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Claire Ancell

M. Peticolas

Rhetoric 306

15 November 2023

An opinion article addressing the implications of incorporating artificial intelligence into industries

that utilize human creativity, to be published on the AARP website, (https://www.aarp.org/). This

organization provides news for older adults, typically a wealthy demographic who are uniformed about

recent developments in AI. Furthermore, the readers of AARP may also be more conservative in ideology

and opposed to incorporating AI into human industry and everyday life. Furthermore, the opinion article

will be stylized in a similar way to other opinion articles published on AARP, such as referring to the reader

as “you.”

Should Human Creativity Be Protected from AI or Partner with It?

Artificial intelligence has taken the world by storm, especially since the release of AI

chatbot engine, ChatGPT, in November of 2022. The popularity of these artificial intelligence

machines sparked a demand for the creation of similar AI engines with the power to do anything

from carrying on an online conversation, to generating visual art, to creating viable strategies to

be implemented in the human workplace (“Is Artificial Intelligence the Future of Human

Creativity? - RedPeg”). You have probably seen on the news or at least heard in passing exciting

stories of the applications of AI as well as terrifying tales of the dangers of AI, raising an

important controversy within our current society: should humans in creative sectors protect

themselves from AI, or embrace it as a part of the new age of technology? The stakeholders in

this ongoing controversy include creative workers, such as visual artists, writers, or advertisers
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whose jobs and livelihoods appear to be threatened by artificial intelligence, as well as the

consumers of creative products, including individuals such as you, who value the quality of

American art and culture.

Those who wish to restrict AI from being incorporated into creative human industries

seek to protect these industries and the jobs of the humans who work in them. Artificial

intelligence is a new field of technology with incredible capabilities, with special proficiencies in

many categories that have been historically human dominated. Artificial intelligence is faster,

smarter, and more capable than most of the human workforce, allowing it to excel in healthcare

or mass production. Artificial intelligence has also demonstrated some creative abilities in

writing, learning, media, music, visual art, and design (“Is Artificial Intelligence the Future of

Human Creativity? - RedPeg”). This has not only contributed to the long-held belief of many that

AI development should be stopped in its tracks, but also fuels the current movement to prevent

AI from touching human creativity altogether.

The constant discussion of artificial intelligence has likely created feelings of uncertainty

within yourself and your loved ones about not only the future of American society, but also the

welfare of the following generations, and not without reason. You may be apprehensive about

incorporating AI into creative human industries because the American spirit involves an identity

defined by occupation. When your occupation or your children’s occupation is threatened, your

core identity is also threatened. If AI is capable of replacing humans in not only blue-collar jobs,

but creative and white-collar ones as well, then artificial intelligence poses a threat to both the

American dream and the very essence of your moral being. Oftentimes, the media can portray

artificial intelligence in a dystopian manner, with the narrative commonly revolving around

potential “loss of control, privacy, and value” (“Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, and Our
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Fears: A Journey of Understanding and Acceptance”). However, proponents of eliminating the

partnership between human creativity and artificial intelligence will take advantage of your

patriotic fears surrounding AI to distract from the reality that AI is nowhere near the level of

development required to threaten human creativity and can actually improve and augment human

creativity if handled properly.

The argument against artificial intelligence is centered around a general fear of AI,

“rooted in the brain’s response to uncertainty and potential threats” according to an article and

study by NeuroscienceNew.com. Furthermore, your potential apprehensive response to AI can

cause you to view AI as a potential competitor or threat (“Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence,

and Our Fears: A Journey of Understanding and Acceptance”). Those who advocate for

restricting AI development often view the controversy as protecting humanity from a terrifying,

out-of-control, sentient AI. This, however, is a logical fallacy, that can be traced back to an

inaccurate perspective of artificial intelligence perpetuated by popular media and science fiction,

like George Orwell’s 1984 or The Terminator (1984).

At the heart of this controversy lies the foundational differences between how human

creativity and AI function. Being creative is one of the most remarkable and unique aspects of

humanity (Goduscheit and Schweisfurth) and cannot be replicated by artificial intelligence. An

article called “From the pyramids to Apollo 11 – can AI ever rival human creativity?” by Tim

Schweisfurth and René Goduscheit, professors of Technology and Innovation studies provides

thorough insight into how AI is able to create. AI innovates by using “generative adversarial

networks (Goduscheit and Schweisfurth). This works through two sub-tasks: generation and

discrimination, where the generator is prompted to produce an image and starts with a random

distribution of pixels, and then the discriminator determines how close the random distribution
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was to the prompt and continues the process until it has produced a response closest to the

prompt (Schweisfurth and Goduscheit). This process is very dysfunctional and inefficient,

making human creative processes still more optimal than automated ones.

Human creativity is the “driving force behind innovation and progress”, allowing humans

to think outside the box and” create novel solutions, pushing the boundaries of what is possible”

(“AI vs Human Creativity: Which One Will Win?”). Human creativity is driven by their

“experience, emotions, and imagination,” as well as “empathy, intuition, and personal

connection” (“AI vs Human Creativity: Which One Will Win?”). Artificial intelligence,

however, relies on algorithms and data inputs, limiting AI’s creative capacity. In simpler terms,

AI can only draw from previous data and is incapable of creating completely new ideas on its

own. It is true that AI excels in industries that involve predictable patterns but is deficient in

unpredictable situations that are common in creative industries. Artificial intelligence also lacks

emotion and empathy, meaning it cannot understand the impact of art or music, rendering it

incapable of creating meaningful products. AI should be allowed to be incorporated into creative

human industries because it is incapable of even replicating, let alone overtaking human

creativity.

Furthermore, using artificial intelligence to augment human creativity will make

incredible innovation and progress possible in the very near future. For example, artificial

intelligence can be of great use to businesses by promoting “out of the box” thinking, evaluating

ideas more efficiently, and facilitating collaboration within a business (Eapen et al). In other

words, AI can be used to fill in the limitations of human creativity. Human bias often limits the

diversity of creativity, and using AI to identify that bias is incredibly beneficial to facilitation

innovation. AI can also increase human efficiency by “overcoming the time and effort needed to
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complete tasks” (“AI vs Human Creativity: Which One Will Win?”). Furthermore, humans are

limited by memory and slow processing of information, and supporting the intake of information

with artificial intelligence can only increase the potency of human creativity. Restricting AI in

creative sectors completely prevents a beautiful interaction between machine and man. In this

process, humans provide the initial ideas, concepts, and experiences while the AI provides the

computational power to process data, make predictions, and assist in the creation of the final

product ((“AI vs Human Creativity: Which One Will Win?”). This process is all the more

desirable knowing that artificial intelligence will not replace human creativity in the long run,

but only augment it. The collaboration of AI and human creativity will not only foster unforeseen

innovation, but also a brighter future for you and your family.

As humanity moves towards a future that is increasingly dependent on artificial

intelligence and automation, human creativity’s value will only increase. Creativity is what sets

humanity apart from machines and allows society to innovate and progress towards a better

future. It is time to stop worrying about whether AI can replace human creativity and start

exploring how the real and automated worlds can collide for unprecedented creative

collaboration.
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Works Cited

Burns, Ed. “What Is Artificial Intelligence (AI)? - AI Definition and How It Works.”

SearchEnterpriseAI, Feb. 2022, www.techtarget.com/searchenterpriseai/definition/AI-

Artificial-Intelligence#:~:text=Artificial%20intelligence%20is%20the%20simulation.

Eapen, Tojin T., et al. “How Generative AI Can Augment Human Creativity.”

Harvard Business Review, 13 June 2023,

https://hbr.org/2023/07/how-generative-ai-can-augment-human-creativity.

“Is Artificial Intelligence the Future of Human Creativity?”

RedPeg, 9 Dec. 2022,

https://redpeg.com/thedirecthit-ai/

Goduscheit, René Chester, and Tim Schweisfurth. “From the Pyramids to Apollo 11 – Can AI

Ever Rival Human Creativity?” The Conversation, 5 Feb. 2020,

theconversation.com/from-the-pyramids-to-apollo-11-can-ai-ever-rival-human-creativity-

131163. Accessed 12 Nov. 2023.

“Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, and Our Fears: A Journey of Understanding and

Acceptance.” Neurosciencenews.com, 23 June 2023, neurosciencenews.com/artificial-

intelligence-fear-neuroscience-23519/#:~:text=Our%20fear%20of%20AI%20is,that

%20might%20outperform%20human%20abilities. Accessed 12 Sept. 2023.

team, AIContentfy. “AI vs Human Creativity: Which One Will Win?”

AIContentfy, AIContentfyOy, 26 May 2023,

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https://aicontentfy.com/en/blog/ai-vs-human-creativity-which-one-will-win#:~:text=Overall

%2C%20AI%20has%20several%20limitations,and%20unpredictability%20of%20human

%20creativity.