First Principles for AI

There’s a familiar playground taunt here in the US, “Anything you can do, I can do better.” When tech optimists get excited about AI to replace writers and designers, they’re basically saying to the creative industries “Anything you can do, AI can do better.” That’s not only insulting to creative people, it is a real threat to our livelihoods.

We also need to be realistic about where AI is today. As we learned in our conversation with Yuni founder Manjula Nadkarni on the Unserious pod, there are glaring limitations and we are still a few years away from machines improving on the things we are best at. AI platforms are very good at rote tasks, reorganizing thoughts, supporting brainstorms, and offering feedback and alternatives to writing samples – areas for which most creatives would love assistance. But we aren’t yet at the point where any of the platforms are outperforming the best creatives.

That gives creative people some time to thoughtfully understand how these tools can support creative work. As creative leaders begin exploring AI as a “co-intelligence” tool, adhering to certain principles can guide the journey and help ease the fears of creative professionals:

1. Human-Led: The first principle is acknowledging that human creativity is astounding and that the future should be human-led. Let’s ask leaders to commit that AI will not reduce creative headcount, even as the jobs creatives are redefined. If AI is a co-intelligence tool, how can it help us push the boundaries of our creative outputs? Creative people are justifiably worried about existential threats to their industries and leaders can ease those fears by making a simple pledge.
2. Experiment and Play: For some teams and companies, there is a clear path and a strong will to push ahead. For most organizations, the use cases are less obvious. If you’re at a company where there is broad interest and understanding of AI, you could probably host a hackathon that produces dozens of idea prototypes. If there isn’t that enthusiasm, forming a cross-functional task force with an enthusiastic minority to brainstorm and test use cases. As creative leaders and managers, we need to begin using these platforms in our work with a spirit of exploration.
3. Be Strategic: This sounds obvious, but use AI to solve real problems at work – i.e. improve work quality, work more efficiently, work more collaboratively and inclusively. At the advent of social media, most marketers chased fans and likes, while the most sophisticated ones would build customer relationships and revenue growth. The same will be true with AI – do not be tempted into shiny-object syndrome and focus on business objectives. Save your prompts as a trail of breadcrumbs and measure the results of your work.
4. Be Transparent: It may be tempting to pass off AI-generated creative work as one’s own, but this is a disservice to the tool and the team. Especially during this early stage, make clear what we’re creating with AI and how AI is used. This will help your teams and end-consumers we’re working with understand the power and limitations of the tools.
5. Fact Check: Even the most advanced AI models hallucinate frequently. We simply can’t trust AI platforms that generate fiction about 20% of the time. Keep in mind that AI is learning what you want and if necessary, will manufacture information to optimize for your needs. If you’re pulling a quote or statistic from AI, triple-check that it’s correct.
6. Be a Critical Thinker: My greatest worry here is developing an over-reliance on AI to do the hard work of learning. Learning and growth are hard; we should not rob ourselves of the experience of grappling to master and learn a difficult concept. That’s what makes us better. We need to move the conversation from how AI can complete jobs with little effort to understanding how we can use AI to become better critical thinkers, ask better questions, and reframe our ideas so they have a greater impact.

These principles can evolve as we continue exploring AI’s potential to enhance human creativity. The key is to focus on how AI can make us better, not just complete tasks for us. By keeping these guidelines in mind, creative leaders can navigate the integration of AI into their workflows while ensuring that human creativity remains at the forefront.