AI and Creativity

Jack Conte, the founder & CEO of Patreon and half of the musical duo Pomplamoose, just gave a keynote about his take on AI, comparing decades-old responses to new technologies with the new technology of today.

Why I'm (sort of) not worried about AI - Jack Conte

It’s a well-delivered and thought-provoking speech, and it left me quite optimistic about AI not necessarily being the killer of creativity it’s sometimes thought to be. I would urge you all to watch the video and draw your own conclusions.

In the video, Jack makes a good point about Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, one of the greatest albums of all time. He makes the argument that it’s not about how the album sounds, but rather the story it tells, the fact that Kendrick Lamar lived it, made it through and is the one telling the story.

In recent years, I’ve listened to fewer albums, so the cultural significance of why some songs become popular over others is reduced to “this sounds good”. The way in which we consume art plays a huge role in our perception of it. I don’t listen to songs because I appreciate the art anymore, but rather because I think they sound good.

Why does this matter?

Why indeed? I wouldn’t listen to songs if they sounded bad, but there are so many songs that all sound good, so why do I pick certain ones and not others?

If I think about my favourite albums or songs, I like them because I can connect to them in some way. I love No More Idols by Chase & Status, but why? Yes, I like the tunes, the beats and the lyrics, but I feel a deeper connection to it as well. It’s from London; they collaborate with British artists. It captures an instant and a feeling I had back in 2011 when it came out. It takes me back to a different time.

The human experience I’ve lived in my life and get to experience through the album are specifically why I like the album so much.

There are artists that I don’t like (and won’t name) that sound like clones of other artists. Rappers might copy flows, topics, bravado and appearance. Sometimes there is an evolution, but unless it connects with enough people, it ends up just being a worse version of the original.

AI is the same thing. If all you’re doing is using it to make a facsimile of something that exists, it’s not likely that you’ve done anything interesting or different enough to actually capture the attention of a new audience.

What is the orchestra of today?

Going back to Jack Conte’s video, he shows that before the invention of the synthesizer, orchestras dominated the Top 10 musical charts and even lobbied to ban its release, lobbying the public about how much worse “canned music” was. Skip to a few decades later, the synthesizer made up most of the Top 10, and there wasn’t an orchestra in sight.

AI today is an exponential shift. It doesn’t just impact musicians. In fact, it pretty much impacts everything. You can produce visual art with AI, musical art, cinematic art, you name it.

AI is an incredible tool, however, and it will be transformative to the workflow of many different kinds of artists. Being able to iterate in a multimodal space is truly transformative. Take the task of testing out concepts, for example: storyboarding for a film, setting up a shot, rephrasing prose or, in software engineering, testing out multiple different UIs or solutions to find the best fit.

I can speak from experience as a software engineer that it wasn’t always feasible to test these things out beforehand. You might be lucky. You could have a frontend or design team that can provide their opinions, but the decision of whether to roll out different versions to users and get live feedback has always been a trade-off.

I think the biggest orchestra of today is the process.

Process

Let me explain. The synth was a new way of creating music and was attacked for “killing music”. We’ve moved so far beyond that now, with autotune for vocals and fully electronic music creation. The synth didn’t change music - it added a whole new way of creating music.

The reason I say that process is the orchestra is because it’s not the art being created that’s at risk, it’s the way in which that art is created that is changing.

Much like the orchestra being the incumbent method by which music was being created, AI has the potential to change every aspect of the process of creating. From ideation through to implementation, promotion and more, AI isn’t just the canvas or the brush - it will expand to fill as much room as it is given. It’s up to the artist to intervene.

Artistic Process

Artists talk about their artistic processes often. Some have a retreat where they go to be locked away from the outside world. Some artists make use of mind-altering substances. Everyone’s different, but until recently, AI has never been a part of it. Sometimes, an artist will need help to create their works. AI is now a new tool that enables them.

When you look at an AI artwork, instead of dismissing it as slop, try to think about what prompt they used to make it. What LoRAs had to be trained to get that particular look? Why did they choose that look? These are the questions people will start to ask.

In real life, human painting, there are choices of medium, material, subject and scale. Before, these choices were restricted by the artist’s particular skillset and resources, whereas today, many of these hurdles are overcome through the use of AI. Of course, this can lead to “slop”, but this has always been a thing (see below).

Artists not only have tools to help them create, but also to help them think, plan and imagine. It is up to the artist to use or abuse this new paradigm. Like Jack Conte, I’m optimistic that great artists will use this to create things that they believed were beyond what they thought they could achieve.

Great art can use AI to become great, but it’s the artistic vision and realisation of the idea that will constitute the greatness of the art - not the use of AI.

On “slop”

Take clip art, for example. There used to be artists and designers who designed computer graphics and sold them on floppy disks. Where is it today? Does the world mourn at their demise?

In this video, Linus Boman gives a history of clip art and the forces (or force) that led to its downfall. Bad AI artwork that calls itself art is just clip art rearing its head again.

Linus Boman discusses the rise and fall of clip art.Why Clip Art Was Everywhere... Until It Wasn't - Linus Boman

An aside, on Company Processes

Interestingly, while this makes me think that I can be optimistic about AI’s interaction with creativity, it is directly at odds with our perception of what a “well-run” company looks like.

For companies, I’ll lean on Lenz’s Law from Physics for an analogy. If a magnet is dropped through a metal tube, it falls much more slowly than something non-magnetic, like a rock. It’s not because gravity is weaker - it’s that a current is induced by the falling magnet, which provides a force against gravity.

Process in a company is like Lenz’s Law. It is a mechanism for resisting (and being more resilient) to changes happening outside. It’s the daily stand-up, the weekly meeting, the monthly team meeting, etc. It’s the hierarchy for signing off on certain decisions.

A company’s process is an orchestra of people and rules that act to keep the ship stable. AI is a new tool that disrupts this because how can you build a proper process when the thing it is legislating on changes so rapidly?

I believe we still haven’t seen a truly AI-native company. If an agent team can have a mixture of experts working together to perform a task, why do companies still have departments? Maybe Posthog’s small team rule is the closest I’ve seen, but I believe there is still room for more innovation here.

The team structure that scales - Posthog CEOThe team structure that scales - Posthog CEO

But this article isn’t about businesses - so I’ll save that thought for another day.