The human capacity for creativity is a survival adaption that evolved as a form of self-therapy. Religion’s communal theater being just one obvious example, though all artistic expressions both communal and individual express this adaption. Any knowledge or insights instilled or evoked by human creativity are always a secondary by-product of the creative act, itself. In short, the urge to create is first and foremost a form of meaning-making that evolved to heal ourselves form our own, or our communal, existential predicament. Though A.I. may offer knowledge for my intellect or evoke emotions for my sensitivities, when we hand the creative side of the process over to a machine, we rob ourselves of our own creative agency and capacity for meaning-making, insight, and potential for wisdom, eventually hollowing out a significant aspect of our own subjective, rich, and complex selves.
Of course, we should be concerned about A.I.’s threats to the material world---out there. Will it destroy humankind, the entire planet? but, I think we should also consider A.I.’s potential threat to human agency; and therefore, its potential threat to what it means to be human. We should be our own meaning-making machines. Let’s not leave it up to the artificial ones: they suffer neither human suffering, nor humans, and A.I. will never solve the problem of what it means to be human. What it means to be human is the problematic question that can only be addressed by humans. This question is why we create. This question is why the Humanities exist.
Express yourself. Write a poem (a blog). Paint a guitar!. Dance!
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