I love this Scott - you inspired me to try the remote associates test (RAT) with AI and it crushed it. Then I asked it to create the most creative and challenging RAT item and this was it:
Sight • Wind • Nature
It took me a couple minutes to solve it. Then I asked it for the most creative sentence ever and it was pure cringe: "Consciousness is the universe remembering that every boundary is a useful fiction, so that through countless finite lives it can discover, by freely choosing truth over comfort, that the deepest form of power is to become the kind of being capable of loving reality exactly as it is while never ceasing to transform it." This is so interesting. Compared to Dylan (not cringe): "Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet"
hahah yes!! This is consistent with the idea in the creativity literature that the RAT is actually a measure of convergent thinking, not divergent thinking!!!
I don't use AI for specific language or editing (I created a set of principles for myself to govern my use of it. One of them is "AI should never speak for you"), but one thing I have found it occasionally useful for is to put an entire essay into Claude and ask "Where does this drag? Where does it get boring?" Sometimes I take its answer into account, other times I ignore it, but it can help offer me a new lens to reconsider something I've written and if there's a better way to say it.
btw, here are my principles if you're interested... had some musicians very angry at me for even considering using it all, but I've found these principles to be helpful. Curious if you'd add or take away any of them!
You are correct, AI is not creative, it is a only a tool that regurgitates information that is gathered from a vast pool of information called the internet! We can use AI but, bear in mind that the user must be the editor, the verifier of accuracy and judge of acceptance because AI has no idea if what it puts out is good, bad or ugly!
I see AI as the "yes and" improv partner to help communicate a unique idea better, but when we ask for it to own the origin of creativity, it simply can't. When the audiences' value comes from the human story, AI is at best the assistant.
Hmm, what I learned from this article is that I have terrible creative taste, because I like the sentence about fireflies. Especially the part about the dark being honest.
I have used AI for two projects I am working on currently. One is the drafting of a memoir and the other, tweaking a novel I wrote and did nothing with. I am a conventionally published self-help author whose book was recognized by the" Library Journal."Anyway, I started with Open AI, broke up with it, and moved on to Copilot. It seemed to understand my work is supposed to be literary, not commercial. But one day, I was not thinking when it asked if it should "polish" the chapter, I agreed to it. And then, I read it. I asked it afterward, "would you like to read three hundred pages written like this?"It admitted it wouldn't. Having said that, I'm like the battered woman with regard to Copilot. I go back, it is nice for awhile, and I think we have a great relationship again. After being complimentary, it turns on me, and I become so confused.
It is not capable of creativity because it is not changed by encounter. The model is unchanged, and the only interaction is in the scope of a session.
Creativity is not the process of creation nor the output of ideas, it is the prior encounter that shapes the creator.
I love this Scott - you inspired me to try the remote associates test (RAT) with AI and it crushed it. Then I asked it to create the most creative and challenging RAT item and this was it:
Sight • Wind • Nature
It took me a couple minutes to solve it. Then I asked it for the most creative sentence ever and it was pure cringe: "Consciousness is the universe remembering that every boundary is a useful fiction, so that through countless finite lives it can discover, by freely choosing truth over comfort, that the deepest form of power is to become the kind of being capable of loving reality exactly as it is while never ceasing to transform it." This is so interesting. Compared to Dylan (not cringe): "Ain't it just like the night to play tricks when you're trying to be so quiet"
hahah yes!! This is consistent with the idea in the creativity literature that the RAT is actually a measure of convergent thinking, not divergent thinking!!!
I don't use AI for specific language or editing (I created a set of principles for myself to govern my use of it. One of them is "AI should never speak for you"), but one thing I have found it occasionally useful for is to put an entire essay into Claude and ask "Where does this drag? Where does it get boring?" Sometimes I take its answer into account, other times I ignore it, but it can help offer me a new lens to reconsider something I've written and if there's a better way to say it.
Great use of Claude.
btw, here are my principles if you're interested... had some musicians very angry at me for even considering using it all, but I've found these principles to be helpful. Curious if you'd add or take away any of them!
https://soundfly.substack.com/p/12-principles-for-using-ai-as-an
You are correct, AI is not creative, it is a only a tool that regurgitates information that is gathered from a vast pool of information called the internet! We can use AI but, bear in mind that the user must be the editor, the verifier of accuracy and judge of acceptance because AI has no idea if what it puts out is good, bad or ugly!
I see AI as the "yes and" improv partner to help communicate a unique idea better, but when we ask for it to own the origin of creativity, it simply can't. When the audiences' value comes from the human story, AI is at best the assistant.
Fucking amen, brother
Hmm, what I learned from this article is that I have terrible creative taste, because I like the sentence about fireflies. Especially the part about the dark being honest.
I have used AI for two projects I am working on currently. One is the drafting of a memoir and the other, tweaking a novel I wrote and did nothing with. I am a conventionally published self-help author whose book was recognized by the" Library Journal."Anyway, I started with Open AI, broke up with it, and moved on to Copilot. It seemed to understand my work is supposed to be literary, not commercial. But one day, I was not thinking when it asked if it should "polish" the chapter, I agreed to it. And then, I read it. I asked it afterward, "would you like to read three hundred pages written like this?"It admitted it wouldn't. Having said that, I'm like the battered woman with regard to Copilot. I go back, it is nice for awhile, and I think we have a great relationship again. After being complimentary, it turns on me, and I become so confused.
Great article and great to see E Paul Torrance in here. Thank god humans are wildly imaginative to counter AI being wildly predictable!