(Not) the end of creativity

Socrates was not a fan of reading and writing*.

He believed they were a poor imitation of real knowledge, which was best expressed through spoken word. In Phaedrus, speaking to a proponent of this new technology, he is reported to have said:

“It is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance… you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing… filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”

We know this, of course, because Plato wrote it down.

Plato, in turn, disliked poetry. “Poets utter great and wise things,” he said, “which they do not themselves understand.” He thought poetry should be banned from the Republic.

We know this because… he wrote it down. (Alas, not because we have a poem about it.)

Skip a few intervening centuries and mediums, and we end up with AI.

Plato, as rendered by AI (Freepix)

I’m not sure what Socrates and Plato would have made of LinkedIn, but it’s currently where people go to share their thoughts on artificial intelligence. Those thoughts are fairly polarised – between people writing posts about how to use AI to become more productive (hmm), and those who think, like Socrates on writing, that it will hollow out human intelligence and creativity.

I share many of their concerns. 

In my opinion, its genesis was probably one of the greatest cultural crimes ever committed. Billions of words, images and videos were hoovered up without consent or compensation to their creators. For example, the publicly available work of every great journalist in every language now all belongs to a handful of technology companies.

The New York Times is suing. Disney too. The millions of individual journalists, screenwriters, cinematographers (and poets) won’t get the same chance to claim compensation. If it doesn’t count as theft, I’m not sure what does.

And this leads us to the other great harm – the almost guaranteed colossal economic upheaval. Not only were the original creators not compensated, but now, like Frankenstein’s monster, their very work is being turned upon them.

Taking LLMs alone, the numbers likely put out of work should deeply worry us. Yes, we’ve all heard the story: every new technology creates new kinds of jobs. Horse traders become car salespeople, etc. But this time does feel materially different.

However, this isn’t another think piece about the challenges of AI. I wanted to specifically address that creative decline. Will all creative work now go the way of the Greek orators?

Balance is needed.

As above, and as someone who works in media, I’m very concerned about the impact on workers and how we navigate through the coming months and years.

But for most of human history, the opportunity to create has been concentrated in the hands of those who could afford to. And then new technology expands access and spurs more creation.

Until the printing press, very, very few ever got to read, let alone write. It is no overstatement to say that without the Gutenberg press, we would not have literature as we know it today.

Right now, comparatively few get to use photoshop, or work with a team on a project, let alone produce a commercial or a feature film.

That every human on the planet can now – or will soon be able to – create with unlimited constraint for almost zero budget feels like something we might be excited about. Imagine what the greatest creators of the last few hundred years would have done with this technology. Or perhaps more interestingly – imagine what every great potential creator who didn’t have the luck to be born in the right place or time would have done?

Again – balance is needed. We can’t possibly know what happens from here. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps this shift in the means of production will result in massive creative homogenisation, or some other second-order effect that isn’t quite clear yet. If there is no new human creative input into these systems, do they optimise towards the banal? Who knows.

So where to from here, other than posting on LinkedIn?

I would like the AI companies to pay for the extraordinary theft of original creative material. I strongly advocate for some sort of digital levy on these unimaginably profitable companies, and think that levy should be expanded to consider this crime and ensure the investment is put back into creative communities – on top of the urgent need to support public interest journalism and journalists.

But I’m not convinced this is the end of creativity. Or creatives. Let alone poetry.

*Imagine my disappointment to discover that I’m not the first Mumbrella contributor to insert this Socrates fact into a piece.

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topics artificial intelligence Crikey Disney New York Times Private Media Will Hayward

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Comments: 1

Will Hayward 20 Jun 25

There is so much more to say about this, and so much uncertainty. And I understand why so many people are extremely worried about what this all means for the sustainability of the creative community. Hopefully I got the balance right.

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