Human history is full of fears that new technologies and discoveries would cause human abilities that seemed desirable at the time to disappear. These abilities were also often equated as representative of a person’s character or the moral values of a society. As one example of many, the Greek philosopher Socrates (469-399 BC) said in one of his critiques that this newfangled stuff, called writing, would promote forgetfulness.
In Phaedrus, Socrates recounts how the god Theut, who is said to have brought mankind a number of inventions, praised his latest invention, writing, to the Egyptian king Thamus as a means of improving understanding and memory. This would make the Egyptians wiser and richer in memory. But according to Socrates, Thamus wanted nothing to do with this and replied that, on the contrary, the scriptures would instill forgetfulness in the reader through neglect of the memory.
Over the centuries and millennia, such fears of skills being lost or the imminent moral and thus civilizational collapse have been repeated. Books that would cause hysteria, especially among women. Comics that could have a negative impact on children’s young minds. Radio, television, video games or Tik Tok videos that would lead young people down a questionable path. Bicycles that would give (young) women greater scope for independence and thus remove them from the control of their parents, husbands or guardians, and would remove them from seduction.
During my studies, an old professor of inorganic chemistry at the Vienna University of Technology told us students that the younger generation would no longer be doing all the chemical experiments that he did in his youth – and had cost him several fingers in the process. He didn’t want to admit that the younger generation had to spend time programming modern analysis devices and therefore had to manage their time. For him, we were not “real chemists”.
Let’s just recall what other supposedly civilizing and character-building skills would be on the verge of regrettable disappearance. How to operate a rotary dial telephone, or shift gears in a car with manual transmission, or use a pencil for an audio cassette.
We admired the skills of people who could memorize poems. For centuries, memorization was an important element in our school system and still is to this day, although its usefulness is increasingly being questioned and creative skills are more important instead. In the Arab-Islamic world, the recitation of the Koran by memory only, also know as Qira’at, is highly valued. People who can recite the 7,000 verses by heart and often work towards them for years are celebrated like pop stars.
In the early 18th and 19th centuries, arithmetic geniuses were still celebrated as mathematical geniuses. Leonhard Euler (1775 – 1836), Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777 – 1855) and André-Marie Ampère (1775 – 1836) were among those who later became famous mathematicians. They were able to perform great feats of mental arithmetic.
But that changed in the late 19th and then 20th century. Great mathematicians were rarely good mental calculators, and good mental calculators were even less likely to become good mathematicians. Mental arithmetic was seen as a mechanical task that could be performed by machines. These mental calculators became the stuff of vaudeville performances and superior computing ability was no longer associated with human intelligence.
Many professions that perform mechanical tasks similar to those performed by head computers, such as notaries, lawyers or traders, and perform no more than an interface function, are – unsurprisingly – most threatened by the latest technology, artificial intelligence. Completely unexpected, but also creative. Creativity and language have so far been cited as some of the characteristics that distinguish us humans from animals and machines.
But is it really so surprising that this is now being called into question? After all, almost 30 years ago, a machine demonstrated that it could beat the world champion in a game that served as an indicator of high intelligence and creativity. I’m talking about chess, of course. Not even 20 years later, it was Go.
And now creativity and creative work have been hit? To do this, we need to understand how creativity is defined. The British cognitive scientist Margaret Boden roughly differentiated between three forms:
- the combinatorial creativity that brings together two styles, for example (tango paired with electronic music = electro tango);
- explorative creativity, which explores all peripheral areas of researched areas (after the blue period, the red period).
- the rarest form is transformative creativity, which changes our frame of thinking. We can cite the introduction of the theory of relativity or twelve-tone music as examples.
According to Boden, the first two forms are responsible for more than 99% of creative creations, while the last form is so rare that we don’t really know how it works.
It turns out that combinatorial and explorative creativity has a lot in common with mechanical thinking. And that is what we are now experiencing with generative AI. Broken down precisely, the supposedly creative work resembles quite mechanistic work. The design of a work of art or a scientific experiment may be the creative part, but then it becomes mechanical. Drawing lines, coloring, testing combinations of materials to find the ideal filament, catalyst or electrolyte are rather monotonous activities that no longer require much brain power. During the creative act, small creative decisions are of course constantly being made. The hand more to the left or right? The pose more this way or that? This shade or color or that shade? An ornament around the window or rather naked?
A not inconsiderable proportion of creatives do not really seem to be able to maintain the level of creativity and are content to continue with a style or successful formula once they have found it. Be it the same style, the same idyllic motifs, the same role in film and television, or the same niche in the scientific field.
If the machine can do this not only better but also faster, what is the value of the ability to create a painting, a sculpture, to compose a piece of music, to explore the next unexplored axiom at the edge of one’s scientific discipline? Will they end up like the mental calculators, who now only demonstrate this ability in variety shows but are otherwise regarded as circus freaks? Or are they just seen as suppliers of creative raw data for machines?
Has this tone become a little too pessimistic? Yes, machines are faster, stronger and think better than humans, but we still watch sports competitions and follow chess tournaments with interest. I dare say we will continue to attend concerts, stroll through galleries and museums, and listen to readings if we meet people there who are creative and show outstanding achievements of any kind.