Innovation is necessary for the progress of our civilization and invention is necessary in order to be able to generate new kinds of innovation.
The first is the improvement of an existing process. The second is about starting on a completely novel path. We can take a look at the creativity that leads to the invention, as the source of this original creation. Human intelligence, human creativity, arts and science are coming from the same root, that we believe genuinely and uniquely defines us.
The methods of how we cultivate this kind of creativity in a given discipline or in an interdisciplinary manner, also evolve. When we are able to resort to books, rather than referring to word of mouth of our ancestors, or when more recently, we can check the Wikipedia article of creative methods, or follow video courses on YouTube
Now AI tools are becoming available, like GPT-3 for generating text, or DALL-E for images. There is no reason not to label these as fully creative.
How should we approach these? Is the conclusion that creative professionals are now in danger? Not at all. Creative professions are not endangered by these tools. They are accelerated joltingly, just as architects didn’t stop designing buildings because computer aided design has become available and AutoCAD became a reference tool of theirs. They just moved from designing buildings by hand to using the computer to be much more effective and proficient. The same is going to happen with the creative professions.
Let’s enjoy it, and let’s thrive in this new era of jolting creativity.