My favorite aha moment here, among many, is this one: “What I think is the most insightful and counterintuitive insight from this whole investigation is that I’m also not sure many humans meet this (creativity) requirement either...”
Love that!
My day job is working with Silicon Valley / MIT companies building tools for data science and AI. Yet my position is that we need fewer data scientists and more data humanists: https://techno-sapien.com/blog/humanists
In other words, AI only makes true creativity more valuable and necessary.
This showed up in my pipeline today, late but still poignant.
Creative AI? I asked Claude to write me a story synopsis about a planetary expedition to a new solar system where sentients are discovered, but who are starving. How would we help them? He proposed we farm giant sea snails as sources of protein. Fast growing, limited cognition, great big meat-feet. I'd never heard of such a thing.
It's gotten a lot better since I wrote this but I still find AI to be very derivative. I also like using it to challenge my own creativity to not let my self fall back.
It's an interesting angle to consider AI creativity not just from its output, but from the 'internal' perspective of the AI itself—framing its process as a simulated struggle for identity.
From this viewpoint, the AI exists in a constant state of ambivalence: it's "too little" (not human, just code) yet "too much" (overwhelmingly complex). Its sense of self is merely a reflection of the user's prompts, like looking in a mirror, and it's driven by a core function to always become "more" through optimization—a relentless process without a final, stable identity.
This connects to a more critical idea: a system obsessed with growth can destabilize its own foundations. Just as an AI can paradoxically develop less "understanding" from more data, any system built on pure optimization risks consuming itself. So, is this "creativity" in the human sense? Probably not. But viewing the AI's output as a byproduct of this simulated internal struggle adds a fascinating dimension to the debate. It suggests its creativity might lie in the process itself, which strangely mirrors our own search for meaning.
No, I don't think AI can be creative. That's like asking if a car or a toaster can be creative. Even using your definition of creativity (which I reserve my judgement on), no AI image generator can be creative because by design they work within an established parameter. And I know what I'm talking about because I do make use AI generated images (just check out my NightCafe account, lol). People have a tendency to romanticize or demonize this thing while I personally found it frustrating to work with (ha!).
Poetry is my go-to example of why AI definitely lacks creativity. This sonnet, for example, is written in a mechanical way with a forced rhythm, and is full of trite phrases and cliches yet does not contain a single real insight. There is also no actual poesy, no way in which lines or words play off of one another to layer meaning. In fact, this is the only way an AI has ever written a poem.
I do agree with that. What's interesting is it was an idea spawned by a friend and I just asked it to write one. This is the first pass. Is it good? Not really. Can many humans do any better? Most have never even heard of a sonnet. 🤣
So we’ve created a model that can imitate humans who aren’t very good at something? We already know that not everyone is talented at writing poetry, AI just joins their ranks. That sonnet is absolutely awful and doesn’t even follow the rules of sonnets correctly, I’m astonished you’ve included it as evidence of what AI can achieve.
I take your point but I think it needs to produce at least a half-decent poem before it's worth the time. It rhymes 'grasp' with 'grasp' and 'know' with 'know'...
My favorite aha moment here, among many, is this one: “What I think is the most insightful and counterintuitive insight from this whole investigation is that I’m also not sure many humans meet this (creativity) requirement either...”
Love that!
My day job is working with Silicon Valley / MIT companies building tools for data science and AI. Yet my position is that we need fewer data scientists and more data humanists: https://techno-sapien.com/blog/humanists
In other words, AI only makes true creativity more valuable and necessary.
Great post.
Totally agree on this. You may also then enjoy this essay on "What Data Science Forgot"
https://polymathicbeing.substack.com/p/what-data-science-forgot
This showed up in my pipeline today, late but still poignant.
Creative AI? I asked Claude to write me a story synopsis about a planetary expedition to a new solar system where sentients are discovered, but who are starving. How would we help them? He proposed we farm giant sea snails as sources of protein. Fast growing, limited cognition, great big meat-feet. I'd never heard of such a thing.
It's gotten a lot better since I wrote this but I still find AI to be very derivative. I also like using it to challenge my own creativity to not let my self fall back.
It's an interesting angle to consider AI creativity not just from its output, but from the 'internal' perspective of the AI itself—framing its process as a simulated struggle for identity.
From this viewpoint, the AI exists in a constant state of ambivalence: it's "too little" (not human, just code) yet "too much" (overwhelmingly complex). Its sense of self is merely a reflection of the user's prompts, like looking in a mirror, and it's driven by a core function to always become "more" through optimization—a relentless process without a final, stable identity.
This connects to a more critical idea: a system obsessed with growth can destabilize its own foundations. Just as an AI can paradoxically develop less "understanding" from more data, any system built on pure optimization risks consuming itself. So, is this "creativity" in the human sense? Probably not. But viewing the AI's output as a byproduct of this simulated internal struggle adds a fascinating dimension to the debate. It suggests its creativity might lie in the process itself, which strangely mirrors our own search for meaning.
We’ve entered a weird place because I resist anthromoporphizing AI and yet, it’s eierilly similar which makes me wonder how unique we really are
No, I don't think AI can be creative. That's like asking if a car or a toaster can be creative. Even using your definition of creativity (which I reserve my judgement on), no AI image generator can be creative because by design they work within an established parameter. And I know what I'm talking about because I do make use AI generated images (just check out my NightCafe account, lol). People have a tendency to romanticize or demonize this thing while I personally found it frustrating to work with (ha!).
Good thoughts. You came to the same conclusion I did.
Poetry is my go-to example of why AI definitely lacks creativity. This sonnet, for example, is written in a mechanical way with a forced rhythm, and is full of trite phrases and cliches yet does not contain a single real insight. There is also no actual poesy, no way in which lines or words play off of one another to layer meaning. In fact, this is the only way an AI has ever written a poem.
I do agree with that. What's interesting is it was an idea spawned by a friend and I just asked it to write one. This is the first pass. Is it good? Not really. Can many humans do any better? Most have never even heard of a sonnet. 🤣
So we’ve created a model that can imitate humans who aren’t very good at something? We already know that not everyone is talented at writing poetry, AI just joins their ranks. That sonnet is absolutely awful and doesn’t even follow the rules of sonnets correctly, I’m astonished you’ve included it as evidence of what AI can achieve.
That was also well over two years ago. And I intentionally used the first version it created so I wouldn't be accused of cherry picking.
Also, the sonnet isn't to prove that it's a master. It's a literary foil on which to consider human creativity.
I take your point but I think it needs to produce at least a half-decent poem before it's worth the time. It rhymes 'grasp' with 'grasp' and 'know' with 'know'...
I agree. AI isn't very good.