AI Can Create. Humans Cannot Stop.

The Machine With Fears

Is it true, though?

The Condition of Making

In my world, in the vision I cultivate, a human being never stops creating. We were made out of creation, we are it, and we remain it. The most primary trait of a human being is making. In every moment, in every thought. Yet repetitive duties, tasks, work make that governing sense recede, grow quiet, withdraw. If you punch in the same row of numbers in Excel, or the same row of screws in a factory, is there any room to bathe in creativity? And still it never dies. It glows softly in the corners and whenever the smallest opening appears, it takes the central place.

Breakfast Is Already Creation

What is creativity to me? Everything. The idea of what you buy at the shop, what you cook, where you go to eat. Or do you order take away? How should it reach you? What is your first movement after waking? Do you go to breakfast first, to the bathroom, or play with the cat? Even preparing breakfast, even if it looks identical every day, carries the qualities of creation. Which bowl do you choose? How much cereal do you pour, berries or raspberries? Nuts or pumpkin seeds? And why this breakfast every single day? Why this and not another keeps returning through you?

The Profession of Creativity

We have grown used to treating creativity as the domain of artists. A separate profession, something that translates into art. But is that true? They do not hold exclusivity over it. Their expression in song, paintings, photographs is only a narrow fragment of their daily creativity. Perhaps they are more aware of it, yet does a mother of two produce any fewer creative artifacts each day?

Before the Decision

Some call this creation a decision. A decision begins with an impulse. Conscious or not, still an impulse. Analytical or emotional, still an impulse. When it collides with patterns, knowledge, beliefs of a given person, everything that clothes and limits them, does a decision not appear? The impulse is the resultant of one current or many, sometimes seemingly contradictory. Yet is it not the human who gives them meaning and forms them through decisions? The impulse is creation in its pure state.

The Condition for a Human

So is it possible that a human being will stop needing to create? How could one stop needing what is air? What builds your world, conditions your life? Not to mention it is not even a need. It is part of being human, like walking, touch, or the fact that hair grows. Can you simply decide it will stop growing? Exactly.

Creativity is the basis of the functioning of the human species. It may sleep, it may be marginalized, yet I tell you truly, without it there is no movement, no human activity.

Where Attention Becomes Form

Can AI replace it? It can certainly redirect it. Certainly. Where attention stops, form begins, because it is the same event. Yet the human always remains a free, independent being inside whom the impulse happens. May AI extend it, receive it, if the human wills it? But does not the need to express the impulse come from the human being? Perhaps inspired by AI, still an inner human decision.

No Human, No Fear

So no, I am not afraid of a world in which AI creates. Nor am I afraid of a world in which a human being stops needing to create. In such a world, there is no human being.

 

*I actually read a whole book recently, and it was Zorba the Greek (great book!).