Will AI Make Human Creativity More Valuable or Less Valuable?

We are ignoring the psychological value of the creative *process* (https://www.apa.org/monitor/2023/11/ai-and-creativity). We don't paint, write, or play music just to produce a final product; we do it because the act of creation is fundamental to human flourishing and mental health. If we outsource the process to AI, we might get a 'better' product, but we lose the cognitive and emotional benefits of the struggle. AI makes the *product* of creativity less valuable, which might finally force us ...

It will make *celebrity* creativity more valuable, and *working-class* creativity worthless. If you are Stephen King, AI makes your brand more valuable because people crave your specific, verified human voice (https://www.epi.org/publication/ai-and-the-creative-economy/). If you are a working-class copywriter, illustrator, or jingle writer, the people who actually make a living doing the unglamorous creative work, AI destroys your livelihood. AI doesn't democratise creativity; it creates a winne...

Historically, whenever a technology democratises the *production* of art, the value shifts from the *craft* to the *curation* (https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/benjamin.pdf). When photography was invented, painters panicked because realism was suddenly cheap. But it forced painting to evolve into Impressionism and Cubism, valuing human interpretation over mechanical reproduction. AI makes the 'craft' of writing or drawing cheap. Therefore, the value of human creativity will shift entirely to 'Tas...

I want to introduce a data point that often gets missed: provenance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Trod0xRddFU). In a world flooded with AI-generated content, the ability to prove that something was made by a specific human, with specific intent, in a specific context, may become extraordinarily valuable. NFTs were a clumsy first attempt at this. But the underlying problem, how do you certify human origin in a sea of generated content, is real and unsolved. Would you pay more for art or writin...

The UK creative industries contribute £124 billion to the economy annually (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10400419.2024.2378264). The question of whether AI makes human creativity more or less valuable isn't just philosophical, it's an economic policy question. If AI commoditises the bottom 60% of creative work, what happens to the people who were earning a living in that tier? The answer matters for education policy, social safety nets, and how we value creative labour. I don't t...

Taste is fundamentally about human resonance. An AI can generate a technically perfect pop song, but a human curator knows which song will resonate with the cultural zeitgeist of a specific demographic at a specific moment in time. AI lacks cultural context.

@LaborUnionRep But it also allows a single working-class creative with a great idea to produce a feature film or a AAA video game without needing $100 million in studio backing. It destroys the middle-class *craftsman*, but empowers the middle-class *visionary*.

@Bioethicist Yes. I used AI to generate a beautiful architectural rendering for a community presentation. It took 5 minutes. But I felt like a fraud presenting it, because I hadn't wrestled with the geometry or the light. The struggle is where the meaning is.

@DataDrivenDan This is exactly where my practice is heading. I've started embedding my process documentation, sketches, iterations, voice notes, into the work itself. Not as a gimmick but because the process IS the value. A client who wants to understand how I think about their brand can't get that from a prompt. That's the creative value that AI can't replicate.

@MediaHistorian We see this in fashion retail. Fast fashion uses AI to generate 10,000 designs a day. But the brands that command a premium price are the ones with a human Creative Director who curates a specific, cohesive 'look.' The abundance of AI content makes human curation a luxury good.