AI Mustn't Kill Creativity

With the release of powerful AI chatbots in recent years, the age of AI has taken the world by storm. In a sense, AI has opened the door to infinite possibilities. Many pundits have lauded AI's potential to revolutionise the world as something only paralleled by the likes of computers and the internet. But some analysts have sounded alarm about AI's pitfalls. The latest prominent figure to make such a fearmongering remark is ex-Google boss, Eric Schmidt, who only a few days ago expressed his fear that AI could be used by terrorists or rogue states to harm innocent people and also said that it could be even misused to make biological weapons to inflict mass casualties. 

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a tech entrepreneur, has frequently warned about its existential threat to humanity and called for its regulation and ethical development. Similarly, Geoffrey Hinton, the famed AI researcher who left Google in late 2023 to speak out about the risks of AI, has repeatedly warned about job displacement and loss of human control. Likewise, Henry Kissinger, the late diplomat, spoke about AI’s potential risks to global security and democracy.

As generative AI gets increasingly capable of writing textual content more eloquently than most people, there will, of course, be a temptation to use it to manufacture writing assignments, spreading the fears of mass cheating, as well as to produce newspaper content. That is exactly what has happened. Recently, news came to light that a major English daily in the country has been receiving a flood of AI-generated articles for publication. 

Even the noted writers were found heavily using generative AI to generate content. Upon being questioned, some writers acknowledged resorting to using AI citing a lack of time and a mounting pressure to meet the deadline, while others denied making use of AI-generated content. For still others, the revelation was so shocking that they altogether stopped writing.  It’s a breach of professionalism and ethical conduct to pass off AI’s work as one’s own. For a publisher's part, publishing such works would amount to showing disrespect to those who put their sincere efforts and time into producing something very genuine. In response, some newspapers are now laying out strict guidelines to deter such a practice.

That said, the notion that AI is a force for good and its goal to free humans from grinding drudgery is being increasingly acknowledged. Even some of the eminent figures who were sceptical initially have retracted their statements, saying they previously failed to grasp AI's full scope. The government of Nepal has also recognised its prospects to steer economic growth and development. In July of 2024, the government made public its first concept paper on AI. The goal was to tap AI's huge potential ethically and responsibly. 

AI is the product of human ingenuity and holds immense potential to improve human lives remarkably. So it should be used to complement human creativity and critical thinking, not replace them. No matter how better it gets in surpassing humans in computational ability, there is tremendous beauty in being human.  Unlike AI, what the human mind does is not mere processing; it's not computation; but rather a complex combination of conscious and unconscious, rational and intuitive and logical and emotional tasks before arriving at a decision. This characteristic is uniquely human, and which, many believe, AI will never be able to mimic.