CreoWorld
The great Equaliser and Creative Mixing of AI
Having recently read Kevin Kelly’s “The inevitable” as part of a Digital Transformation course, essentially as regards to AI and how we might adapt to the very new digital world we live in, it reminds me of how much of a challenge the VUCA world poses (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) and we are all striving in many ways to reframe the insights of that acronym into something positive. Some propose that it can be reframed and delving into what the challenges and opportunities are might allow us to do just that. (VUCA as Vision, Understanding, Clarity, Agility)
I find remnant and reminders of the reframe across the chapters of his book. There are a couple of pieces that I find especially interesting. One of them is the “democratization of arts”. It seems to me there is a lot of concerns and challenges around two aspects of this. One is how AI has been taught, using copyrighted materials across the internet. In some cases, infamously so, as Meta’s recent admission that LibGen – as well as SciHub and Z-Library was used to train their latest LLM. An admission brought on by the revealing article published by The Atlantic. These sites do contain a lot of public domain materials, but most of its content is still well within copyright limitations, and have been the subject of various legal actions for many years. Surely one of the richest companies in the world can find the economic resources to buy access to copyrighted materials. I find not doing so egregious and unmoral, as well as illegal. However, I find nothing wrong with end-users using AI to enrich their creative endeavours, whether it be visual, sound or text. The crux of this specific challenge is how the LLM was created, not what its output is being used for, which remains mostly innocuous, deepfakes and other schemes non-withstanding.
Even so, the new EU AI act has been come into effect as of the 1st of August 2024, with a phased introduction. Many provisions are coming into effect from the 2nd of August 2026. It sets out numerous requirements and limitations, mostly dealing with high-risk AI systems, and their developers and deployers. So, end-users are not really within scope.
I think it remains important to consider the democratization from a specific angle. All AI are built on enormous sets of data, to better shape it to its intended purposes. As such, all AI conform to the bell-curve of that data. It can only output something that resembles the middle of the bell-curve, and in best cases, slightly above. So, in this example, for text-creation, it can be a great equaliser. Anyone who for various reasons are below that bell-curve in English writing skills, they now have access to a tool that can easily lift their written content to the average, or perhaps even above. Imagine reports, papers, CVs, cover letters, emails, etc. As a tool it can now empower people to write with confidence, if not eloquence.
In all creative arts, AI can now put plenty within reach to those of us who earlier found them beyond us. Music, Imagery, Photography, A/V Editing skills, and more. And in doing so, increases our collective contributions and outputs onto the web. Content creation has never been easier.
And when you take that equaliser one step further, we can reach “Mixing” from “the inevitable”. As a life-long student of creativity, one of the often-misunderstood aspects of creativity is that it’s a singular endeavour, rather than group-based. Even painters, who are famous for their distinctive style, developed and refined their artistry in complex structures, social groups, communication and experimentation together in groups.
Therefore, I find the recent development of group-based AI chats models particularly intriguing. It allows a group to engage on a specific topic together, brainstorm, scrutinise, shift and improve the collaborative understanding of the topic at hand. Imagine rather than having a traditional knowledge base available, and using email to discuss that same topic. Now there is a communal sounding-board, using de-synchronised communications, to drive exploration and finding strategies and solutions together.
The great Equaliser and Creative Mixing of AI
Having recently read Kevin Kelly’s “The inevitable” as part of a Digital Transformation course, essentially as regards to AI and how we might adapt to the very new digital world we live in, it reminds me of how much of a challenge the VUCA world poses (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) and we are all striving in many ways to reframe the insights of that acronym into something positive. Some propose that it can be reframed and delving into what the challenges and opportunities are might allow us to do just that. (VUCA as Vision, Understanding, Clarity, Agility)
I find remnant and reminders of the reframe across the chapters of his book. There are a couple of pieces that I find especially interesting. One of them is the “democratization of arts”. It seems to me there is a lot of concerns and challenges around two aspects of this. One is how AI has been taught, using copyrighted materials across the internet. In some cases, infamously so, as Meta’s recent admission that LibGen – as well as SciHub and Z-Library was used to train their latest LLM. An admission brought on by the revealing article published by The Atlantic. These sites do contain a lot of public domain materials, but most of its content is still well within copyright limitations, and have been the subject of various legal actions for many years. Surely one of the richest companies in the world can find the economic resources to buy access to copyrighted materials. I find not doing so egregious and unmoral, as well as illegal. However, I find nothing wrong with end-users using AI to enrich their creative endeavours, whether it be visual, sound or text. The crux of this specific challenge is how the LLM was created, not what its output is being used for, which remains mostly innocuous, deepfakes and other schemes non-withstanding.
Even so, the new EU AI act has been come into effect as of the 1st of August 2024, with a phased introduction. Many provisions are coming into effect from the 2nd of August 2026. It sets out numerous requirements and limitations, mostly dealing with high-risk AI systems, and their developers and deployers. So, end-users are not really within scope.
I think it remains important to consider the democratization from a specific angle. All AI are built on enormous sets of data, to better shape it to its intended purposes. As such, all AI conform to the bell-curve of that data. It can only output something that resembles the middle of the bell-curve, and in best cases, slightly above. So, in this example, for text-creation, it can be a great equaliser. Anyone who for various reasons are below that bell-curve in English writing skills, they now have access to a tool that can easily lift their written content to the average, or perhaps even above. Imagine reports, papers, CVs, cover letters, emails, etc. As a tool it can now empower people to write with confidence, if not eloquence.
In all creative arts, AI can now put plenty within reach to those of us who earlier found them beyond us. Music, Imagery, Photography, A/V Editing skills, and more. And in doing so, increases our collective contributions and outputs onto the web. Content creation has never been easier.
And when you take that equaliser one step further, we can reach “Mixing” from “the inevitable”. As a life-long student of creativity, one of the often-misunderstood aspects of creativity is that it’s a singular endeavour, rather than group-based. Even painters, who are famous for their distinctive style, developed and refined their artistry in complex structures, social groups, communication and experimentation together in groups.
Therefore, I find the recent development of group-based AI chats models particularly intriguing. It allows a group to engage on a specific topic together, brainstorm, scrutinise, shift and improve the collaborative understanding of the topic at hand. Imagine rather than having a traditional knowledge base available, and using email to discuss that same topic. Now there is a communal sounding-board, using de-synchronised communications, to drive exploration and finding strategies and solutions together.