Sometimes AI Mediocrity Is Just What You Want
If your strategy at work is to spare yourself for other purposes, AI can help
Last fall, I gave a talk in which I mentioned generative AI’s homogenizing effect on creative expression. These systems create their answers by analyzing patterns in what has already been written, or said, or imaged. So of course their writing and image-making isn’t tops for spark and originality. (That’s why, I think, some studies report that AI helps average performers at work more than it helps the stars.)
I said this was unquestionably bad for creative people. An assistant who nudges you to do the expected thing is not one who’ll inspire your wildest flights.
But a questioner gave me a new perspective. People have to make a living, she pointed out. For a working writer, “it’s not all short stories,” she said. “Sometimes you got to copywrite.”
She’s right. There are times, for many office toilers, when AI’s banality could be a feature, not a bug. These are days…