When Struggle Was the Signal: AI's Challenge to Creative Worth
Back in the pre-internet days, I used to write letters to my grandfather once a month. A man of letters himself, my grandfather would critique my writing a little more harshly than my already harsh teachers. But he was always happy to receive them. Because my letters were proof that I cared enough to invest my time and effort in writing to him.
Today, when I receive auto-templated comments, I feel little. Though I still respond, arguing that even an auto-complete sentence demands some effort (however minimal).
When writing was hard, it meant something.
Ages ago, I helped many friends with their Statement of Purpose (SoP) as they applied for their Master’s in the US. But even with a writer, the writing was hard. The hook doesn’t fall into your lap. Ideas don’t come organized. The facts don’t fit into a narrative. Emotions don’t translate into words.
The SoP, even when ghostwritten, was an outcome of time, effort and a creative struggle.
Creative Struggle. That’s what writing took. Now, however, the very essence of this struggle, and the value we derive from it, faces an existential challenge. GenAI upends everything we hold sacred about writing, creativity, and creation.
Commodification of Human Spirit
Nick Cave, the Australian musician and writer, was aghast when his fans mentioned about a songwriter who was using ChatGPT to write ‘his’ lyrics because it is ‘faster and easier’.
Responding through an emotional letter, Cave comments: “ChatGPT rejects any notions of creative struggle, that our endeavours animate and nurture our lives giving them depth and meaning.”
The tone grows acerbic: “ChatGPT is fast-tracking the commodification of the human spirit by mechanising the imagination. It renders our participation in the act of creation as valueless and unnecessary.”
Ethan Mollick laments the devaluation of writing, especially of the ‘letter of recommendation’ for his students.
In his essay, he starts with what these letters signal: “Professors are asked to write letters for students all the time, and a good letter takes a long time to write. … The fact that it is time consuming is somewhat the point. The fact that a professor takes the time to write a good letter is a sign that they support the student’s application. We are setting our time on fire to signal to others that this letter is worth reading.”
Mollick experimented with some GenAI tools for the same task. And the AI-generated letter of recommendation shocked him.
“ … the terrible, horrible thing about it is THIS IS A GOOD LETTER. It is better than most letters of recommendation that I receive. This means that not only is the quality of the letter no longer a signal of the professor’s interest, but also that you may actually be hurting people by not writing a letter of recommendation by AI, especially if you are not a particularly strong writer. So people now have to consider that the goal of the letter (getting a student a job) is in contrast with the morally-correct method of accomplishing the goal (the professor spending a lot of time writing the letter).”
Even a great outcome, when it lacks a creative struggle, isn't valued. This explains the negative reaction to a recent Google ad. Google quickly pulled a Gemini ad, aired during the Paris Olympics, that depicted a father using AI to write his daughter a fan letter. Viewers found it disturbing; one media professor went so far as to call it "one of the most disturbing commercials I've ever seen."
AI is now both the producer and consumer
While AI's role as a content producer has been extensively discussed, we're only beginning to grapple with its emerging role as a consumer of that very content. I recall a colleague boasting he could write faster and with such finesse that he rivaled professional writers (like me). An interviewer, likely a stand-in, dryly added, “I don’t know why these people [my colleagues] need a writer. I use ChatGPT for my emails and reports; it gives great output already.”
While AI’s role as a producer has been dwelled on excessively, people have largely not accounted for its role as a consumer.
If one can write an elaborate, embellished email using AI, the receivers will likely use AI to cut to the chase too. If people can now create reports that span hundreds of pages in a jiffy, the consumers will promptly sniff out the bone from the lump of meat too.
Why Creative Struggle Matters to Us
Whenever I look at lengthy books, I used to wonder how the author found the time and energy to write so many pages! I would imagine the sleepless nights and endless distractions the author may have overcome to accomplish such a feat.
When I stumbled upon timeless wisdom, I pondered the decades it took for the author to arrive at this magical state of enlightenment.
Indeed, this is what Will Durant says of Spinoza, whose claim to fame rests on one short book:
"Spinoza is not to be read, he is to be studied; you must approach him as you would approach Euclid, recognizing that in these brief two hundred pages a man has written down his lifetime’s thought with stoic sculptury of everything superfluous."
- Will Durant, 'The Story of Philosophy'
When you read someone, you resonate most with their struggle for fulfilment, their quest for meaning, and their pursuit of dreams.
As James Baldwin remarked: “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
The reader connects with the writer (even those long dead) through shared effort and vulnerability. This human connection is precisely what we risk losing when the 'creative struggle' is outsourced. The act of grappling with doubt, uncertainty, and pain makes the writing worth the effort in both authoring and reading it.