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+---
+title: "The possible impact of AI on human creativity"
+date: 2024-04-23
+feature_image: "/sm_blog/assets/images/the-future-of-creativity-with-ai/feature-image.jpg"
+categories: AI Life-lessons
+---
+
+A series of (rather disarranged) thoughts on the possible negative effects of AI on beginner's creativity in the future.
+
+I'm growing up in a world where the opportunities are almost endless. Generally speaking, as you might have already noticed, today you can easily do many more things than a few decades ago. I'm constantly reminded of this when I hear on videos I watch (from essays to tutorials, from devlogs to reviews) phrases along the lines of "*It's never been easier to do [insert task] than now!*".
+
+By _easy_, I should note, I don't just mean "_simple_", but I'm also referring to the related meanings of "_frictionless_" and "_accessible_".
+
+Why are things easier, today? Well, I think there are at least three reasons:
+
+1. Making things easier, _when it is possible without compromising other aspects_, is a natural consequence of good human decisions and progress in general
+2. The access to information everywhere at any time allows to learn more things with less effort and resources
+3. AI is simplifying and automating many tasks, even some difficult ones, letting humans make "the easy part" (this of course doesn't always apply as it's very task-dependent)
+
+Take an example from the music industry (but this applies to many other fields as well): if you were a beginner musician in the past and wanted to make and release your music, it was, simply speaking, an awful experience:
+
+* Decent quality recording equipment was expensive, and good free/cheap music software basically didn't exist
+* Just getting music to an audience was expensive and difficult, and promoting it was even more so
+* Breaking into the music industry typically required the approval of record labels and complete reliance on them (and some luck, too), meaning they got a significant proportion of the revenue
+
+I'm not talking from personal experience, but many, many artists have witnessed these career difficulties.
+
+What about today? Let's see:
+
+* Equipment is much more affordable, and some DAWs are free and open-source
+* Music streaming platforms enable artists to distribute their music worldwide with minimal cost and effort, and promotion is way easier
+* It is no longer considered "crazy" to self-publish, manage your own distribution, and retain creative autonomy without relying on traditional industry gatekeepers
+
+It is still true that musicians, producers and songwriters are still encountering problems (e.g. minimal revenue through low royalties, difficulty in discovery through a saturated market, dependency on the platform's algorithms, and the cold start problem), but given how many more artists get on Spotify each year, over 10 million ([source](https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/faqs/there-are-millions-of-artist-profiles-on-spotify-yet-only-a-small-fraction-are-generating-money-shouldnt-a-higher-percentage-of-all-artists-on-spotify-be-making-money-arent-there-8-milli/)), it seems to me that the music industry of today is much more accessible than in the past.
+
+The fact that it is easier than ever to get into new fields (music, game development, programming, and so on) as a beginner is an incredible achievement in today's society. Granting beginners a **low barrier** to enter the world of their passion is the first step to bringing them closer to achieving their life objectives and eventually realizing their dreams.
+
+Of course, increased accessibility doesn't guarantee success: the global market (in almost every category) is now overcrowded and the quality expectations are very high, so competing and standing out from everyone else is much more difficult than in the past.
+
+Not only that. Before it was flooded by what I like to call the "generative AI revolution" (from DALL·E onwards), the world was still tough for beginners, even considering all the accessibility advantages.
+
+When these people at the beginning of their careers found an obstacle on their way, they (quite intuitively) had to learn the skills to overcome it. They mostly had to do it themselves, watch a tutorial, or ask an educator or a friend, but still, they had to dedicate some time to learn the necessary technical skills to express their creativity in the best way.
+
+Sticking to this music industry example, I can tell you an experience of mine related to that.
+
+## The importance of mistakes for reaching creativity
+
+When I started making music, I soon had to learn some software to write it down, record and arrange it. Just experimentation on the piano keys wasn't going to produce anything useful. After trying some other software, I decided to learn Ableton from scratch. It wasn't easy, it took a lot of time and determination and today I still have to learn a lot, but I finally acquired the basic technical skills to be able to express my creative ideas fairly accurately and in a sharable way. It would have been so much harder to learn that software a decade ago for many reasons (less documentation and tutorials online, less intuitive UI, more limitations, etc.), but I still had a lot of trouble anyway doing it in more recent times, as is normal for every beginner.
+
+All the **trial and error** and **friction** required to learn how to use Ableton was, in my initial view, a **limit to accessing the creative freedom**<span class="tooltip">`*`<span class="tooltiptext">by "creative freedom" I mean the flexibility of expressing anything creative coming from inside yourself</span></span> I was searching for, while in reality it all was beneficial in the end: these limits led me to **better understand what I wanted to create** and got me **involved in the work much more**. The limitations and challenges encountered along the way motivated me to **improve my skills and competencies**.
+
+For example, listening to a lot of music from talented people and trying many times to recreate what they achieved (or reach their level of "perfection"), which was often tedious and/or hard to do, made me more aware of the limits and possibilities in the world of music and forced me to learn new skills. This was the "_creative_ experience" I had obtained.
+
+## Improvement through experience is required to achieve great outcomes
+
+Creative ideas within your mind are almost never "the final product", the thing you actually want to achieve. First, you need to make a rough version and then start to improve on it, perhaps even changing your original idea with something radically different.
+
+You might need several iterations of an idea before it finally clicks. As said by the content creator NeatOnTheRocks in this [video]([https://youtu.be/1nHxaqNFpCU?t=1420](https://youtu.be/1nHxaqNFpCU?t=1420)), "*improving at your craft means you're able to make more intentional choices and more accurately express yourself*", and that improvement, even to the smallest extent, is always necessary.
+
+Only through research, making mistakes, overcoming difficulties and comparing your results with those of others, do you shape and refine your idea in what becomes the artist's work that everyone can enjoy.
+
+This set of experiences is what allows humans to create great things.
+
+> "Good outcomes require good taste, and good taste requires plenty of experience in the field you are working on." — me :)
+
+But why did I reference a time before the generative AI revolution?
+
+## Inexperience and AI
+
+Keeping in mind the context of what I've said in the previous examples, I'm slightly worried about something. I fear that from now on, in the face of the seemingly infinite possibilities that the generative AI models are going to offer (from text to image generation), humans will start to encounter fewer limits and obstacles due to imprudent automation. This will cause a decline in the number of people with experience and proficiency in creative skills, which are necessary and fundamental to express their ideas to their full potential, and consequently, creative freedom and variety will diminish.
+
+As AI becomes increasingly proficient at generating content, there's a risk that humans will rely on it too heavily, given our overall laziness, eroding our own creative abilities and technical proficiency in the content we enjoy the most.
+
+Indeed, while AI can simplify some aspects of the creative process, it is important to recognize that true creativity arises from a balanced combination of knowledge, experience, innovation, and an extensive understanding of the fundamental principles of human emotions.
+
+Although AI will reduce the skill barriers to self-expression (meaning, it becomes easier to make creative work that tries to reflect what someone wants to express), there will be nothing substantial to express about oneself without first having acquired relevant experience with traditional means (the "old" way).
+
+Picture an independent, beginner filmmaker who relies on AI to make a movie. Let me give him a name, like John, for the sake of clarity. In the hypothetical situation that John lacks the technical (and non-technical) expertise and experience of professionals, the AI would handle the various aspects of filmmaking for him, while John would feel empowered to focus more on creative storytelling and his artistic vision. However, being so inexperienced, John would not be able to make an interesting, non-trivial or even decent movie, because lacking knowledge leads to a barely decent creation at best.
+
+You could argue that a **_filmmaker doesn't need to know all the tools and technical details in order to make great movies_**. After all, a team of other people or AI tools would handle the technical part for him.
+
+However, making a good work is not just about mere technical proficiency, but also the ability to make informed decisions about your creation, which relies heavily on your own **understanding of the medium**.
+
+Without a solid grasp of the fundamental principles of filmmaking (just like any other creative field), like storytelling conventions, camera techniques, editing principles, etc., John may struggle to make a story that resonates with his public, or even evokes any emotional response at all.
+
+Also, I think **considering technical proficiency secondary to creativity is simply wrong**:
+
+* a photographer who understands and masters the principles of exposure, composition, and lighting can capture photographs that more effectively convey mood, emotion, and narrative depth, compared to the "*point and shoot*" approach of a beginner.
+* a music producer (like me) who understands well their DAW and the various concepts of music theory (melody, harmony, rhythm…), can create polished and interesting songs that convey emotion with more clarity and depth.
+* a graphic designer who knows how to use layers, filters, typography and so on effectively allows them to produce visually beautiful and clean designs.
+
+You get the idea.
+
+All this to say that, at least from what I'm currently seeing, beginners will try to skip to the top by empowering themselves with AI. In reality, they'll have to _work their way up the ladder_ if they want to achieve success through their creative work, like everyone has done so far.
+
+**_P.S.: I know this is a long and not very cohesive post, so here's a little AI-generated TLDR that sums it all up well, being accurate to what my thoughts are_**:
+
+### TLDR;
+
+* Before the generative AI revolution, beginners faced obstacles that forced them to develop specific skills, enhancing their creative abilities over time
+* This has led to more meaningful artistic expressions
+* AI presents a potential threat to human creativity, as reliance on it might lead to a decline in creative freedom and technical proficiency
+* Without prior experience and skill development, reliance on AI may result in superficial expressions devoid of substance.
+
+<span class="caption">Post thumbnail generated with Microsoft Designer Image Creator.</span>