We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

Last time I talked about some common reasons people give for pretending that we can keep AI from becoming a thing. Most of those involved legal or technical issues and tend to be the talking points of people who actually do creative work and are scared, but not scared enough to actually do research. I decided to save the “AI will destroy art” argument for separate article in part to keep the last one from being too long, but also because this argument tends to come from a different crowd. If anyone who actually does creative work is using it, they’re either doing it cynically or seriously overstating their creative credentials.

The “AI will destroy art” argument is one of many variations of the idea that boils down to “art is magic.” These people believe that creativity is a superpower that only certain special people can use when the stars are in alignment and the Muse is open for office hours. I strongly suspect that this argument comes mainly from people who would like to do creative work, but tend to give up at the point when it stops being fun. You know, the kind of people who use babytalk words like “makers” or “creatives” to refer to themselves even though they don’t seem to make or create anything. Why do I believe this? There are a few reasons:

Their “Art” Is Oddly Elusive (or just bad)

First off, a lot of the magical thinkers seem to be on the young side. Unless they have large trust funds to protect them, they’ll get hit by reality in a few years. Some of them will realize that creative work actually requires work and start putting in the time and effort to actually create things. The rest will learn to code or something once they decide that if they have to do something unpleasant, they might as well get paid. If you went to college, you probably know some of these people. If you went to a liberal arts college, you definitely know hundreds of them.

A lot of people in this category won’t show anyone what they’ve done because they’re afraid someone will steal their ideas. The only ones who ever seem to put their work out for public consumption are visual artists, and in most cases it looks like the stuff drawn by the metalhead in your middle school math class. Good for a kid in middle school, but a far cry from professional work. Many of these people have been so blinded by people telling them how talented they are that I don’t think they can honestly see the quality gap through the haze of their own exquisite farts. That’s unfortunate, because if they weren’t so positive they can coast on talent alone, they might actually develop their skills and become successful.

They Believe Their Ideas Are Worth Something

One reason these people don’t show their work (other than the fact that it doesn’t exist) is that they think “ideas” are a commodity that other people want to steal. In addition to falling for the naive belief that there’s such a think as a new idea, this idea fetishization sets them apart from creative people by revealing that they don’t have a lot of ideas. People who actually work in creative fields know that ideas are fucking worthless. We have more than we can use, and most of them show up at the most frustrating time possible. We don’t need to steal your idea for a story about short people throwing rings into volcanoes because we have two dozen other ideas in our “if only I can get some time to work on this” file. I’m in my 50s now, and for the last few years one of the questions I ask myself when choosing a new project is “which of these ideas do I want to get out into the world before I die?” because I know some of them will never get done. If you think ideas are valuable, you probably haven’t done a lot of creative work, and you’re probably not very well suited for it.

On a related note, these folks also routinely worry that if AI allows for the cheap creation of art, artists will stop making art. This also reveals a deep disconnect with how the creative impulse actually works. We’re not doing this to make money, we’re doing it because we don’t have a choice. We have a need to bring those ideas into the world even though we’d probably have a healthier, happier life if we didn’t. If you don’t believe me, look at the sheer number of articles on this site, which hasn’t turned a cent of profit in over 25 years because we’re not doing it for the money. Then remember that there’s a lot of articles I have yet to repost from the old editions (not to mention the 500 or so Patreon posts that I didn’t republish here). Even if AI reaches the point where it’s the “push of a button” operations that its detractors claim it already is, some of us are still going to do it the old-fashioned way, because it’s not our decision to make.

Most Creators Say They’re Wrong

One of the nice things about pretending that art is some kind of magical process is that it absolves all guilt form failure to create. It’s not your fault because you’re lazy, it’s the Muse’s fault for not dropping by. If you want to paint yourself as a creative person without all the hassle of actually creating things, the elusive Muse is your best friend, always there to provide a good reason to procrastinate.

Most people who are actually successful in creative fields disagree. Nearly every panel, book, article, and personal conversation with someone who’s making a living doing creative work includes one piece of advice that’s routinely presented as the most important piece of advice: It’s a job, and if you want to be successful, you need to treat it like a job. If you sit around waiting for a mythical entity or the right fame of mind to come around, you’re never going to finish anything. You’ve got to sit your ass down and actually do the work, even when it’s not fun.

This is a powerful myth, one that even those of us who know it’s bullshit often fall victim to. I don’t believe there’s a magical Greek lady waiting around to give me ideas, but I’m absolutely guilty of blowing off writing because I’m not in the right headspace for it. I know that if I actually open the file and start writing, I’ll write. Even if I write compete crap that gets deleted the next day, it gets me farther than not writing at all would have. But opening that file is the hardest part, and there are days when I lie to myself and pretend I’m only procrastinating because my creativity superpower is on the fritz.

Break!

Well shit. I was planning on going into why perfectly rational people insist on pretending something that conforms in all ways to our understanding of “a skill” is treated like a magical power. But since I’m already up to over 1,000 words and I suspect this will be at least 500 more, I’m going to call it a day and stretch this out to a 3-parter.