A3 Argumentative Essay Outline Texts

Topic: Technology and Creativity

Question: Is the technology of Artificial Intelligence (AI) limiting

creativity?

Creative Technology [web page]. University of York, n.d. ([Link]

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TEXT 1

Democratized Creativity: The Evolution And Impact Of AI

Sachin Dev-Duggal
Forbes Magazine
April 9, 2024.
Adapted from:
[Link]
evolution-and-impact-of-ai/?sh=288d65d64a8f

Can artificial intelligence be creative? And can it make us more creative? Already AI is
changing the landscape of innovation and artistic expression. It’s clear we’re finding our way
through a time much like the very early days of the internet—we’re in the “AOL period” of AI.
This comparison highlights the massive changes to come that we can’t yet imagine.

AI has begun to democratize creativity. From enhancing storytelling in Bollywood to

streamlining software development, AI isn’t just a tool—it’s also a catalyst for a new wave of
originality and invention, opening up opportunities for creators worldwide. Clearly, it proposes
huge challenges and a need for careful regulation. But its benefits are not just technological
evolution. It can allow humans to explore further into the endless worlds of imagination.

How AI Is Transforming Creative Fields

AI empowers individuals to bring new ideas to life, without the need for extensive technical
knowledge. It offers humanity the chance to focus on what we do best—dreaming up new
concepts and unlocking our passions—while allowing AI to focus on the technical details.

By turning complex tools into intuitive, personalized conversations, AI allows anyone with an
idea to build software, write lyrics or create videos just by using their voice or typing a quick
message. Conversations are what make us human, and AI’s conversational interface is
what’s really driving the recent AI revolution. For example, this technology is changing the way
software is developed—giving anyone the tools and resources to build apps just by explaining
their app idea. AI can handle routine, boring tasks like removing backgrounds from images,

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freeing up time for designers to concentrate on the artistic elements of their projects. It can
generate 3D models for architects, and it can design characters and create virtual
environments for game developers.

It has the power to personalize content, too, such as by helping filmmakers offer interactive
content based on each viewer’s reactions or preferences. That’s just one way that this
technology can leverage data to give you a better understanding of your target audience and
open a future filled with unique and tailored experiences for tomorrow’s informed and
demanding customers.

Facing The Challenges Of AI

Yes, AI has made great advances over just the past 12 months, but it’s still in the early stages
of development with great potential to grow and evolve. Over the next few years, AI will
become multimodal and more integrated into our lives, enhancing human capabilities and
enabling new forms of expression. This comes with its own challenges, such as the potential
for people to misuse it.

Even while we’re riding this transformative wave, people everywhere will need to come
together to develop strategies to responsibly control AI and use it ethically. The rapid
advances in AI capabilities, from generating human-like text to creating intricate code, only
increase the need for a balanced approach to regulation. Rules for creative industries should
aim not only to grow innovation and protect intellectual property but also to prevent making
inequalities worse, or creating new forms of exploitation.

We stand at a crossroads. AI’s future must evolve to include a nuanced understanding of its
implications, and as we start to use this powerful tool, we must do so with a strong sense of
responsibility and a commitment to the greater good. It’s up to all of us to make sure AI is
developed and regulated wisely.

Helping Humans Transform Their Imagination Into Reality

By offering tools that simplify complex processes, AI empowers people across a range of
industries to turn their vision into reality. For example, in Bollywood, producers are now using
AI to analyze audience reactions, enabling them to refine scripts in a new way. This can put
younger writers who do not have the resources to attend film school on a more level playing

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field with those who do—and improve their chances for long-term success.

Similarly, in software development, AI’s conversational interfaces are breaking down barriers,
enabling people without traditional coding skills to bring their innovative ideas to life. This shift
toward a more inclusive creative landscape isn’t just about making creation easier; it’s about
offering every hopeful new creator (even those who lack the means to access formal training)
a fair shot at success.

Through AI, we’re seeing the dawn of an age where the only limit to success is one’s
imagination. It’s no longer about their ability to use complex software or to break through into
traditional industries. AI is a tool with the power to enhance creativity and innovation. It saves
time and energy for creators by enabling them to focus on what they do best—creating. This is
a revolution that could democratize ingenuity. It is a technology that means you no longer
need tech skills to bring your ideas to life. We’re all living through the age of AI. So while this
tech transforms our lives and jobs, it’s up to all of us to ensure it’s used for good and drives
positive change.

Glossary

catalyst something that speeds up change

ingenuity cleverness in thinking of new ideas and solutions

interface (in IT) a system through which people exchange information with computers

leverage (v) make maximum use of

multimodal (in AI) working with a range of data sources

nuanced including or aware of a range of meaning

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TEXT 2

AI is not killing creativity – it’s enhancing it

Negative thinkers claim artificial intelligence could lead to a decline in human creativity and
innovation, but really it offers a wealth of new ways to improve imagination and creative thinking

Bernard Marr
Raconteur
May 24, 2023
Adapted from: [Link]

AI critics have warned that the growing wave of generative technology, such as ChatGPT,
Bard and Dall-E 2, could bring in an age of declining human creativity and innovation.

Today, it’s true that AI-generated art and literature can hardly be called inspiring, moving,
thought-provoking or even very entertaining – the features of great human-created art. Mostly
it is formulaic, bland and, somewhat inevitably, robotic.

But we’re still very much in the early days. One school of thought holds that as technology
evolves and better learns to “understand” the creative process, it will become capable of
creating increasingly sophisticated works. Can we be sure that we will never see AI artwork as
awe-inspiring as that of Michelangelo or poetry as moving as Wordsworth? And if it does,
where does that leave us as humans? Will there be any need (or motivation) for us to express
ourselves creatively? It’s a depressing thought. However, it certainly isn’t one I agree with.
Rather, I believe that AI will amplify and add to our creative abilities in all sorts of amazing
ways. Here’s why:

The role of AI in human creativity

There’s magic in human creativity. By that statement, what I mean is that human creativity
rises beyond normal, everyday experience. What is it that makes a great artist: a writer, poet,
painter, musician or even a film director or video game designer? We can’t know for sure but
the best answer is “everything that makes them human”. It is the interaction of talent, creative
spark and drive (the burning need to express themselves creatively), of the artist’s values,
beliefs and even political leaning … and of many other qualities that machines can’t yet

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emulate.

However, it also requires many more standard, practical qualities that are much easier to
automate. These include the ability to think in a structured way in order to plan and deliver a
piece of art, time management, attention to detail and quality, and even what will make the
artwork sell. After all, many artistic projects of the past 100 years may never have been
completed if someone hadn’t seen a potential to make money and paid the money to make
them happen. Over the centuries, think how many great artists might simply never have had
their chance to shine because they lacked these everyday skills. Now that they can be
automated or delegated to our robot friends, this could stop being an obstacle for many.

Additionally, AI has the ability to process huge amounts of data, drawing together knowledge
from thousands of sources and making it quick and easy to access. This means human artists
have more information from which to draw inspiration, leading to new ideas they simply may
not have had without this collaborative partnership.

The democratisation of creativity

The flip-side of this is just as interesting and exciting. Humans who may lack the mechanical
skills of creativity – the ability to paint well, or to structure prose in a readable way, or to write
the code for the ground-breaking video game that so far exists only in their head – might also
find themselves set free. Now anyone who simply has a good idea can have AI add the details
and bring it to life. Even if they don’t want to put out something created by AI as their finished
product, it can help with getting to the prototyping, first-drafting or pencil-sketch stage, which
may have previously been too big a challenge.

I also believe that, even when a computer does generate the finished output, it’s the human
input that makes a simple picture, sound or piece of text different from a work of art. Tools like
Stable Diffusion and Dall-E 2 can create technically well-drawn images – a picture of a horse
that is recognisably a horse, say. And ChatGPT can write a story about a horse. But a human
artist is needed to give it context, meaning and artistic value. Is the image supposed to simply
show us what a horse looks like? Or is it meant to convey the beauty and power of horses, as
in the work of George Stubbs or Alfred Munnings? Is a piece of writing simply meant to
educate us on the qualities of a horse, or tell an exciting adventure story like Black Beauty?
The human artist makes these decisions and in doing so shapes and defines the artistic
creation.

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AI as a creative tool

So, it seems clear to me that AI’s role is not to replace human creativity but to assist and
augment it. By handling the repetitive or technical elements of creativity, it can free the artist to
focus on the specific elements of creativity where they excel, or that they truly love.

Another factor is that just like other tools, AI can be thought of as a way to speed up tasks that
the artist would be able to do anyway if they had enough time. This allows humans to explore
a wider range of creative ideas and opportunities in a shorter span of time. There’s no reason
to believe Shakespeare’s plays would have been any less creative if he’d had AI to help him,
but he might have written hundreds of them, rather than a mere 39.

AI can also be a hammer to smash through creative blocks, a torch to light the creative spark,
or a shovel to dig up buried sources of inspiration! Of course, any exploration of the ways that
AI will impact the future of society and humanity has to take into account some ethical
considerations. It’s possible that AI could lead artists to unknowingly infringe copyright, as the
sources of information that are included in its output are not always clear.

There’s also the question of authorship and attribution. At what point does the artist assign
authorship to the AI? Is the initial idea, or spark, enough to claim that the finished work is a
product of the author’s artistry? Or should a portion of the credit (and profits) go to the creator
of the AI, or the source of the information it was trained on? And how can we ensure that
access to the democratising impact of AI is available to everyone and not confined to a
privileged, tech-aware social elite? This would be likely to lead to further inequality and
growing societal divisions.

Answers to these problems are likely to emerge as the shape of AI’s impact on the world
becomes apparent over the coming years. But overall, my belief is that rather than replace
human creativity, human creatives will find it an increasingly useful tool and ally.

Glossary

attribution a statement of who is the creator, such as a citation

delegate hand on (a job)

formulaic made following a standard procedure

TEXT 3
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 Will AI kill our creativity? It could – if we don’t start to value and
protect the traits that make us human

Cameron Shackell
The Conversation
September 28, 2023
Adapted from: [Link]
value-and-protect-the-traits-that-make-us-human-214149

There’s no doubt generative AI’s ability to rapidly produce new texts, images and audio is
shaking up creative jobs. In the long-running Writers Guild of America strike, a key issue was
the guild’s demand that AI be used only as a research tool and not a replacement for writers.
For many creative types, it seems harder to earn a living with AI around. At the same time,
however, AI tools are often seen as a springboard to next-level human creativity. Technologies
such as Anthropic’s chatbot Claude and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E 3 offer a seductive
creative experience. Will these tools help us survive and thrive as a creative species? Or do
they mean the death of creativity as we know it?

What is creativity?

In her book The Creative Mind, cognitive science expert Margaret Boden defines two types of
human creativity. Psychological or personal (p-type) creativity happens when an individual
thinks something for the first time – even if others have thought it separately before. One
example is a child realising that water can take any shape. Basically, p-type creativity is
learning something useful and, in the process, fitting our thoughts with others.

Historical creativity (h-type), on the other hand, happens when an individual thinks something
that has never been thought before. One example would be Archimedes’s “eureka” moment in
the bath, which supposedly led to him discovering the law of specific gravity. The more
someone’s creativity affects other people’s thinking, the more impactful their legacy.

This is why Wandjina rock art in the Kimberley, Homer’s Iliad, Picasso’s Guernica, Frank Lloyd
Wright’s Fallingwater house and Einstein’s Annus Mirabilis papers are all considered
exceptional, important works from exceptional humans; they continue to shape our thinking.

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Generative AI doesn’t belong in either category

AI obviously has the potential to promote both p-type and h-type creativity. It can lead us to
insights about biology, history and mathematics, and help us create texts and images that may
be useful or thought-provoking. But there is one key difference between human creativity and
AI-driven creativity: AI creativity doesn’t grow from the evolutionary clash of mind and world.

AI models don’t contain reality. They rely on the statistical analysis of digital data. This limits
their real-world creative significance and their capacity to produce “eureka” moments. To draw
the difference between AI-driven creativity and old-fashioned creativity, I suggest a new term:
generic, or g-type, creativity. This means that while AI models are capable of prompting new
thought, they are limited by the underlying data they have been trained on.

The big risk: a generic spiral

We can expect an explosion in g-type creativity in our future. The danger here is our increasing
use of AI could make us think too much alike, leading to a drop in diversity of thinking.
Societies would also become more rigid in what they allow as normal behaviour and ideas.
Population-wide, this would be a creativity killer.

The threat isn’t just AI-generated movies, TV, books and art. In the future, the homes we live
in, the cars we drive (or won’t have to drive) and our shared public spaces will all be shaped by
AI, homogenising our thinking under the force of increasingly similar environments and
experiences. This sameness further puts us at risk of a generic spiral. AI models are trained on
content we create. So the more we use AI for g-type creativity, the more generic our content
will become – and as this will be used to further train AI, the more generic AI outputs will
become. While this is useful for certain tasks – such as consistently interpreting law – it’s
worrying to imagine the kind of Orwellian political economy a generic spiral might give rise to.

Can we enjoy AI and also preserve creativity?

Generative AI may well be a technology as transformative as the printing press or steam

engine. Such massive forces are difficult to resist; we get swept up together in the change,
uncertainty and alienation they whip up. Our best chance to remain truly creative is to protect
and respect the human over the artificial. Intellectual property law is key. Any further moves
towards legal personhood for AI – such as allowing AI a right to train itself on copyrighted
material, or have copyright applied to AI outputs – will erode our creative system and risk a
generic spiral in human creativity.

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Glossary

alienation a feeling of being a stranger or of being disconnected

clash conflict, sharp difference

homogenise standardise, make all the same

insight a thought that brings a new understanding

legacy a permanent benefit someone creates and leaves behind

legal personhood giving something or someone the same legal rights as a person

seductive attractive and tempting

specific gravity how heavy a material is compared to something of the same size

thrive grow rapidly and healthily

TEXT 4

AI can help − and hurt − student creativity

Sabrina Habib
The Conversation
February 2, 2024
[Link]

Teachers across the country are grappling with whether to view AI tools like ChatGPT as
friend or enemy in the classroom. My research shows that the answer isn’t always simple. It
can be both. Teaching students to be creative thinkers rather than rely on AI for answers is the
key to answering this question. That’s what my team and I found in our study on whether AI
affects student creativity, published in the Journal of Creativity and representing scholars from
the University of South Carolina, the University of California, Berkeley and Emerson College.

In the study, we asked college students to brainstorm – without technology – all the ways a

paper clip can be used. A month later, we asked them to do the same, but using ChatGPT. We
found that AI can be a useful brainstorming tool, quickly generating ideas that can spark
creative exploration. But there are also potential negative effects on students’ creative thinking

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skills and self-confidence. While students reported that it was helpful to “have another brain,”
they also felt that using AI was “the easy way out” and didn’t allow them to think on their own.
The results call for a thoughtful approach to using AI in classrooms and striking a balance that
nurtures creativity while making use of AI’s capabilities.

Why it matters

Increasingly, students are using AI for help with their schoolwork. Whether it’s for drafting
essays, learning new languages or studying history and science, AI tools are becoming a
staple in students’ academic toolkit. Students tend to view AI as having a positive impact on
their creativity. In our study, 100% of participants found AI helpful for brainstorming. Only 16%
of students preferred to brainstorm without AI.

The good news is that the students in our study generated more diverse and detailed ideas
when using AI. They found that AI was useful for kick-starting brainstorming sessions. Other
research has shown that AI can also serve as a nonjudgmental partner for brainstorming,
which can start a free stream of ideas they might normally hold back in a group setting.

The downside of brainstorming with AI was that some students expressed concerns about
relying on the technology too much, fearing it might undermine their own thoughts and, as a
result, confidence in their creative abilities. Some students reported a “fixation of the mind,”
meaning that once they saw the AI’s ideas, they had a hard time coming up with their own.

Some students also questioned the originality of ideas generated by AI. Our research
supported these feelings. We noted that while using ChatGPT improved students’ creative
output individually, the AI ideas tended to be repetitive overall. This is likely due to generative
AI recycling existing content rather than creating original thought.

The study results indicate that allowing students to practise creativity independently first will
strengthen their belief in themselves and their abilities. Once students understand this, AI can
be useful in advancing their learning, much like teaching long division to students before
introducing a calculator.

What still isn’t known

Our study primarily explored AI’s application in the idea-generation phase of creativity, but we
also emphasised the importance of developing skills at the start and end of the creative

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process. The essential tasks of defining problems and critically evaluating ideas still rely
heavily on human input.

The creative process typically involves three phases, such as problem identification, idea
generation and evaluation. AI shows promise in aiding students in the idea generation phase
of the creative process, according to our study. However, the current generation of AI lacks the
capacity for defining the problem and refining ideas into something that can be put into action.
AI’s growing role in education brings many advantages, but keeping the human element at the
forefront is crucial.

What’s next

Content ownership, plagiarism and false or misleading information are among the current
challenges for implementing AI in education. As generative AI gains popularity, schools are
pushed to set guidelines to ensure these tools are used responsibly. Some states, such as
California and Oregon, have already developed guidelines for AI in education. Ethical
considerations are vital for a positive relationship between creativity and AI.

Our team will continue to research the effect of AI on creativity, exploring its impact on agency,
confidence and other phases of the creative process. AI in education is not just about the
latest technology. It’s about shaping a future where human creativity and technological
advancement progress hand in hand.

Glossary

agency the ability to make decisions and act independently

nonjudgmental responding without giving negative criticism

staple an essential item, used all the time

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