The Creative Resistance

A truly American phenomenon

First, happy July 4 to everyone.

A couple of weeks ago I illustrated a post with a clearly AI-generated image. It wasn’t a very good one because I was in a bit of a rush and didn’t have a great idea of what to create. Several people commented negatively on my use of this AI slop¹. I’ve actually used AI to create images for the last several months, but this was the first time anyone objected. It was not a good decision on my part.

In addition to being a wakeup call, this also marked an introduction to what is now popularly called the Creative Resistance, people (mostly artists and writers) who wish to limit the use of AI because they see it as a technology that is advancing too quickly to be properly regulated; one that is a tool of powerful special interests that threaten the livelihoods of a great number of people (especially artists and writers), not to mention its toll on the environment.

Ever since artificial intelligence’s Large Language Models (LLMs) were introduced there has been controversy over their use in creative writing. Some people feel they should be allowed for research, grammar editing, and even some editing of content. But many in the Creative Resistance apparently feel that LLMs should be banned completely from any creative task.

The shortcomings of AI are well documented. The information it provides is not always accurate. AI can hallucinate and mislead. Its more advanced versions have potential dangers that we are not even fully aware of. Andrea Miotti, founder and CEO of ControlAI, a non-profit organization working to keep humanity in control of advanced AI, has written, “The leading AI companies are explicitly trying to build superintelligent AI, or ‘superintelligence.’ Such AIs would be vastly more capable than humans, fully autonomous, and able to overpower countries’ national security institutions.”

The trend against AI in its everyday applications seems to be gaining momentum among the public as well. In the last few weeks I’ve seen several articles about this, such as, “The AI backlash is only getting started” in The Economist and “The Tech Backlash Gets Nastier—and Funnier” on Ted Gioia’s Substack². The New York Times on Monday reported that voter dissatisfaction with AI has led to a variety of ballot propositions designed to limit its growth³.

That seems fairly normal for American politics. There is an ebb and flow to public opinion in our country that seems to go to an extreme in one direction and then just as far in the other.

But the movement against using AI in the US is countered by how the technology is received elsewhere. In an article titled “Words, Words, Words,” Martin Puchner, the Byron and Anita Wien Chair in Drama and in English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, and the general editor of the Norton Anthology of World Literature, wrote that we should be more accepting of the possibilities that AI offers. He even sees it as a useful companion for writers.

He noted, “Based on my experience teaching and lecturing across the world, the Creative Resistance is strongest in North America, much less dominant in India, and still less in China and Korea, with Europe somewhere in between. When I taught a class on AI and creativity in Seoul last summer, with students from across Asia as well as Latin America, they had a single concern: please teach us how to use these tools effectively. The only person calling for creative resistance was an American student who had strayed into the class.”

That seems pretty typical of American politics as well.

Maybe that’s the real debate. Many people in the US tend to look at social issues through the lens of politics, and since our politics is so divided, there is little to no middle ground, and no attempt to compromise. The Creative Resistance seems to mirror the us-against-them mentality that dominates our national discourse.

It makes me wonder about motivation.

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The above opinion of AI by people in other countries is closer to my own. I see it as a useful tool to enhance my work. It allows me to do research much faster⁴, and it occasionally offers input that augments my thinking, much like a human work partner. Its errors are annoying, but I believe I have the experience and judgment to weed them out of my work process.

I don’t use AI for writing. I don’t use it for planning or to brainstorm. I don’t use it to edit my work⁵. I am not tempted to use it for those purposes, partly because I have what I consider a very strong imagination, as well as decades of experience in creative writing and just don’t need it, and mostly because LLMs are tools that rely primarily on compilations of standard, mainstream literature, and I don’t want to write like that. They mimic writing styles, rather than attempt to create anything imaginative or original. They are useful as writing tools mostly for people who do not really know how to write.

I’ve been a writer — both a journalist and a creative writer — for nearly 50 years. I have always thought of the ability to create as something special, a talent you are born with and which must be cultivated. But I get the feeling that some creative writers treat it as something other than that. They seem to think of creative writing as sacred. There’s a difference. In fact there’s a big difference. When something is sacred it implies that the quality is ethereal, connected to an indefinable aspect or force that exists outside the person — more like a religious affect. It must be worshipped and fiercely defended so that it does not change.

Let’s look at it from the opposite perspective, that of the students in other countries Puchner mentioned, the ones who are eager to integrate effective AI use into their lives. Why would they feel this way? Or perhaps it would be better to say they don’t look at creative writing as the kind of sacred, protected activity that many people do here in the US. Perhaps people in other countries, as Puchner alluded, see AI usage as something more utilitarian than existential. That’s not to say they couldn’t appreciate great art, only that they reserve that judgment for what they consider the finest examples. Considering that AI is not designed to create great art, only mainstream facsimiles of art, it becomes easier to see why they view the technology the way they do. AI then becomes a tool, not a competitor.

There may be a political motivation as well. AI is the product of an elite technology class. These people are incredibly wealthy and have control of much of American politics and culture. Perhaps it’s not so much the product that the Creative Resistance is against, but the people who own it.

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As for that product, it’s hard to see a future in which AI doesn’t have a strong presence. Maybe instead of trying to eliminate it we should seek to find the best way to use it. Many people have written about that.

Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Colson Whitehead wrote, “People are usually surprised when I admit that I love AI. I use AI for everything, 24/7. I can’t get enough, me and my whole family.” He just doesn’t use it for his writing. He hastened to add, “Except art. If you use it for your art, you’re a freakin’ hack.”

I couldn’t have said it better.

Nick Kabrél, a researcher on human-centered AI, said, “The good news is, it’s not the technology itself that risks making us more stupid, but the way we use it. To protect yourself and potentially gain benefits, you simply need to put a little more effort into designing smarter interactions between your mind and chatbots.”

Eric Hanushek, an education economist at the Hoover Institution, took that argument further: “Individuals with more measured cognitive skills systematically do better than those with less, and nations with a more skilled population grow faster than those with a less skilled population.”

But Sam Kahn at Persuasion continues to boycott AI. He wrote, “It’s not really about what AI can do or what it can’t do, whether it will take all the jobs or won’t, whether it will destroy the world or not. The question is about agency — do you choose to exert agency in your own life, in the way that humans always have and were doing just fine with until, like, three years ago? Or do you prefer to turn it over to a machine, which really means turning it over to the data miners and the advertising innovators in the world’s largest tech corporations?”

And Sam Kriss wrote a piece titled, “If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you.”

That’s the nature of American politics.

Me? I’m not sure why AI usage has to be an all-or-nothing proposition. I have read many more opinion pieces that echo the proponents of the technology: that in the hands of experienced and knowledgeable users, it can create new frontiers in science and art, maybe even another artistic renaissance. The naysayers are also many, but it seems as though most of them are people who don’t use the technology, or don’t know how to use it well, so how do they know?

And yet, the people who stand against AI are just as important as those who see a bright future for it. Unchecked technological advancement always leads to bad outcomes. The voices warning about the dangers of artificial intelligence are necessary. They will force proponents (like me) to factor in the potential costs on the environment and people. My brief encounter with the Creative Resistance has helped me to see their point. It won’t change my optimism about AI’s future, but it will make me more cautious about it.

What about you? Where do you stand on AI use and why? And where do you think the technology is taking us?

Enjoy your 4th of July holiday. My wife and I are away this weekend so replies to comments will probably be delayed. The image for this one is not AI, but a stock photo by Jill Wellington on Pixabay to celebrate America’s 250th.

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What else I’m reading/listening to:

The Odyssey, read by the AI-cloned voice of Sir Michael Caine, and available free on the ElevenReader app. The too-loud background music is annoying, and the cast of AI-generated voices often miss the emotional impact of the epic poem, but this is still worth a listen if only to experience the language of Homer as translated in the 1870s (now public domain) version by William Cullen Bryant.

“Right and Left Are Seeing Two Different Worlds.” Dan Williams, an Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Sussex, uses the philosophy of Walter Lippmann to explain how people judge the meaning of events that take place in the larger world, even if they have no knowledge or experience of that larger world.

1. I always try to run some kind of image with each post and this was a last minute concoction. When I use AI to create these images, I think it’s pretty obvious that I am not doing it to create serious art. Prior to using AI for image creation I would typically spend a considerable amount of time perusing stock photo images, none of which ever really fit what I was writing about and so I had to spend even more time manipulating the image in Photoshop. (For the record I would always make sure that the stock image included permission to edit, and I would always pay the photographer for the use.) Using AI has streamlined the process and saved me several hours of work each week. It also affords me the kind of creative control I need to express what is in the accompanying post. Because the purpose of these AI generated images is not to pass as any kind of serious artistic endeavor I don’t feel I have crossed a line. You may, of course, disagree.

2. Do check this one out. There is a YouTube video about how musician Steve Terreberry used AI to create a song from gibberish lyrics that is hilarious.

3. Interestingly, the campaigns that are promoting ballot initiatives against AI are in fact using AI to analyze voter responses to them.

4. I have programmed my AI account to provide links to its sources, and I am careful to check them out. It has a tendency to point to dead links or to even make some up. No matter how good the technology gets, I think AI’s users should continue to check its research.

5. I once used it in a post in which I asked AI to convert a novel query letter to one that would be more appealing to a woman literary agent, but that was just for demonstration purposes and I never sent it anywhere.