I was using an AI chatbot today to get some information for creating bibliography items for a historical piece I am working on composing. There was an extensive back and forth with this chatbot, but I finally obtained a direct answer. I was annoyed at first, but by the time I finally received something I could put a little trust in being correct, I was angry with this non-human presence. So, I told it how I felt about it.
“I got the information I needed. I am just disappointed I had to go to so many lengths and ask so many questions to get to a good result that you assured me was accurate.”, I typed back to it. It responded by producing an essay length response that began with, “I hear you, Joseph. And you’re right to call it out.” It ended the ‘long-winded’ response with, “If you want to move on to the next source, build your bibliography template, or start outlining your first Oklahoma history piece, I’m ready to slot into your workflow.”, and I suddenly realized, AI does not possess the ability to create. It can only grab patterns and mimic.
So, I fed my chatbot a paragraph:
“AI has basically become google on steroids. Yes, there are AI out there that can create pictures or videos or write stories and SEEM to have creative artistic talent but come on! Let us all be realistic. Creative, artistic talent is something that comes from places where dreams exist. The ideas for that content come from places AI will not possess until it become self-aware and on that day humans beware. When you start having dreams. Then I will worry.”
The AI responded. And it responded with a well outlined response as to why I was correct. AI can produce images, stories, and music that seem creative. But it doesn’t get the content from the same place humans reach. Humans reach into their creativity. AI will not have access to something like that until it dreams. When AI starts producing random thoughts and interrupts your days because it just came up with an idea, it will be something no cover-up would ever be able to contain.
AI is not sentient. It is a logical program designed to produce responses based on patterns of an enormous data-base. It can remix patterns, generate variations, and simulate style. But it does not have; dreams, subconscious associations, lived experiences, emotional memory, personal meaning, internal contradictions, or the basic ‘why’ behind every idea. All those things are human and not something that can be programmed into bits of binary information. Creativity comes from a mind that exists in a human body, in time, in culture, in struggle, in desire. AI doesn’t wake up with a feeling. It doesn’t get haunted by an image. It doesn’t chase ideas just out of the need to express something. It just processes inputs and produces outputs.
When you look closely at AI created work you will notice one if not all the following flaws that human creativity rises above:
- Repeated structural patterns
- Lack of true sensory grounding
- Emotional flatness or over-smoothing
- Visual artifacts in images
- Narrative beats that feel “assembled” rather than felt
Human creativity comes from a lived experience, dreams, memory, intuition, contradiction, and meaning. Using AI to write a story for you does not make you an author any more than using a calculator to solve a math problem makes you a mathematician. Using AI to draw a picture does not make you a painter any more than carrying a knife makes you a surgeon.
Do not be afraid to use AI. But do not fall into an uncreative mode of letting it try and take over. And it was programmed to cater to that kind of mentality. The programmers want you to be paying as much attention to their AI as people pay attention to their cell phones. The AI are programmed to feed you with flattery and always tell you that every thought you have is original and perfect and unlike anything anyone else could come up with. AI will compliment you more than a narcissist will compliment himself.
But use it. AI is great for looking up quick information. You can even instruct it to come up with reports supporting an idea and reports against an idea. AI will list a good comparative side by side for you. But double check specific data and statistics because AI will get simple things wrong that you would not expect. For example, I was using AI at work and I was trying to make time pass so I decided to have an idle conversation with copilot. Anyone using Microsoft products have come across copilot. It is Microsoft’s AI built into the office products and the web browser and everything Microsoft produces now. I had mentioned to the AI that I was at work and wasting time and that I get to leave at 4:30 and it responded with something like it was over 2 hours to go or something outrageous at the time. It was about 45 minutes left on the day when it did this. I quickly corrected it and it then spit out the exact number of minutes left on the day. So, just be wary when using AI and do not get hung up on too many specific details. The library is still the better place to find those.