There’s a lovely old joke from Billy Connolly concerning lions running towards two members of film crew. One colleague puts on trainers.

“You bloody fool, you’ll never outrun them in those.”

“No” said the colleague “but I’ll outrun you.”

I’m hearing versions of this a lot lately, concerning embracing AI in our creative work.

It really is a bandwagon.

Jump on or jump off? Stay ahead of the lion, right? Tech bros love it. Real artists are worried. Environmentalists are screaming. And the public are happily making cute plastic toys or muppets of themselves.

I don’t hate AI, truth be told. But I’m troubled by the industrial creative aspect that’s being touted as an inevitable end to artistic careers. Naturally. I mean, we all gotta eat? I have a feeling some people will outrun those lions for a little while.

But there are more lions waiting around the corner. For all of us.

My entire career has been specifically built on blending my creativity with tech. Each new Design tool or programme or… they’re all called apps now 😂, has been a learning curve & made things marginally easier. (Sometimes.)

I love innovation. I love progress. I think clever new things are fascinating. And, to be clear, I do think AI can change our world in many positive ways. I particularly love what it’s doing/could do for Health. It’s certainly not all about taking artists jobs. No.

But. (Oh no, here it is! The ‘but!’)

But, putting talented creative people out of work is not helping anyone but the big corporations who (often unwillingly) have to pay ‘creative people’ to create the ‘product.’

“But you’ll adapt”, scream the tech bros, drowning out the environmentalists. ”Relax. It’s just a tool. It’s inevitable. Embrace it.”

This is akin to walking up & embracing that hungry lion that will happily eviscerate you & feed you to its cubs.

Here’s why…

• Creative people love to create. A job where you get paid to be creative is THE dream job for many. They hone their skills & WANT to create. This is not factory labour (or shouldn’t be) or a tractor replacing a horse… this is a calling that is being tragically culled.
• Making something wonderful is not easy. And It is deeply satisfying when it works. And we grow & learn when it doesn’t. Typing words into a machine that simply does it for you is not satisfying. It’s not YOUR words, YOUR art anymore. You are now an editor, as much as you can be bothered. And, arguably, we learn nothing.
• We (artists) are not the ones who are going to benefit from this ‘tool’. This is the most important aspect. This creative avenue of  ‘machine learning’ will squeeze out rising creatives across the board. An entire strata of entrance level jobs gone. It will numb us & dumb us.  And simply make the big boys richer.
• Arguably, no creative person asked for this. Some might be intrigued & think they can stay ahead by learning everything about it. That if they embrace it, it will spare them. Ultimately, it will replace us all & will not care how good your prompts are. It’s designed to ‘not need humans. You’re fooling yourself if you think that doesn’t mean YOU. (lions. 😉)
• Creativity is a beautiful human thing and not everyone has it. Why would we give it away?

And then there’s ’what is real?’ We’re starting to see hyper real videos & photos of animals thanking firefighters, beautiful people petting Lions without being eviscerated, rainbow lightning and incredible things that simply cannot be.

Mountains with twelve waterfalls streaming off them? Stunning. No, I don’t know where the water’s coming from either? Maybe It’s the waste outlets from the data banks?

But they look ‘kinda’ real, these fakes. And more so by the day. Maybe even better than real? And no one is saying they are not.

And so people believe it IS real.

And if no one knows what’s real anymore, then we’re all going to hell in a bucket. If the natural world is underwhelming the next generations in reality, who’s going to care for it in future?

The truth is fluid, because we can rewrite it with AI prompts.

Politicians can deny everything, even if they say or do it on camera. It’s all too real and it’s all too fake.

(And let’s face it, people are going to get a nasty shock when they try to kiss real wild animals!)

So what to do? It’s inevitable. That’s what I keep hearing. We can’t stop it. The corporations are mining our heritage of books, music & art and it’s all grist to the mill of machine learning.

They’ve probably taken it all already.

But, even if it puts me at a disadvantage, wherever I can, I’m going to choose not to use it to help me creatively, thank you very much. 

It’s too easy, you see?

I enjoy writing. I enjoy designing games. I enjoy thinking & imagining. I enjoy seeing the real sunrise & being there to photograph it. My own words. My own outputs.

If I let AI do it, then… what’s the point of me? My creative muscles will get flabby and dull. Why even finish a sentence if the machine will do it?

Instead of creators, we become editors of a machine.

I’d be far happier to create & let the machine suggest edits. I mean, are we really all that predictable? Replaceable? Pointless? Apathy is akin to death.

We should fight for this.

Knowing how to ‘creatively’ problem solve as a human being is NOT a problem we should blithely surrender. It requires context. Knowledge. Connection with people. It’s satisfying, it stretches us and helps us grow. Develop. Mature. Learn to be better.

Do we really learn anything if ‘someone’ simply gives you the answer?

Perhaps that makes you happy? Maybe I’m alone in this? I hope not. But if we want to carry on this analogy, lions are less likely to attack a herd. 😉

And when/if the AI lions do finally gobble up all of our collective creative careers, come and find me? I’ll be selling my analogue wares somewhere in a dystopian black market with a stall banner saying, “Made by a Human.”

Trying my very best not to look like a wildebeest.. 😉

Marc Diamond, StoryToys, Producer of LEGO DUPLO MARVEL & upcoming LEGO BLUEY