Home > Posts > AI and the Destruction of Creativity

A couple of months ago, a friend of a friend posted a screenshot of a tweet on Facebook. (It seems to me that it doesn’t really matter which social media site gestates posts like these—sooner or later they’ll end up on your feed.) It’s taken me awhile to articulate exactly why this tweet bugged me so much. Since ChatGPT use and abuse have skyrocketed in the last few years, I’ve seen hundreds of posts criticizing AI, and for good reason. I’ve seen the impact firsthand. When I read that tweet, I was employed as a teaching assistant, which meant grading dozens of essays—dozens of AI-assisted essays.

It’s easy to tell, albeit difficult to prove, which students use AI. ChatGPT has a distinctive voice. You learn to listen for it after awhile, like you listen for the voice of your beloved leaping over the mountains (though with rather a different kind of anticipation). And AI often confidently recites information that sounds right, but just isn’t true—sometimes providing references to and even halfway-convincing summaries of texts that do not exist. Those are the most obvious giveaways. But what frustrates me most isn’t the lifeless style or even the misinformation that AI imparts on student writing. I am concerned with the writing itself.

“Writing” is a term I use generously. AI cannot reflect. AI cannot analyze. AI cannot argue. AI cannot play with words or take delight in the nuances and subtleties of language. AI cannot provide anything more than a surface summary of a work’s main ideas and perhaps an overview of the work’s historical significance. Sure, it can put one sentence after another, but AI cannot write.

Neither can my students.

The professor I answered to had been having this problem even before generative AI became widespread. The students’ only assignments were reflection papers, but he couldn’t get them to reflect. They’d regurgitate the material. They’d summarize. They’d evaluate the text based on whether they liked it or not. But they wouldn’t—and perhaps couldn’t—engage on a deeper level. Thematic analysis? Real-world significance? Forget it.

And he wasn’t alone. When I still lived at home, my dad—a well-seasoned college professor—would squint at a stack of bluebooks and grumble about the essays. His students didn’t know how to use paragraphs, he said. They didn’t know how to write topic sentences or transition between ideas. He couldn’t evaluate their grasp of the material because they couldn’t articulate it in writing. They didn’t know how.

A natural conclusion is that students don’t know how to write because they aren’t being taught. To me, that is not a satisfactory explanation, and it places undue blame on teachers. If that were the reason, students would be leaving their freshman composition classes with a thorough understanding of the writing process—but they aren’t. So what’s the problem?

It’s worse. Students lack far more than ability to write. They don’t believe writing is important in the first place.

It’s not surprising. The arts and humanities in general—not just English—are the butt of the scholastic joke. Some Twitter user quips about literature majors working at Starbucks. Senator Marco Rubio declares the world needs “more welders and less [sic] philosophers.” An acquaintance announces they “don’t need to know history” to opine on an issue of international relations. Schools around the world cut music and theater classes to free the budget for a STEM curriculum. The message, broadcast over and over again, is that these disciplines are unnecessary—pointless—a waste of time—even a detriment to society. Is it any wonder that when we assign writing to our students, they only see busywork? Why wouldn’t they delegate it to their AI subordinate, then, and free up their schedules for more important things?

The AI crisis, then, is a response to an insidious and persistent devaluing of the humanities. Mr. Owl’s tweet has reversed cause and effect.

Though I agree that reclaiming the abilities to create and to think critically is imperative, especially when the internet is so rife with propaganda and misinformation, I hesitate to attribute AI use and the widespread disparagement of the humanities to a “concerted effort to drive people towards fascism.” A “concerted effort” implies the deliberate action of a conspiracy. Suggesting, based on a feeling, that there is a conspiracy does not promote critical thinking.

Addionally, I don’t believe maintaining intellect and imagination requires the total eschewal of AI. I don’t mean to dismiss concerns about plagiarism, theft, and copyright infringement—those are real and documented problems—and, since AI is derivative by nature, I don’t believe it capable of generating anything worthwhile on its own. However, smaller LLMs with specific training data can be used as material for innovative and thought-provoking art projects, such as Diemut Strebe’s The Prayer. I think it’s a mistake to assume that all AI is the same and that all possible uses of it are detrimental.

If boycotting AI doesn’t solve the problem, then what does?

I think rejecting the notion that something has to be practical to be valuable is key. When students ask questions like “Why should I bother learning about poetry when I’m going to be an engineer?” or “Why should I learn to write essays when it’ll never be relevant to my life again?” I can rattle off a list of practical reasons. They’ll think more critically. They’ll develop empathy. They’ll be better at problem solving. They’ll become persuasive speakers. So on and so forth. But apologizing for arts and humanities like they need to be anchored to more “useful” disciplines does nothing to challenge the presupposition that they’re worthless by themselves. I want my students to know not only that reading, learning, and creating are pleasurable and beautiful, but that the pleasure and the beauty are worthwhile for their own sake. They are, as Mr. Owl puts it, the best that life has to offer.

So learn things. Make things. Revel in the joy of discovery. You don’t need any other reason to do it.