You are a generative human intelligence

Don't give away your humanity

Hello, Beautiful People!

I’m deep into prepping for the imminent launch of Sci-Fi Haiku. Today’s post was originally published over on Medium.

The subject of human creativity in a world where AI bullshit is flooding the zone is always on my mind. All of us are more creative than we think, and human creativity has never been more important than it is right now.

While today’s post only hints at this, I’ve also been thinking about the link between AI and the rising tide of authoritarianism—not in a conspiracy theory way—but as a kind of unholy convergence. Autocrats don’t want their subjects thinking too deeply about anything, and when we outsource our creativity to AI, we are weakening our ability to think.

It won’t surprise you to discover that these themes are also explored in Sci Fi Haiku. By next week, I should have more details about the official launch date and where you can get your hands on a physical or digital copy.

You are a Generative Human Intelligence

We exist in a strange moment in history when capitalism is weaponizing technology to get us to give up our humanity. Many of the most powerful and popular new technological gadgets and apps aren’t designed to make you better at something. They are designed to do something for you, to convince you to give up a part of your humanity.

There is a push to convince you that you are not creative enough, that you don’t have time to write your story or paint that idea you got from that strange dream.

These are lies.

Creativity is at the core of what it means to be human. You are creative. You don’t have to be an artist or a writer to be creative. You just have to be human.

When you decide to remix two nights of leftovers to make street tacos so that your family will think they are eating something new and not leftovers, you are being creative.

The moment you invent a game for your kids to play, you are being creative. When you lie to get out of work or to avoid a boring meeting, you are being creative.

You do have enough time to be creative. The real problem is you don’t want to be bad at being creative. You want an app that will do it for you so that you don’t have to be a beginner, so that you don’t have to feel uncomfortable about making ugly things.

But our apps don’t help us do things. They do things for us.

The navigation apps on our phones don’t improve our navigation skills. Instead, we completely outsource that task to the phone and never learn our way around our neighborhood.

AI writing assistants don’t teach you to be a better writer. They just write for you. They stop you from thinking about how to best communicate with another human being and instead train you to trust the machine.

In the words of Maalvika Bhat, the current stage of technology is delivering learned helplessness.

We move forward as individuals, societies, and as a species, through creativity. Creative people—the weirdos—see the world as it could be and then reverse engineer the way forward in their imaginations.

The master plan for generative AI is for technology companies to sell us progress on a subscription.

There are lots of ways true AI could be useful to us, but mostly, we are using inferior generative AI technologies to slowly phase out our creativity. The robot uprising isn’t a revolution. It’s a slow-moving corporate takeover, and we are fully cooperating.

The funny thing about humans is that we love to create, and we are also terribly resistant to change and discomfort.

One of the most powerful uses of our creativity is to make people uncomfortable. That includes your parents, your teachers, your bosses, your political leaders, and yourself.

Progress is a form of change, and change is always uncomfortable.

New problems are not solved by applying old solutions. Progress is not made by doing what has always worked in the past. But what happens when we no longer know how to do things?

When we lose the ability to write for ourselves, to create for ourselves, how do we solve problems?

We pay someone else to solve them for us.

You can already see our culture heading down this path. We are all essentially cyborgs. We use our phones as a synthetic memory to store directions and details about our loved ones.

It’s not that technology is bad. The issue is how many of us use technology thoughtlessly. How easily we give up our autonomy and humanity to technology companies that exist to make profits, not to make our lives better.

Human creativity is about disrupting the status quo, and that makes people uncomfortable, especially the people in charge, the ones who benefit the most from the status quo. We are at a critical juncture. We can either outsource our ability to change ourselves and our communities to Silicon Valley, or we can take back our humanity and start creating the kinds of solutions we want to see.

But first, you must believe in your own creative powers. Any time you have made a change in your life, it has been driven by your creativity. You figured out how to break an old habit or make a new habit. You created a new path for yourself.

If you want to change the world, you must nurture your creativity.

Don’t think that you are not creative. If you are alive, you are creative—even if you never do anything “creative”, that power sits dormant inside of you. You can unleash it at any time.

Creativity looks different for everyone. Some dance, some sing, some write music, and some play music. Many write or draw. Others organize or carve wood or make shadow puppets.

Humor is a form of creativity, as is teaching.

The tech oligarchs and the fascists do not want you to believe that you are creative because creative people make them uncomfortable. Creative people aren’t satisfied with what is and are always wondering what could be. Creative people look behind the curtains and think for themselves.

Creative people not only have hope, but they also inspire others to have hope, and that hope is fatal to tyrannical systems.

If you want to see a better world, you can start by unleashing your creativity, not as a side hustle or productivity hack, but to enjoy your life more.

Do you remember how it felt to create as a child? Do you remember making messes and laughing? Do you remember singing at the top of your lungs or spinning around in the front room until you collapsed to the floor?

You can feel that again. All you have to do is get uncomfortable. You must be willing to look silly. To be creative, you must embrace your inner weird.

Once you accept that, nothing can stop you. The more creative activities you try, the more ideas you will have in other areas.

If you want to change the world, you must be creative, you must be weird. That’s the only way. Normal people have never once changed the world.

You don’t need generative AI to bring your ideas to life. You are an extremely powerful generative human intelligence. You can learn to paint, draw, write, or make films. You can and should learn new creative skills for the joy of learning and creating—not as the means to getting rich.

It doesn’t matter if your new vase is lumpy or if your painting of a horse looks more like your dog. The power and joy of creativity are in the doing of the thing. If you love the activity enough, you will find the time to do it more and get more skilled at it.

There is magic to doing things you love solely for fun. It nourishes your soul, and it eats away at the power of the massive corporations and oligarchs that want to extract value from you to pad their bank accounts.

I promise you that if you embrace your creativity, you will change the world. Maybe not for everyone, but you will change it for someone, and that someone will be forever grateful to you.

Now is the time to double down on your humanity by making stuff for the sheer joy of making things.

What do you have to lose? Shake off the shackles of conformity and make some big, beautiful messes.

You and your world will never be the same.

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Thank you for reading and sharing my work!

Be the weird you want to see in the world!

Cheers,