Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 209: AI as a Creativity Enhancer, not a Creativity Replacement

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Can AI replace our creativity or is it there just to enhance it? How can it help someone go from a 5 to a 10 in creativity? Paul Eder, Strategy and Data Consultant, joins us to discuss how AI is changing the way we perceive creativity. Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode pageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan and Paul questions on AI and creativityUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTimestamps:01:40 Daily AI news05:00 About Paul and his work08:36 Confusing speed with creativity in AI creation.10:53 Skeptical of AI's usefulness in improving coding.15:51 AI replacing employees, fear of being replaced.17:39 Trust, authenticity crucial in building online presence.21:53 Diverse skills enable new opportunities in coding.26:43 Discussing creativity, AI, and advice for creators.Topics Covered in This Episode:1. Paul Eder's Perspective on AI and Creativity2. Impact of Generative AI on human content3. Exploration of Creativity Affect and AI4.  Legal Aspects of AIKeywords:AI, watermark attribution enforcement, fair use, educational purposes, legal system approach, copyright infringement, IP, watermarks, generative AI, school curriculums, AI content detection, creativity, Everyday AI newsletter, Jordan Wilson, Anthropic, chatbot, Claude, Google, Gemini 1.5, OpenAI, Sora, text-to-video model, Paul Eder, data poet, large language models, workforce, storytelling, prompt engineering, supervisor creativity, AI course.Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the Everyday Podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. Can AI replace our creativity or is it just there to enhance it?

Is it just something that's going to get everyone from a zero to a five? Or can it bring someone who's a five in creativity to a 10? And what does this mean for our future of content consumption? Well, we're going to be talking about those things today and more on everyday AI. Welcome. My name is Jordan Wilson, and I'm your host of Everyday AI. We're a daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter helping everyday people like you and me, not just learn generative AI, but how we can all actually leverage it to grow our companies and to grow our careers. So if you're joining us live, thank you. If you're on the podcast, make sure as always

check the show notes. So look in the episode description. We have a lot of other great resources for you to check out. So one of those resources is our website. Every single day, People don't know this. Yeah, there's actually a newsletter written by me, a human. So we recap every single episode. We talk about what's going on in the world of AI news and a whole lot more. I'd say it is a free generative AI university. There's 200 plus videos, podcasts, old newsletters.

You can go read on our website for free in any category you care about. So you can go learn about AI and education or AI and entrepreneurship or whatever you care about. All right. So now let's talk about what's going on in the world of AI news. news. There's a lot. All right, here we go. So first, Anthropic is steering away from voting questions, according to reports. So artificial intelligence startup Anthropic is implementing safeguards for their chatbot clawed to avoid false information, particularly regarding elections. So Anthropic is testing a new technology called Prompt Shield that detects when users of its

Gen AI chatbot ask about political topics and then it redirects them to authoritative sources of voting information. So the company's decision to implement this technology was driven by limitations in Claude's ability to provide reliable and up-to-date real-time election information. So we're going to be hearing a lot about that. We've already seen meta and OpenAI and some others put in some safeguards as well. All right. Speaking of big companies, Gemini 1.0 lasted about a week. Gemini 1.5 is already out. So Google has already up. It's newest version of its large language model Gemini. So Google is launching a new and improved version of their large language model Gemini

with an increased context window and improved efficiency for users in the company. So the model is said to outperform OpenAIs GPT4 in most cases. And we'll see as benchmarks start to roll out here in the coming weeks. So what's really noteworthy is the impressive context window of one million tokens, allowing it to handle larger queries and process more information at once. However, some of those longer context windows seemingly are going to be limited to just businesses, larger businesses and developers as the standard window will just have a 128K token context window, and that's what the general public will use.

So that's about 96,000 words of back and forth before Gemini starts to lose its memory. So Gemini is part of the premium workspace, products in has released a limited preview right now to everyone else. So you're not going to see all these full 1.5 capabilities, but they will still be rolling out slowly in the coming days. All right, last but not least, and this is what everyone's talking about. If you've been on the internet in the last 18 hours,

you're seeing SORA. So Open AI has released some previews of its groundbreaking new tech SORA. So they just released at least some previews for its new text video model called SORA, which can generate videos up to a minute long based on user input. So OpenAI is sharing its research paper and samples that you can actually go download to gain feedback and is working on ensuring the safety and ethical use of the technology. So the company is collaborating with experts to test for potential harm and will publish safety evaluations. So if I have to give you my quick take on this, I did not believe it.

If I'm being honest, I use every, I don't know a safety. I haven't used. I've used hundreds. SORA, it is mind boggling so far. I do not fully understand how it can even produce the level of quality. I actually did a rundown of, you know, comparing runway, you know, prompts with SORA prompts, SORA, you know, Open AI shared the prompts that they used to generate these. So I did a side-by-side comparison. We'll have that in the newsletter as well. But wow, what, what a big day. But speaking of creativity, Let's talk about that. And let's see, you know, is, is AI just going to enhance our creativity or could it actually

replace us? But don't worry, you don't just have me blabbing on today. We have an expert guest. So I'm excited to welcome to the show. There we go. Paul, Paul, either, who is a strategy and data consultant. Paul, thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI show. Thanks for having me, Jordan.

I like to pretend like I know things sometimes. So this is good. Same. Hey, we're all just pretending, right? There is no generative AI experts out there. We're all learning together. But Paul, maybe tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Well, who have I? Well, I've been in kind of the data and stats world for the past 20 years. I got a PhD in social psychology, which is, I say it's the study of normal people, if that exists. And I basically help organizations become more efficient and effective in a variety of ways. I've been in government consulting for the past 16 years. and help just a variety of government agencies implement new processes and procedures.

Some are tech-based, some not-tech-based. So I've dabbled in and out of tech. But over the past year or two, I've really gotten more into the AI space. And, you know, I'm curious, you know, with someone with more of a data background, right, a lot of people, you know, when AI came out or, you know, quote-unquote came out, but when it became popularized with the text to blank models, you know, a lot of people just went down deeper in their own, you know, kind of niche, right? So, you know, I'm curious even for you, you know, with a data background,

you know, kind of what pushed you to look at the creative side, you know, as well when generative AI started to popularize. Well, well, this is where I'm kind of a marriage of the left brain and right brain, right? I view myself as kind of a data poet. And so it's the art. science aspect of data. And I also kind of write poetry on the side and I kind of do my own journaling and writing and things like that. So what really flipped the switch for me is when the large language models came into existence and also the art models that Mid Journey has and

things like that. And it just blew my creative mind. And it really made me less of a, you know, AI is a tech world thing to AI as an everyday thing. So it looks. Look at that. Look at that plug. Yeah, no, absolutely. And hey, as a reminder for our live stream audience, thank you for joining us. Everyone from Tara and Chrissy, we got people from all over. Daniel joining us from Buffalo. Thank you. But let us know, what questions do you have with AI and creativity? And let's maybe start at the end, Paul. So, like, what is your overall take on AI? Is it going to replace creatives or is it just going to help people, you know, be more creative? Well, you know, I'll start, you know, again, a little bit more of a background.

I wrote my dissertation on creativity and how people and organizations can be more creative. So this has been something I've been studying for a while. And over the past year and a half, has this become more popular. I've gotten in a lot of conversations and probably my most, I guess, interesting conversations on social media, and especially LinkedIn, have been in this realm where, you know, there's people strongly on both sides where, hey, these new AI models, these are very creative. They're so creative. I'm afraid they're going to take over the world versus almost. my gosh, my kindergartener could create this in the garage in a couple hours.

What's the big deal here? And the conclusion that I've come to is that in a lot of cases, people are confusing the act of creating with creativity itself. And they're substituting the concept of speed for creativity. Just because a tool can produce something that is passable or acceptable. within 30 seconds, it doesn't mean that something that's passable is creative or that it took creativity to produce it. And I always go back to what's the academic definition of creativity. And it's really a combination of two things. It's something that's novel, that's also useful.

So it has to have both of those characteristics. And where the skeptics come down is that, yes, you know, AI produces useful stuff, but it's not exceptionally novel. And in terms of, you know, some of the, you know, words that it produces, it borrows, it uses from other sources, some of the pictures and images that borrows. So in that, in that aspect of it, it's producing something you can use, but isn't entirely new. You know what? That concept there, I think, is important because, you know, even when we think of different generative AI tools, a lot of them, you know, in order to produce this, they're really just kind of recreating, right? They're recreating, what's in their training data. You know, most companies don't say, but presumably it's anything that's ever been

on the open internet, any image, any video, you can almost. And I'll stop you. I think, I think humans do too, but that's just my bias. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I guess my thought is, right? So as, as this improves, right, because anyone that, you know, as an example used mid-journey four and then mid-journey five and now mid-journey six, right, the outputs are obviously getting better and better. So then I guess, it comes to speed and quality, you know, what we just talked about there. What happens, right, when not only the speed obviously is, has caught up, but then what happens when the quality, when it's not, oh, you know, one out of 10 are usable? What happens when it's 10 out of 10? Does that change the, I guess, answer to if, you know, creativity is just an enhancer or a replacement?

Well, you know, you're speculating. And so in that regard, I'm still a skeptic, right? I know AI can produce great things and it's going to produce things that I use all the time. But one of the things that I've been using it for is coding. I've gone from not being a coder to being a Python coder. But one of the frustrations that I have is that it constantly forgets the context or takes out things that I've said to include and things like that. So just from a usability standpoint and my personal experience, with it. It feels like the buggyness of the output in terms of being anything greater than

average isn't quite there yet, nor something I can fathom. So at this point, even looking at CHATGTP4 versus 3.5, there were researchers that took a look at divergent thinking tests and how well they performed on them. Chat GPT 3.5 performs at about an average person level. Whereas chat GPT4 is a slightly above average person level. You know, will AI get to the super genius level? I don't know. But right now I'm happy with the slightly above average human level. And that's a comfortable place for me.

But I don't think it's something where I'm going to take the experts on my consulting teams and replace them with AI because I want people who are experts not slightly above average people on my team. Sure. And, you know, I'm curious. So let's go back to a little bit because you said that you did your dissertation on creativity. I want to explore that a little bit more. So like first of all, you know, can you tell us a little bit more about, you know, when this was? But also, how do you think, or maybe not, do you think if you did the same, you know, dissertation today or next year, do you think it would have come out any differently?

Do you think that your, you know, like background and research would have changed? change the outcome of kind of what your dissertation concluded. Well, my dissertation was in about 2008 timeframe, 2007, 2007. Yeah, 2007. I'm going, you're asking to think about time lines here. And it really pertained a lot of the assessment of creativity was supervisor assessment of employees and how creative those employees were. Now, if an employee is kind of in the background using some Gen.

and they typically weren't the most creative person. Maybe their supervisor doesn't know they're using it now and is getting wowed. There's a slightly difference there. Slight difference in how people would be rated. But in the end, what I find is that people who are really not oriented towards being super creative tend to not even care about Janiya anyway. It's really the creative class who's getting really jazzed about this stuff and using it.

So even though it can make people who are generally not creative, oriented, get to average, they seem to not really care about it. You know, and that's just my personal experience. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the all-in-one creative AI studio. Powered by Adobe's Creative Agent, Firefly AI Assistant lets you start with your vision, just

describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes form with. the assistant. The assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows, drawing on 60-plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom Express, and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-built workflows for common creative tasks, like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations. Every step the assistant takes is visible, you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director.

Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at firefly.adopo.com. And then so with, I mean, with that in mind, right, because these, these, all of these generative AI tools are just getting very, you know, very powerful, right? Like even, you know, we talked a little bit about the new Open AI SORA model, right, that was just released, you know, about 18 hours ago, you know, do you think that that's going to change this, right? Do you think that this is going to, you know, not just like, ah, people are

dabbling and, you know, someone who's, you know, not at all creative. And they're like, ah, not too jazzed about it, as you said, you know, do you think that's maybe just because it made people average? But if it does make people or if it has the capabilities to make people above average, do you think then that those non-creative people are all of a sudden going to be, hey, we're going head first into this, you know, AI creativity thing? I don't know whether they'll go head first, but their supervisors may think that they can be replaced with it. So if you can use Gen.I. to get an average to slightly above average employee, why would you have a slightly below average employee anymore? And so,

I think that's where some people's fear is, is, hey, is AI going to replace us? And in the end, it could replace you if you're, there are certain leaders who kind of believe all employees are average and replaceable cogs. It's unfortunate, but that is really a mindset that some people have. And if a leader has that mindset, they can make the decision, well, I can save a lot of money by firing all these people and not really notice that the, their complete output has turned to average versus when it wasn't before. So there is going to be some of that.

There already has been some of that where some, I know, notable news organizations trying to generate AI articles and then getting slammed for it because it's such poor quality. Yeah. Let's talk about that, right? Because I think a lot of people have already started to experience this over the past year, just getting bombarded with average written content, right? Because so many people early on, you know, jump,

on board with chat GPT, you know, and unfortunately, you know, using the free version, which is, you know, subpar, I think, especially if you don't know what you're doing, do you think that as consumers, are we going to be hit with an ongoing avalanche of just this, this, you know, mediocre content? And if so, what does that even do to the concept of creativity? Is it going to be too hard for actually creative people to stand out in a sea of decent? Well, personality becomes very important that people will follow the people that they trust and that they trust aren't robots. So especially if you're in social media, building that audience trust around you as a producer

of human content is going to be very, very important. You know, a lot of people, you know, I see this all the time and I'm so doubtful of it. People say, oh, I can tell the difference between AI and human content. I'm like, can you, can you really, you know, I want to see the definitive tests on that because in the end, you know, if you think that you can spot AI because it's like, oh, it does grammar right, it must be AI. I've had so many, you know, ever since I taught it, talking about AI, so many hundreds of people claiming that all of my articles and posts are AI.

I'm like, well, obviously people can't tell because I write my own poorly written articles, right? You know, and you're touted the fact that you have a human written newsletter. My first my first skeptical eyebrow raised was, is it really a human written newsletter? You know, and just talking about AI makes you think you do everything with it. It's such a bias out there. It's so weird. Yeah. How do we, you know, because I'm sure a lot of people listening today are maybe creators themselves, you know, they're trying to create content maybe for a small business, for a large business or maybe to, you know, establish their own brand. How can individual creators, you know, balance, right? How can they still leverage generative AI when they need to?

But yet, what you just said, how can they still have that personality and that trust in that human piece still shine through? Well, I think the key is storytelling, being able to share personal experiences, things that only you would know and that AI would. know and focusing on that aspect of things because then people will trust that it's your own experience. Now, can people, you know, tell their experience to chat GPT and have it write it up for them? Well, sure. But in the end, that is still something that AI is producing that no other person could have AI produced. No one else can have AI produce your own experiences either. So it's still a differentiator in some ways. Yeah. And, you know, we actually have a ton of great

question. So I want to get to a couple of these. But Maricio, thank you for this. I think this is a great question. So Maricio asking, would you consider effective prompt engineering as a creative tool? Paul, what's your take on that one? Oh, 100%. You know, my favorite guy who really started talking about prompt engineering was Jared Benia. He's an AI guy who's been just with Chachapit and AI from the front and really got me interested in a lot of different things. And he really introduced me to the concept of prompt chaining, which is, you know, you have your initial prompt, but what do you do after that when you get your results and maybe think about that from a more strategic perspective as well. So yeah, absolutely. That's essential for a creative person to not accept what they first get

and to continuously tweak and refine and develop their own prompt templates for getting what they need going forward. Absolutely. Oh, and I couldn't agree more. I think anyone that spends a lot of time hours a day prompting will tell you one of the most important future AI skills, I would say is communication, effective communication, clarity in the written word, silly things like typing. Like that's important, right? Like I think so many younger people aren't great at typing. So guess what you have to do a lot, you know, when you're working with with generating AI, typing, right?

Well, in some cases, I know a lot of people who use like the chat cheap D app and use the voice the text. So typing is less important than that in that regards. That's true. That's true. Another great question from Andy. Andy, what's up? Thanks for joining. So saying, would you agree that generative AI benefits generalists over specialists by extending the skills and scope of creativity in a wider range of area through upskilling? Great question, Andy.

What's your take on that one, Paul? Oh, well, you know, I definitely, I've actually posted a lot. about being kind of a generalist who just can't niche down just by my personality. I tend to just kind of jump all over the place. And so for someone like me, it opens up new doors, like becoming a coder that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. So I can speak to my personal experience that as a generalist, yeah, it's fantastic. But I know that there are specialists, especially maybe those more in like the healthcare

space who are really working on AI to help with diagnoses and very specific things like that. And so I can imagine, you know, it's kind of beneficial across the board. You know, generalists just tend to be a little bit more inch deep mile wide. And now I can be mile deep, mile wide, which is pretty cool. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, yeah, it definitely changes, I think, your outlook on not just like the creative process, but also how you, how you do. distribute, right? It, like, what you can create on the front end, changes everything that your

company can or maybe shouldn't do on the back end. Our audience is on fire today. So many great questions. It's a Friday, right? Like, normally, my book is a fire starters just so you know, so, so I'm setting fires everywhere. I love it. All right, well, here's, here's a tough one. And Tara, thank you for your questions. So Tara said, how can AI balance the enforcement of watermark attributions with the principles of fair use, ensuring that content remains accessible for educational review and commentary purposes without infringing on creators right? This is like a trillion-dollar question right now. What's your take on this one, Paul? This is one that I've written about quite a few times on LinkedIn and get a lot of people who are very strong in the

copyright protection area. My take on this is a little bit of a little. bit more, I guess, we'll say libertarian, freedom focused. If you're using something that's copying someone else's work and they can prove it, they have the legal system to help them do that. Something is not copied and not unattributed unless the lawyers say so and the judge says so. And so it's kind of, I'm more of a, you know, a legal system absolutist on this, that if you think you're being infringed, take it to court. Yeah. Yeah.

And that will be, I think, a topic that at least here in the everyday AI show, we'll be talking about nonstop. I've talked, you know, probably way too much about how 2024 we're going to see so many court cases for these exact things. Copyright infringement, IP, watermarks, you know, it's going to be messy. It's going to be messy, but Open AI can afford really expensive lawyers. Yes. So they're going to win. Yeah, I've said they probably have like the 92 dream team of lawyers. Yeah, yeah.

There's no way they don't win this. Yeah. Yeah. Or just settle everything, right? Yeah. So Paul, another good question here from Daniel. And especially, I think with your background, you know, your dissertation on creativity, I would love to hear your answer on this.

So Daniel asking, do you think generative AI will be its own course in school? Or will it be become part of curriculums in every class? class. I have advocated that just from the start. Like, I mean, with teachers immediately, all over the place started fretting. Now I don't know if people are plagiarizing. I don't know, you know, you know, how to grade these kids' papers. And, you know, even my own son had something sent back to him saying, this sounds too much like AI rewrite it. You know, and in the end, you know, the education system can't place itself in a place where it's in opposition to the zeitgeist. I'm there I use the key word that I get bonus points for. It has to embrace it.

And if it really wants to train children for the future, incorporate it into classes as much as possible. And, you know, teachers can easily develop rubrics where they look at, hey, what was my initial prompt? How did I develop a prompt chain based on that? How did I revise the final product? You can ask for all stages of the process, if you're worried about the final product product that's going to be plagiarized, ask them to show you each phase. And that's, I mean, that's in my mind what's going to have to happen if we want our kids to know this stuff and succeed with it. Love that. Great, great question, Daniel. Great answer, Paul. And hey, FYI, teachers, admin, everywhere out there. I don't say this enough. There is no such thing as

AI content detection. It literally doesn't exist. I've probably spent 30 hours, you know, trying out everyone. Not a thing, y'all, just putting that out there. So Paul, we've talked about a lot. We've talked about the act of creativity versus, you know, the act of creating something versus creativity. We've talked a little bit about even your own personal experience, you know, with coding and with your background, you know, your dissertation in creativity, right? So as, as we kind of wrap up here, you know, because I'm sure there's a lot of people who are constantly thinking about how AI does impact them either as creators or potential creators. So maybe what's your one takeaway piece, you know, that you can give to people that, you know, that they,

they can, if they're interested in becoming more creative with generative AI, how do they do it and what should they keep in mode? I use AI as a starting point, but not a finishing point. If what you're doing is taking AI content and cutting and pasting it and giving it to someone, you're going to be average. If what you're doing is taking that what you initially get, adding your flavor, enhancing it, you know, even if you're doing AI art or AI video, incorporating that with something else that you're doing in a more nuanced way, that is going to be just more beneficial for society. And if you're in social media for your audience, than just any kind of cutting and pasting any day. So that's what I advocate. Great, great advice. I love that. You know, it's not a starting point. It's a finishing point.

Well, that's our finishing point. The other way. Oh, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for Correcting me. Hey, it's Friday for all of us, right? Like, hey, that just shows you. I'm not an AI, Jordan. I'm a human. I make mistakes, right? But hey, we covered so much here, Paul. Thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI show. We really appreciate it. All right. Thank you very much for having. I appreciate it. And hey, as a reminder, we covered a lot. So make sure you go to Your EverydayAI.com. Sign up for that free daily newsletter. We're going to be recapping what Paul and I talked about today as well as a lot of other things, all that news we talked about. out and a lot more. Thank you for tuning in and we'll see you back for another episode of everyday AI. Thanks, y'all. Meet Firefly AI assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while

the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in. and refine at any time. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit Your EverydayAI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.