AI

Ideation

In the ideation phase of coming up with an idea or a concept for a story to be told, some people are more lucky (or disciplined) than others in that an idea will arrive fully formed in their head, and their main task is to get that out into a format that can be presented to the world. Not everyone has this ability, and for some people the kernel of an idea can appear and blossom and bloom to something tangible that they can cultivate and work on until they feel ready to move to the next steps and eventually share with the world.

There are also people who turn to AI to refine an idea they have with tweaks here and there that will solve logistical or storytelling issues down the road, or in some cases, ask an AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or any of the other interactive AI systems out there) to give them their idea. These aren’t the only examples of AI being used in the ideation stage, but they do illustrate some use cases of the technology.

AI is purely derivative of what it has been fed, with the Large Language Models (LLMs) that we interact with being designed to react positively to our thoughts that we provide them. On top of that, one of the primary goals of these models is to increase and maintain interaction with them, justifying their use and existence to their creators, so that the companies can turn to their investors and show that there is a consistent and engaged userbase.

A problem that arises from this is that when “pitching” an idea to an AI system, it’s the best idea that it’s ever heard, you are a genius for thinking of it, and what criticism they would have to offer in return pales in comparison to the user’s towering intellect and vast amount of creativity.

While it is true that a human will always be infinitely more creative than an Artificial Intelligence system could ever be, the marketing of AI as a powerful creation tool that is wildly innovative and creative is dangerous in that it will not be providing true critical (positive or negative, both are equally important) insight into a creative idea it is prompted with. In a very succinct way to express it, nothing an AI system does is truly create. I’ve heard the argument that an AI system being derivative is no different than someone being influenced by something they have seen, read, heard, etc. My counter argument to that is that a human knows how the influence makes them feel, and can use those feelings and emotions to explore new ideas that are sparked by their influences and inspirations. An AI system can replicate that experience, but it can never truly know the how or why of something.

A description I once heard of LLMs that I feel sums them up as a whole quite nicely is that it is basically the predictive text function running itself. Also, a rather telling phrase that is constantly used around AI is “generation”, rather than “creation”, which I feel speaks a lot to how it should be regarded.