Education
Innovation
Artificial Intelligence
July 29, 2024
The extinction of creativity
Generative artificial intelligence can be an ally of good ideas, if used with common sense
In June 2024, the premiere of the film “The Last Screenwriter” (O Último Roteirista, in free translation) was canceled at a cinema in London, England. The reason was the public reaction to the fact that the script for the feature had been created by an artificial intelligence (AI): ChatGPT.
Open AI’s chatbot has been dividing opinions since its inception. Launched in November 2022, it had reached the mark of 100 million users in two months, which at the time was considered a historic record. In the wake of ChatGPT, several other generative artificial intelligence models were born, with which it became possible to create texts and images with just a command, without creative effort.
The result was the emergence of an avalanche of content conceived by digital “minds” in all sorts of scenarios, including the scientific one. In 2023, according to a report published in the English newspaper The Guardian, more than 10,000 articles had to be retracted in various scientific journals worldwide due to the improper or inadequate use of AI at some point during the preparation of the manuscripts, a fact disclosed in the column AI in scientific writing: advances and ethical implications, published by Revista Estratégias e Soluções (E&S), from Editora Pecege.
This environment stimulated Turnitin, creator of a detection tool for similarity (plagiarism), to recently launch a product to recognize texts written by artificial intelligence. Currently in the refinement phase, the solution is not yet available in Brazil.
Concern spread across various sectors, especially in the area of education. Fears involving ethics, dependency and even damage to creativity were expressed everywhere.
Is the era of creativity extinction arriving? The grammarian and Portuguese professor Pasquale Cipro Neto does not believe in this possibility. “I don’t say it’s impossible, because, at this stage of life and of all the shameful things that happen on the planet, everything is possible (‘Everything is possible, only I am impossible,’ says Drummond in ‘Secret’). But it seems unfeasible to me that a machine feels what a person feels, that translates feelings, reactions, facts as a person does. I can’t imagine a machine writing something like ‘Tecendo a Manhã’ (by João Cabral de Melo Neto), for example. Deep down, deep down, my desire is to tell stupidity, I mean, artificial ‘intelligence’ to lick soap (it’s not exactly what I’d like to say, but there are children in the room),” Pasquale stated, humorously, to Revista E&S.
A study on this matter, published in July 2024 in the journal Science Advances, concluded that AI tools favor creativity individual of the author, but, as a side effect, produce a kind of leveling collective.
“We found that access to generative AI ideas causes stories to be rated as more creative, better written, and more enjoyable, especially among less creative writers. However, stories produced with the help of AI are more similar to each other than those written only by humans,” says the abstract of the work.
The Pecege Institute Pecege recently held the “Artificial Intelligence Training: Prompt Engineering” course, taught by Alura, to update staff on technological innovations. The course instructor, Alexandre Aquiles, highlighted that generative AIs are “excellent for text refinement tasks”.
According to him, activities such as correcting spelling, adapting grammar and syntax, adjusting the “tone of voice” for specific target audiences and channels (blogs, social media, books), looking for synonyms, translating or structuring the text into sections can gain more agility with these tools.
“Generative AIs also help to generate illustrations and transcribe audio to text very efficiently,” highlighted Aquiles, while also pondering the importance of using them only as aids, a condition under which they have the potential to amplify creative capacity. “Used in generating ideas and seeking new perspectives, AIs are a stimulus to creativity, causing people to focus on broader aspects of the text and even overcome creative blocks,” he suggests.
“It is important to emphasize that [using the tool this way] works best for people with more experience in text creation. Less mature individuals may have their creative potential development hindered,” he said. The table below shows some tools that Aquiles recommends to help with specific activities.
However, it is essential to pay attention to the output generated by the models, because generative AI tools for text, known as LLMs (Large Language Models), do not verify if the content produced is factually correct. “This can generate ‘hallucinations’, the technical term for text that contains incorrect data, but is correct in its structure,” explains Aquiles.
According to him, a large part of conversational interfaces, such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, contain an integration layer with tools for search like Bing and Google, which show the origin of the information, reducing the occurrence of hallucinations. “Gemini currently has a check answer button, which shows the sources for each piece of generated text.”
The Pecege design ops manager, Lucas Tangi, one of the training participants, considers artificial intelligence an ally in idea generation. “I see AI as a tool that enhances creativity.” According to him, the accessibility of generative AIs, mainly through prompts(command phrases that initiate the “conversation” with the model), democratizes the use of artificial intelligence, “benefiting users with less technical knowledge and, at the same time, boosting those who master programming.”
For Tangi, the advancement of generative AIs and new technologies makes creativity an even more important skill for programmers, who will need to be increasingly creative to request, review, and seek solutions in conjunction with digital tools.
Neuroscience
It is still too early to measure the results of all this movement, but one thing is certain, at least in the eyes of neuroscience: creativity can be exercised. Therefore, it is permissible to conclude that the effects of using AI as an assistant in text production will depend on how the tools are used, as Aquiles said.
If they are indeed treated only as auxiliaries, they can function as catalysts and enhancers of ideas. To this end, the recommendation is to avoid excesses. Brazilian neurologist Miguel Nicolelis makes a warning in the book “O verdadeiro criador de tudo: como o cérebro humano esculpiu o universo como nós o conhecemos” (Ed. Planeta): “Continuous coexistence with technology and computers can affect the functioning of the human brain. This scenario will manifest itself all the more quickly as our brain is deceived, convincing itself that greater rewards would be obtained if it ceased to express the most celebrated attributes of the human condition.”
For Nicolelis, who teaches and leads studies at Duke University in the United States, the human brain is capable of “an almost unlimited expression of creativity, intelligence, intuition, discernment, and wisdom that exceed, by many orders of magnitude, the performance of any computer”. Therefore, in another passage of the book, he attributes to the organ “a unique position as a computational system… By definition, in contrast to digital computers, neither the operation nor the products of this ‘organic computer’ can be simulated or reproduced by a digital algorithm”.
| SUGGESTED READING |
| 1 – “ChatGPT for Everyday Use” (Bruna Escudelario – Casa do Código). It offers a perspective on how to use it daily, from summaries to creative writing. 2 – “Artificial Intelligence and ChatGPT” (Fabrício Carraro – Casa do Código). It provides a broader view of Generative AI; delves into the functioning of the tools and teaches how to create quality prompts using the technique of Prompt Engineering. |
| To access the references of this text click here |
This content was produced by:
Renata de Gáspari Valdejão Almeida
Assistant editor of the Strategies and Solutions (E&S) Magazine, from Pecege Publishing House. She is a journalist, screenwriter, and researcher. She worked for 16 years at Folha de S.Paulo, as a writer and reporter, and collaborated with several national circulation magazines, such as Época Negócios, Pais & Filhos Magazine, and Superinteressante. She worked in the communication area of the USP School of Medicine and was the Audiovisual Coordinator of UNA-SUS/UFMA, in Maranhão.
Who wrote this column
Editora Pecege
