Don't fear A.I. -- use it to enhance your authentic creativity ✨
It’s been the biggest business story of 2022 (and 2023 thus far) – how AI (artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT and Midjourney) is disrupting education, work, and the arts.
"This shift marks the most important technological breakthrough since social media." --Time Magazine
ChatGPT is the fastest growing internet service ever... faster than FB, YouTube, Gmail, etc.
Real estate agents are using AI to create home listings.
Marketers (like me) use it to brainstorm and create content and offerings.
Teachers are using it to create lesson plans. (In fact, teachers are finding it even more beneficial than students.)
From an NY Times article:
Eli Snyder, a special-education teacher in Colorado, wanted to play basketball with his students. He had questions: How could he adapt the game for a child with cerebral palsy? And how could he help his students with autism play a highly stimulating activity?
Snyder could have found this information through a Google search. He turned to ChatGPT instead because it produced complete paragraphs instead of delivering links that would have left him with more clicking and synthesizing to do. The chatbot’s response helped him quickly write adapted lesson plans for each of his students.
“It’s been revolutionary,” Snyder said. “What used to take me an hour now takes me five minutes.”
“Everyone is talking about how A.I. is going to replace us. I don’t agree with that. It’s going to free up more time at our jobs to do other, more productive things.”
A.I. is also starting to help with detection of conditions like cancer & Alzheimer’s. Before long, it’ll be used for treatment planning. If you had a loved one with a serious illness, who could have a higher survival rate with an AI-assisted treatment, would you do it?
When I asked my audience about A.I., there were strong reactions in both directions – great excitement, as well as grave concern.
Personally, having seen how it works, I’m optimistic about AI. (In fact, I’m even teaching a course about it: AI Tools for Authentic Solopreneurs.) However, I do care about the concerns that my clients and friends have about it. Perhaps this post will ease the fears a bit…
How can AI be used for authentic creating?
One of my readers asked:
“If our content becomes 95% AI-generated, would you say this is still authentic?”
My response:
It's a great question, and it cannot be answered via the current paradigm.
The new paradigm emphasizes the skills of direction and curation based on human empathy. Not raw creation (now outdated).
With these new tools, you are being asked to ascend from a writer or actor, to become a Producer or Director. Is that authentic? Of course, it can be. Are movie Directors authentic if they don't do the writing or acting or editing? 95% of the raw creation isn’t done by Directors, but the whole vision and what they decide to release to the public? That's their decision. If they have a tremendous amount of human empathy i.e. understanding how other humans will react to the creative work, then they are excellent directors.
Response from a fellow commenter:
"The Director and Producer(s) midwife the artistic creations. We then collaborate with the innovative tools that are destined to evolve. Work with the flow, not against it. I remember my resistance to cell phones way back when...😅
I've noticed whatever I resist is usually something I need to learn more about. And when it comes to AI, I've had that creepy "ew" feeling in the pit of my stomach. BUT, it's here. That genie is not going back in the bottle. Let's learn how to work wisely with it!"
Exactly.
This is going to be increasingly so:
- Raw creation (writing, drawing, acting) will become more and more old school.
- New school will be increasingly about the ability to curate, envision, and direct.
What are the future proof skills? Nobody knows at this point, but I’m going to guess: the ability to have (and reflect on) wide and deep human experiences, so that we can direct the creation of things that elicit emotions and energy from other humans.
Why? Because the new tools will do all the technical work.
Won’t it make us dumber?
For example, ChatGPT. Think of it like a combination between a calculator and search engine. It helps you be more efficient at work. But will it make humans dumber?
Would you want humanity to lose the calculator as a tool? Because then we’d have to do math by hand (or abacus) again. Sure, it might help our minds be sharper with numbers, but would also dramatically slow down many areas of work.
Would you want humanity to no longer have search engines? That would force us to return to libraries, which would be good for librarians, and maybe for our social interaction. But it would also add a huge amount of time to finding information.
Would you want wikipedia to be gone? To bring back paper encyclopedias?
These things – calculators, search engines, wikipedia – have made us humans less dexterous, and less social. Yet nobody would say we should never have had those things. It's about using those things to free up time for higher level activities, including more beautiful experiences of human connection.
It’s up to each of us to parent our kids (and ourselves) to use new tech tools to live more meaningful lives.
Here’s another example (thanks to one of my readers, V – you know who you are!) They were concerned about how Google Maps has made them much less able to navigate on their own.
“I don't just want to make that same mistake again because it's an uphill effort to regain lost abilities that I've outsourced! And at the same time - the tools are just so cool and can be useful - and so, how to use the tools without slowly degrading the innate human genius?”
My response:
These tools free up your energy for other creative thinking and connections. Your genius isn't limited when you aren't doing things manually. It's liberated for new activity. Boredom generates new exploration in your brain and spirit. Having more time allows you to stretch towards new horizons.
The key is to remember that we humans are adaptable, much more so than robots (at this point) because we shape them. We have always adapted to the revolutionary tools we’ve created. And I have faith that we always will.
But what if [insert your concerns about A.I.]?
Well, then we will adapt, won’t we?
Of course we will.
If you are paying attention to the videos and articles spreading fear about AI, you must understand: they are using fear to get more traffic to their channels and websites. Sure, they might have some genuine concern, but much of what I’ve seen is speculative fear, not grounded in evidence. They spread ungrounded rumors about impending danger, and by doing so, they get more followers and make more money.
People forget the many fears that never panned out, but only the few that did. (That’s how we evolved, but it’s outdated programming. Fear greatly stifles our potential and entrepreneurialism.)
No matter how this all turns out, I have faith that we will find ways to recover from challenges, and to grow stronger because of it.
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