AI killing creativity

Rebekah Morton on why we need to stop feeding the monster

“Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed. The word disarmed is strong I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward for humanity.” – Pope Leo XIV

The pope’s encyclical isn’t usually a document that ends up flying around social media, but the 42,000-word “Magnifica Humanitas” that came out on the 25th May has been very well received by many surprised young people, myself included.

I hate Generative AI with a passion. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve brought light dinner conversations about the use of AI to a grinding halt as everyone looks at me and wonders if I need a sedative, and quickly. They think I’m anti-technology or anti-progress; they tell me I’m going to be left behind if I don’t start using AI in my daily life. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t mind getting left behind if the other option is going somewhere I absolutely do not want to go.

Almost every other ad I see is promoting generative AI.
Can’t think of a present for your loved one? Ask Chat GPT!
Can’t write that essay? Ask Gemini!
Want to make up a story for your children? Ask Claude!
Want to get a job? Better put that CV through AI, otherwise the AI that checks your CV won’t like it! Don’t think for yourself or ask a friend or an expert, you idiot. Don’t force yourself to be creative, as every human since the beginning of humanity has done. Instead, ask this monstrous amalgamation of stolen, misused and regurgitated human-made art, words, images and data to throw out something that has no real meaning so you never have to bother with that annoying ‘thinking’ thing ever again.

The tech companies are pushing this on us to an almost suffocating degree; it’s everywhere you look. When you search on Google, it’s the first thing that comes up; it comes along with most software. Images and pictures used in advertising, even small level advertising like schools and churches, have that almost imperceptible, slightly eerie feeling about them – something I can only describe as an artless art. Art without humanity.

Art is the process of creating as much as it is the finished result. Pulling words from your head and ordering and reordering them, or drawing with the fine motor skills, tiny muscles and ideas you’ve trained over the years of your life.

“As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing Bach’s suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.” – Ursula K Le Guin

As a writer, AI irritates me particularly. Could AI write a better article on the dangers of AI than this one that I’m writing? Possibly, but that’s not the point. Why should any of us bother to read something that nobody could be bothered to write?

“If technology promises emancipation, yet produces new forms of global subordination, it stands in contradiction to the fundamental principle of human dignity.” – Pope Leo XIV

I’m not just protesting the hollowing out of creativity. The idea that AI is simple, easy or clean is utter rubbish also. It is exploiting and harming people now, as I write (and you read).

The environmental impact of AI is huge and only getting bigger. On top of energy use, huge amounts of water are needed to cool the data centres. According to a study by MIT, asking Chat GPT a question uses five times more electricity than a normal web search.

As a weapon of war, AI is contributing to the dehumanisation of the already dehumanised. In Gaza, the IDF are using an AI-powered database to identify targets based on their potential links to Hamas. Over 70,000 people, a significant number of them children, have died in Gaza since October 7th 2023. The system is called Lavender, a horribly harmless-sounding name that makes a mockery of the sheer violence it has been used to perpetrate.

Around 60% of generative AI answers are said to be wrong. Put that onto the glaring atrocity of the genocide in Gaza, and you should start feeling very, very sick.
These are human lives. Real breathing, living, loving, learning, hoping, human lives ended by a malfunctioning machine in the foolish hands of tyrants. AI becomes whoever uses it; so when the monsters use it, monstrous it becomes.

At what point do we stop, look around, and decide that this isn’t actually progress? That something that replaces creativity, undermines humanity, and very literally weaponises incompetence might not actually be the best thing?

Generative AI is, first and foremost, a product that needs to be bought and used to be viable. Every time we use AI, even if we don’t pay, we give it more data to work with; we feed the monster. The first step to jamming down the brake on AI is refusing to engage with it. There are, of course, many, many more steps needed, including proper regulation and standards of use, but this one is in our hands right now. Put the AI down and step away, hands where I can see them.