn’t really see here is the ability to brainstorm widely and come up with crazy ideas. While this might be diminished by the tendency of these models to degrade over time, I have found them to be helpful in getting me out of a brainstorming rut when I get stuck.
The metaphor I’ve been using for a while now that feels right to me is ladder vs. crutch. Surely many are using it as a crutch, leaning on it in a way that is detrimental to their own creative practice. But I do think there are ways where it can be used as a ladder if you’re thoughtful about when and where to engage it. Using it as an aid to ideate once you’ve been working for a while and get stuck might be one example.
Will comment again later if more comes to mind in a second pass :)
Well said! It resonated with me as well. Regarding the various AI tools as ladders, I may use your metaphor myself, if you don't mind. As a new writer, see my post, I use all the tools I can, Microsoft Editor, Grammarly, ProWritingAid, etc. I change all their suggested edits to my voice, yet more succinct and clearer for the reader.
I think that's a useful analogy, and it makes sense to me, even though I can't perceive a need for it in my own work. Part of that is that I've never been a particularly "active" brainstormer. I'm more prone to musing, like while I'm walking the dogs or in the shower, or my favorite time, in the 30 minutes between the time I gain some measure of consciousness and when I actually get out of bed.
I've always been self-conscious about the ready-set-brainstorm process, though in teaching I've seen some students for whom it's a vital part of their process.
Creativity fascinates me. How, what, where, and why does art appear? And, like your brother, does it manifest itself in his practice of law? Is he successful because he can come to a case with a twist on an interpretation of the law? Was my dad successful in his business in a large engineering firm building power plants by thinking creatively? One safety standard he created is still being used today, fifty years later. My treatment of vision problems of children required me to use traditional methods in an unorthodox manner to help them. I would argue these are creative acts, yet not normally viewed as art.
My favorite part of this issue is the concept of creativity contributing to longevity. I have embarked on the journey of writing my family memoir, which will take years. I figured I can write well past the age of traipsing about the world and still have a reason to get up in the morning.
The idea that we're trying to determine if machines can "think" and whether they can be "creative" or have a "soul" just goes to show: humans will anthropomorphize anything!
Nature? That's a god, shaped like a human.
"I got punched by that storm!"
On a very positive note, more people today are thinking about thinking (and creativity) than at any other time in our history. Perhaps we are due for a renaissance in our understanding of the human mind.
Great piece, John. But one thing that seems to go unaddressed in pieces like this is using AI to augment a creative practice / pursuit.
"The reason why typing prompts into MidJourney or DALL-E and looking at the result and thinking 'that’s cool' is not a creative act is because there is no practice behind it."
Yes, but, what if there is a creative practice behind the larger project DALL-E is being used for? For example, a video artist who has been practicing for years who can now use some AI tool to create an effect she's been looking for.
Anyway, great stuff. That thought was just nagging me.
I think in that example at the end, it's not so different from other tools to create visual effects so the AI in that case simply becomes part of an extant process. It's possible that the AI creates a more powerful tool in that case, though it's not transformative in the way some seem to be positioning the technology.
I think some of what's going on, at least in my head, is trying to figure out how truly revolutionary this tech is. My thoughts change all the time. Currently, I'm of the mind that it will be considerably less impactful than many believe in terms of altering the way people work and the necessity of human labor, but part of what's interesting about this era is that we truly don't know what's in store.
Great piece. I keep coming back to this article I read early this year about intentional creation which really resonated with me - https://github.com/readme/guides/intentional-creation I started reading it as a skeptic, assuming it would be some nonsense business advice for programmers (and they did tie the practice into creating sellable products), but it actually read as really good life advice. It helped me to recognize that I was trapped in the Consume part of the process, and would never go beyond that without intentionality. This article and your writing advice are what pushed me to start writing my own Substack. Even if not many people follow it, I won't ever get better without practice, and what better way to practice than by writing about all of the information I consume every day and making myself put down coherent thoughts.
This may not be generalizable to everyone, but I believe a lot of people want to be creative, but are afraid of failure, or are flooded with so many attempts to grab their attention that it takes intentional disconnection to process and decide how to proceed and use that creativity.
There's a thread I cut from today's newsletter talking about a book called "All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age" that discussed the concluding chapter to the book which is about finding meaning in intentionality. The book talks about the loss of meaning in a world without spiritual wonder, but I think it dovetails with what you're talking about here, which is a world in which we're largely defined by what we consume and often than consumption happens without intentionality because the only things deemed worth doing are those that others will consume.
One of the points in the conclusion is that it requires a deliberate act focused on literal doing of something for the sake of doing it. If I remember correctly in the book they talk about making a cup of coffee as an example. That disconnection you describe could also be viewed as a decision to connect to something else.
That's very true, maybe focus is a better word to use than connect/disconnect. We are always focusing on something, but that can be intentional or not. Sometimes we don't intend to focus on our phones, but they draw us in anyway (which is why app makers created notifications). When someone makes a concerted effort to focus on a specific act, they're taking back their precious attention from those who would waste it.
This also made me think of a sci-fi book I read a few years ago called Cash Crash Jubilee, which was pretty frontloaded with world-building, but whose details I found very interesting. The protagonist lives in a future in which almost every conceivable action a person can take is the intellectual property of a company and you are charged microtransactions for everything you do (blinking, eating, walking, etc). There is even a legal gray zone around which actions are involuntary and shouldn't be monetized (breathing being both a conscious and unconscious act).
The basic premise is that every second of someone's life becomes an opportunity cost decision and people try to optimize every aspect of their life. This is obviously an incredibly stressful way to live, and has clear parallels to the way many people are taught to live and act. Rather than doing things because you enjoy them, or for the process itself, many people look for the quickest way to get things done because there is always something you could be spending your time on if you weren't doing the current task (laundry, reading, making art, making coffee).
Posting this as a separate comment regarding the comments here. I'm a little saddened by how many defenders of AI are coming in to talk about how it can be valuable to the creative process. I think some have good points, for example using it as a tool, rather than as the process, however I wish more people would look at the underlying issues around AI. That it relies on huge amounts of underpaid labor by people in precarious situations around the world to create functioning models (people labeling clothing, body parts, and everything else in massive sets of images). Add to that the fact that most models are trained on art created by real humans, and the image output would not be possible without unpaid use of those images in training data sets. These technologies which are driving the valuations of many tech companies should be compensating the artists for the huge amount of human creative labor that made the images presented by these models possible. Until we see that, it seems to me like AI is literally stealing from artists, rather than drawing inspiration as people do.
The ethical and moral problems wrapped up with the tech are significant and profound, and part of the rollout of ChatGPT, IMO, was designed to stun people in a way that would distract from those issues. I think that aspect of what's happening is getting more traction, but it's still probably not enough.
As I’m working on a thesis for my PhD in Creative nonfiction, which has a subtitle ‘Writing Practice’, your post is very apt and timely. I like the ideas around the nap, especially since I’m a nonfiction writer. I shall add this to my routine because I seriously think it will help. Lots of good research to back up the claim to it being beneficial as well. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
really liked this A LOT - (apologies for altering it very slightly) -
"I’ve never known a successful - artist - who sits around waiting for inspiration. They go out and seek it. They walk around a field in a lightning storm wearing a knight’s suit of armor holding a fifty foot long metal poll in one hand and flying a kite with a key attached to the other."
i feel this embodies how i move through the world. i have been referred to as a 'make work project' ;) perhaps i am in fact a 'make art project'
thank you for this reminder early on a friday morning stuck in an office pod waiting to be freed - while also borrowing enough time to find mini inspiration like your newsletter :)
If you still feel guilty about the nap, just remember that Churchill napped + bathed midday every day of the Blitz. Resting + recharging keep us fresh when it’s needed most. ✨
I was about to say we need a support group for nappers, but it's more like an advocacy group, not Nappers Anonymous, but Napper and Proud. It's weird how ingrained the idea that taking a minute to collect oneself is laziness, but I don't know that I'll ever shake it.
Great issue. I especially love the proposal that creativity might be connected to longevity and also your reaction to Rubin’s book. I want to love it, but I keep giving up on it. Maybe the way to read it is in small bites at long intervals.
I think it is definitely a book taken best in small doses. I haven't even been reading it in order. I look at the TOC, grab a title that seems to fit the moment and read the entry. It's more like how I'd read a book of poetry or short stories. It's not a how to in any sense of the word.
Suzuki: a Zen student must learn to waste time conscientiously
Interesting that in all three of the AI Picasso's, the software assumed a male teacher.
In a way, it's even odder considering (as you know) the vast majority of teachers are women and that Picasso painted women much more often than men. Whatever is churning away in the algorithm seems to have all kinds of unknowable biases.
This is a very reductionist view of creative work with AI:
"The reason why typing prompts into MidJourney or DALL-E and looking at the result and thinking “that’s cool” is not a creative act is because there is no practice behind it."
People made the same argument about photography ... it is just pointing the camera and making a few tweaks with lighting. Baudelaire said it would ruin art forever.
Creativity isn't in the tool ... nor is it in the person ... it is in the interaction between the two. You can use any tool creatively ... or not. But you are right, it does require a practice.
I don't entirely disagree, and over time, I imagine some kind of creative practice using the tool will emerge, but given that the tool itself is not stable, I wonder what that would or could even look like. For now, I see a lot of people who are truly reductionist by mistaking the product for the creative process.
This piece really resonated. Thanks, John.
One important aspect of creativity that I didn’t really see here is the ability to brainstorm widely and come up with crazy ideas. While this might be diminished by the tendency of these models to degrade over time, I have found them to be helpful in getting me out of a brainstorming rut when I get stuck.
The metaphor I’ve been using for a while now that feels right to me is ladder vs. crutch. Surely many are using it as a crutch, leaning on it in a way that is detrimental to their own creative practice. But I do think there are ways where it can be used as a ladder if you’re thoughtful about when and where to engage it. Using it as an aid to ideate once you’ve been working for a while and get stuck might be one example.
Will comment again later if more comes to mind in a second pass :)
Josh,
Well said! It resonated with me as well. Regarding the various AI tools as ladders, I may use your metaphor myself, if you don't mind. As a new writer, see my post, I use all the tools I can, Microsoft Editor, Grammarly, ProWritingAid, etc. I change all their suggested edits to my voice, yet more succinct and clearer for the reader.
I think that's a useful analogy, and it makes sense to me, even though I can't perceive a need for it in my own work. Part of that is that I've never been a particularly "active" brainstormer. I'm more prone to musing, like while I'm walking the dogs or in the shower, or my favorite time, in the 30 minutes between the time I gain some measure of consciousness and when I actually get out of bed.
I've always been self-conscious about the ready-set-brainstorm process, though in teaching I've seen some students for whom it's a vital part of their process.
Creativity fascinates me. How, what, where, and why does art appear? And, like your brother, does it manifest itself in his practice of law? Is he successful because he can come to a case with a twist on an interpretation of the law? Was my dad successful in his business in a large engineering firm building power plants by thinking creatively? One safety standard he created is still being used today, fifty years later. My treatment of vision problems of children required me to use traditional methods in an unorthodox manner to help them. I would argue these are creative acts, yet not normally viewed as art.
My favorite part of this issue is the concept of creativity contributing to longevity. I have embarked on the journey of writing my family memoir, which will take years. I figured I can write well past the age of traipsing about the world and still have a reason to get up in the morning.
Great food for thought.
The idea that we're trying to determine if machines can "think" and whether they can be "creative" or have a "soul" just goes to show: humans will anthropomorphize anything!
Nature? That's a god, shaped like a human.
"I got punched by that storm!"
On a very positive note, more people today are thinking about thinking (and creativity) than at any other time in our history. Perhaps we are due for a renaissance in our understanding of the human mind.
Great piece, John. But one thing that seems to go unaddressed in pieces like this is using AI to augment a creative practice / pursuit.
"The reason why typing prompts into MidJourney or DALL-E and looking at the result and thinking 'that’s cool' is not a creative act is because there is no practice behind it."
Yes, but, what if there is a creative practice behind the larger project DALL-E is being used for? For example, a video artist who has been practicing for years who can now use some AI tool to create an effect she's been looking for.
Anyway, great stuff. That thought was just nagging me.
I think in that example at the end, it's not so different from other tools to create visual effects so the AI in that case simply becomes part of an extant process. It's possible that the AI creates a more powerful tool in that case, though it's not transformative in the way some seem to be positioning the technology.
I think some of what's going on, at least in my head, is trying to figure out how truly revolutionary this tech is. My thoughts change all the time. Currently, I'm of the mind that it will be considerably less impactful than many believe in terms of altering the way people work and the necessity of human labor, but part of what's interesting about this era is that we truly don't know what's in store.
Ann Patchett recommended “Old Filth” this week also in her Friday video from her bookstore. Gonna have to read that book.
Great piece. I keep coming back to this article I read early this year about intentional creation which really resonated with me - https://github.com/readme/guides/intentional-creation I started reading it as a skeptic, assuming it would be some nonsense business advice for programmers (and they did tie the practice into creating sellable products), but it actually read as really good life advice. It helped me to recognize that I was trapped in the Consume part of the process, and would never go beyond that without intentionality. This article and your writing advice are what pushed me to start writing my own Substack. Even if not many people follow it, I won't ever get better without practice, and what better way to practice than by writing about all of the information I consume every day and making myself put down coherent thoughts.
This may not be generalizable to everyone, but I believe a lot of people want to be creative, but are afraid of failure, or are flooded with so many attempts to grab their attention that it takes intentional disconnection to process and decide how to proceed and use that creativity.
There's a thread I cut from today's newsletter talking about a book called "All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age" that discussed the concluding chapter to the book which is about finding meaning in intentionality. The book talks about the loss of meaning in a world without spiritual wonder, but I think it dovetails with what you're talking about here, which is a world in which we're largely defined by what we consume and often than consumption happens without intentionality because the only things deemed worth doing are those that others will consume.
One of the points in the conclusion is that it requires a deliberate act focused on literal doing of something for the sake of doing it. If I remember correctly in the book they talk about making a cup of coffee as an example. That disconnection you describe could also be viewed as a decision to connect to something else.
That's very true, maybe focus is a better word to use than connect/disconnect. We are always focusing on something, but that can be intentional or not. Sometimes we don't intend to focus on our phones, but they draw us in anyway (which is why app makers created notifications). When someone makes a concerted effort to focus on a specific act, they're taking back their precious attention from those who would waste it.
This also made me think of a sci-fi book I read a few years ago called Cash Crash Jubilee, which was pretty frontloaded with world-building, but whose details I found very interesting. The protagonist lives in a future in which almost every conceivable action a person can take is the intellectual property of a company and you are charged microtransactions for everything you do (blinking, eating, walking, etc). There is even a legal gray zone around which actions are involuntary and shouldn't be monetized (breathing being both a conscious and unconscious act).
The basic premise is that every second of someone's life becomes an opportunity cost decision and people try to optimize every aspect of their life. This is obviously an incredibly stressful way to live, and has clear parallels to the way many people are taught to live and act. Rather than doing things because you enjoy them, or for the process itself, many people look for the quickest way to get things done because there is always something you could be spending your time on if you weren't doing the current task (laundry, reading, making art, making coffee).
Posting this as a separate comment regarding the comments here. I'm a little saddened by how many defenders of AI are coming in to talk about how it can be valuable to the creative process. I think some have good points, for example using it as a tool, rather than as the process, however I wish more people would look at the underlying issues around AI. That it relies on huge amounts of underpaid labor by people in precarious situations around the world to create functioning models (people labeling clothing, body parts, and everything else in massive sets of images). Add to that the fact that most models are trained on art created by real humans, and the image output would not be possible without unpaid use of those images in training data sets. These technologies which are driving the valuations of many tech companies should be compensating the artists for the huge amount of human creative labor that made the images presented by these models possible. Until we see that, it seems to me like AI is literally stealing from artists, rather than drawing inspiration as people do.
The ethical and moral problems wrapped up with the tech are significant and profound, and part of the rollout of ChatGPT, IMO, was designed to stun people in a way that would distract from those issues. I think that aspect of what's happening is getting more traction, but it's still probably not enough.
I had no idea about the degrading thing — absolutely fascinating. You're on such a roll with this stuff — can't wait for the book.
As I’m working on a thesis for my PhD in Creative nonfiction, which has a subtitle ‘Writing Practice’, your post is very apt and timely. I like the ideas around the nap, especially since I’m a nonfiction writer. I shall add this to my routine because I seriously think it will help. Lots of good research to back up the claim to it being beneficial as well. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Good luck with the thesis!
really liked this A LOT - (apologies for altering it very slightly) -
"I’ve never known a successful - artist - who sits around waiting for inspiration. They go out and seek it. They walk around a field in a lightning storm wearing a knight’s suit of armor holding a fifty foot long metal poll in one hand and flying a kite with a key attached to the other."
i feel this embodies how i move through the world. i have been referred to as a 'make work project' ;) perhaps i am in fact a 'make art project'
thank you for this reminder early on a friday morning stuck in an office pod waiting to be freed - while also borrowing enough time to find mini inspiration like your newsletter :)
If you still feel guilty about the nap, just remember that Churchill napped + bathed midday every day of the Blitz. Resting + recharging keep us fresh when it’s needed most. ✨
Long live naps 🙌
I was about to say we need a support group for nappers, but it's more like an advocacy group, not Nappers Anonymous, but Napper and Proud. It's weird how ingrained the idea that taking a minute to collect oneself is laziness, but I don't know that I'll ever shake it.