Creativity is Conflict
Why AI is no replacement for creative debate
When people ask what I do for a living, I usually make it simple: I write the words you read on the walls in history museums. For the last 10 years, I have been writing exhibitions across the country. For the last 15 years, I’ve worked in branding — helping all kinds of organizations tell the story of who they are.
I’ve been in a lot of creative meetings. As AI rises, it’s clear to me that it could never replace the creative debate that happens when smart people make something new together.
The Risks of Streamlining
I came into the creative world, somewhat naïve. Social media was a new thing, and the rise of tech entrepreneurs filled creative offices with giddy energy. It felt like anything was possible, and we could mold the world into whatever we envisioned.
That positive creative energy was responsible for a lot of innovation. Whether it was coming up with a new brand strategy, or logo, or creative project with friends — the excitement of new tools and a market that was ready to receive them made every project feel exciting. At the time, many of us did not see where social media and its offshoot businesses were going. Few saw the potential harmful impacts it would have. I remember feeling like we were riding a wave, but in the last handful of years, the wave has crashed into the shore.
Now, a new wave is ascending. AI is taking off with giddy excitement among the tech world. And don’t get me wrong, as a creative professional, it certainly makes a lot of things easier. Creating a proposal for a new project takes a fraction of the time it did before. Invoicing, taking notes, combing through data to see patterns — AI has streamlined some of the worst parts of the creativity business.
Yet, when we streamline too much, we remove the friction that creates interesting ideas.
In 2020, I was honored to join an exhibition team to curate and write a powerful exhibition about American history. It would have been easy to get a bunch of experts in a room, decide on some topics to cover, and prompt AI to give us an outline and a way to frame the history. Instead, we did it the hard way. We had focus groups, and community conversations with a broad spectrum of people. We solicited input through surveys and one-on-one conversations. We encountered new ideas, questions and concerns.
While ChatGPT wasn’t even an option five years ago, I still believe our success lay in the countless meetings to review the exhibition, and going into deep debate on how to contextualize this history. It took us three years to develop the work. Yet, our team is soon to receive the seventh award for this exhibit that was steeped in debate, conflict, and conversation.
As the AI revolution takes off — making more and more things easier and seamless — I hope we don’t streamline ourselves out of what leads to the best ideas: creative debate.
Different Opinions Matter
Studies show that, in creative work, teams from different backgrounds produce better ideas and create more profit. Yet, it’s not because of identity politics. It’s because of the challenges that happen when you get different people in a room to solve a problem.
If I were to ask ChatGPT to be contrarian to the ideas I present, helping me see another way of thinking, it could be helpful. However, debating ideas with a human being would be vastly more rich. The reason is the “why.”
I have a philosophy about creativity, especially in the realm of exhibition and culture writing. It is guided by my desire for clarity, emotional impact, and a belief that history can show us the way forward. My human experiences — full of tangible senses and core memories — led me to my creative perspective. These experiences gave me a “why.”
My philosophy is a result of my frustration with academic language, the visceral feeling of connecting my experience with someone from the distant past. It is rooted in empathy for those who, like myself, did not spend decades in academic circles, but still want to understand the truth of our past.
These experiences drive my creative work. A robot could never.
In the course of developing an exhibition, there are curators and researchers, designers and builders, writers and editors. Each group has its own opinions, objectives, and perspectives they bring to the table. The value of creative debate is encountering the differing points of view — the differing “why’s” — we all bring to problem solving. Some of us are obsessed with art and emotion, some only think in terms of “on time” and “on budget.” Others see the political or social implications as the highest priority. Without all these differing voices, projects will lack the dynamism that makes work impactful. It is in the balance of these competing priorities that the magic happens.
The magic dies when one point of view dominates all others.
I’ve only walked away from a couple projects in my museum career, but they were always projects with a leader who had to be right about everything. If a perspective didn’t fit perfectly into their view, it was instantly rejected. In the hands of these types of professionals, AI could be a bludgeon to the kind of rigorous debate that good projects need. Replacing creative discourse with technology meant to accomplish tasks leaves us with far fewer inputs. In the worst cases, the end result only reflects one person’s purposes, belief system, and value set.
The best projects I’ve been a part of, like this traveling exhibition, included hours of heated discussion. Our team was a mix of type A and B personalities, artists and academics, introverts and extroverts. As a result, we created a rich exhibition that recieved so much demand it was extended from its initial run by two years.
The Next Generation of Creative Thinkers
After years of being a creative professional, I no longer suffer from the nettling anxiety of imposter syndrome. Yet, I’m only just on the other side of it.
To develop as a creative professional, I needed to be in the rooms where the debates were happening in order to get better at thinking creatively. I needed to be a part of conversations with differing opinions, that left people frustrated and the project at a standstill. The tension of coming to an answer, even if you don’t agree on every nuance, allows for ideas to come to life that are bigger than ourselves.
Yet, we also need to develop creative professionals in an environment where creative debate is happening. For more seasoned creatives with decades behind them, suffering the ignorance of new talent can feel like a slog. Their inabilities delay the speed of projects. One could certainly argue that technology that takes direction, generates results, and provides starter ideas could replace the responsibilities of new creatives. But that road increasingly depends on a seasoned few, without raising new generations of creative thinkers. It will lead to a dearth of new talent that can challenge the old ways of thinking. In the long term, it’ll be bad for business.
Toxic debate in the workplace that includes personal attacks, insults, intimidation or disrespect have no place in any work environment. Yet, the skill of debating a creative idea on a wide range of merits is essential to doing things well.
Writing is compromise not dictation. A prompt is not a conversation. Creativity is the seed of progress in business and culture, and we need new ideas to shape the future. So, we need to invest in the type of work and workers that breed new things.
In all the AI excitement, we have to resist the idea that creative work is just one more task to accomplish. It is in the debate and the conflict that the dynamic magic of creativity becomes possible.
