Will AI threaten creatives?

Newspapers were “dead” in 2008. Dead. People started reading on iPads and tablets alike. 

Then — they continued. I get one at my office. I like them. They evolved. The New York Times' revenue tanked and then started on an uptick from there to now over $2B per year. 

People get tired of the new stuff and feel nostalgic for the old classic stuff. 

The Apple Watch killed regular watches. But didn’t. Rolex and other traditional watches are exploding these days. Just check Instagram. 

Social Media became the new social life. But it gets old and there are people doing old-school activities more and more these days to unplug. 

Airbnb threatened hotels and now hotels are stacked to the rim while Airbnb is still succeeding 

Hell, most thought crypto was going to replace U.S. currency - we’ll see but it’s not looking pretty for it. 

AI for writing is a thing now. Threatening the creative. Until of course, people get so inundated with AI spam content that everything feels very "me-too" or like a bot wrote it so people want some quirky or interesting, real-life content piece from a human with emotion. 

In 1997, the IBM computer beat Garry Kasparov at chess which I’m sure shook that community to the core — but chess thrives and still exists. 

The reality is — there is no scarcity. There’s room for everyone and everything. It’s not and/or, it’s and/and. Always has been. But there are those that like to make it feel scarce and dangerous. Threatening even. 

Just focus on your craft, whatever it is. Focus on mastery. Be the best at that. There will be a market for it.

There are still carriage makers out there pulling in millions of revenue believe it or not. 

The TV remote made us lazy. 

The microwave made us fatter. Certainly didn't replace chefs. 

The Roomba helped but we still need to clean. 

I tried ChatGPT and below is a screenshot of a random question. My thoughts are this — while what it said is accurate and true and helpful to some degree, it’s not sexy and misses the context of what video really is. It’s about aesthetics and communication that moves people. Who? The audience, which means you have to understand them at their core. 

There’s no shortage of movies that miss context, story and casting resulting in a bad movie that should have been good. Same for books. 

Years ago, Relativity Media tried to sort of math their way to movie success. It worked to a degree but ultimately failed. Many of the Relativity Media movies were just ok. If I named them, you wouldn’t recognize most of them. 

I asked the chat tool to write a joke by Jerry Seinfeld, here it is: 

It's safe to say that Jerry shouldn't be worried at the moment. 

Ultimately I think AI will make people less and less creative which will make true creativity all the more valuable. You tend to lose what you don't use. So if we defer creativity to AI, the ability to think up ideas and creativity will suffer to some degree. No different than working out. So the value of true ideation and strategy will increase. 

However, I do think there are positives and it can be like Garvis to Tony Stark — a helpful assistant to move faster, better and stronger toward what you’re trying to do. 

I tend to be romantic about the human spirit and creativity and will most surely bet on that. While I know for sure that AI will do unreal things and disrupt various areas, I think human innovation and creativity will still be standout in comparison. Especially for all things creative.