AI and the Creative Urge

Been thinking about this for a while, how many of us are creators, and our work is more meaningful when it comes from our hearts, but with the introduction of AI to the mainstream, how our creativity is being modeled and commodified and sold back to us as a way to be more productive. Or for companies to be more productive using what we've created over the years.

When I think about making a living and how we need to be faster than the rest, smarter than the rest, able to learn better and more efficiently than the rest, then I see AI as having a place in our lives.

But when I think about how some of my favorite writers and creators spent so much time crafting their timeless masterpieces, and how much those masterpieces moved me, not just because of how beautifully they were crafted, but in reading about said creator's journey to the completion of their masterpieces, I think that AI is a cheap ripoff of what it means to be human.

What's more important: productivity for the sake of our continued existence, or the appreciation of the journey of life?

Honestly, I think it's still the latter and we've just got messed up priorities. If AI can help us live better lives, that's awesome. More productive lives, in my opinion, are meaningless. So meaningless that I gave up my six-figure a year job at AWS to move to Africa because I saw that I had begun losing touch with the things that made life beautiful to me, and I knew I needed to slow down.

I decided to write this because I was tempted to go check out some of these AI writers, thinking it might help me somehow. But then I remembered why I write in the first place. It's not to show up at the top of Google search, but to relieve the creative urges within me, whenever they arise.

I hope that other creatives continue to create from their hearts and souls for the reasons that are important to them, not for glory or fame or a paycheck.

∞ Aminah