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...

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.