One of the most feared Chinese curses says: "May you live in interesting times." Our time can hardly be called boring.
In technological development, we have entered a new revolution that will lead to a massive restructuring of our perception of things that previously seemed self-evident.
The widespread adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already significantly increased productivity in many areas of human activity. And the constant development of AI opens up more and more new possibilities for its application.
At the same time, complex problems are emerging more acutely in those areas of human activity that cannot be completely and mathematically precisely defined. More specifically - how the introduction of AI affects creativity.
Not Theft, But Accessibility
Very often, many people enthusiastically accuse AI of stealing results from original content creators. In their opinion, AI is just a banal "collage creator." Something that stole the works of others, cut those works into pieces and reassembled them, turning them into an ugly creation that is passed off as a breakthrough. But the basis for everything is trivial theft.
In my opinion, everything is really different. The problem is not at all that something has been physically stolen. The same style is a style. You can learn it yourself. Anyone, if they wish, can learn to copy the style of Van Gogh or Monet. Have you seen artists selling replications of famous works that they created themselves?
The problem lies elsewhere. The problem is accessibility. And it is exactly here that perception breaks down.
Let's consider two examples.
Programming: Automation of Routine Tasks
At first, I thought that the introduction of AI was very similar to the invention and implementation of steam engines. A huge number of types of simple mechanical work could be transferred to machines. This benefited many professions - for example, there was no need to manually push carts with ore from mines. Many professions lost their meaning, but many professions were created anew - at the very least, one had to know how to operate the new machines.
And the introduction of AI in software development looked the same to me. A huge amount of pure coding work - simply writing program text, with algorithms already created and so on - became possible to automate.
In programming, this happens very often. Necessary pieces of code have long been written and are quite common. For example, take the infamous bubble sort method. It has already been created, it already exists, and you don't need to constantly recreate it in your different programs.
In my time, when I was programming in Delphi 7, I collected my own small library of components that I actively used in my projects. It was considered very cool when you wrote your own DLL library and used it. And then it turned out that many components that I created were already made in a much better form - for example, with greater flexibility and functionality - and were present in extended packages of Delphi components.
Accordingly, roughly the same can be said about AI. A lot has already been created. A lot has already been written and explained. A lot exists in the form of pseudo-code. And all of this is publicly available. Everything can be found on Stack Overflow. The only question is the time you are willing to spend searching.
That is, in fact, AI uses knowledge and best practices created by generations of developers in order to minimize the routine work of writing code.
Art: Access to Style without Understanding Content
The situation with visual arts is largely similar. Mastering the style of a famous artist has always been part of learning. Young artists copy the works of masters, study techniques and methods.
Before the advent of AI, this process required many years of practice and training. The problem is not that AI "stole" Van Gogh's style - this style has been studied, described, analyzed by art critics and artists. It exists in the public domain as a set of techniques and methods.
The problem is that now anyone in seconds can get an image "in the style of Van Gogh" without understanding the essence of his technique, the historical context, or the philosophy of the artist. The democratization of access to style without immersion in its essence - that's what causes anxiety among professionals.
And yet, true understanding of art always goes beyond simple imitation of technique. The value of Van Gogh's original works is not diminished by the fact that someone can create a similar painting. Their value lies in the original vision, in the unique context of creation, in the fact that these works opened a new path in art.
The Accessibility Revolution: parallels with printing
So what do we see in these two examples?
On the internet, there are tons of hate about how AI has stolen everything and passes it off as its own. But - as already mentioned - there is no theft here. This is learning technique and training. Any person can (by spending enough time) master the same technique of execution through the same training.
So, the main problem is specifically in time. Previously, it took a person years to achieve such results. Now the use of technology has become available to almost anyone.
And at this moment, I realized what the current state of affairs reminds me of. It's not even the introduction of steam engines into life.
It's printing. When texts became available to a wide range of people, not just the specially selected few who had access to handwritten copies of books.
Before the invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century - whether by Laurens Coster in Haarlem or Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz - books were a luxury item. Each copy was created manually by monk scribes or professional scribes who worked for months on a single copy. This made books inaccessible to most people - even a simple prayer book could cost as much as a small house.
Scribes possessed not just a skill - they owned a monopoly on the dissemination of knowledge. Their high social status was based on the rarity of their skill and the labor-intensive process.
When the printing press appeared, very strong transformations occurred:
- Accessibility - books became tens, and then hundreds of times cheaper, more accessible to ordinary people.
- Crisis of certain professions - many masters of calligraphy lost their jobs or were forced to retrain.
- Standardization of results - printed books became more uniform, the uniqueness of each copy disappeared.
- Growth of literacy - when reading ceased to be a privilege of the elites, the level of education in society began to rise.
- Rethinking of value - handwritten books did not disappear, but turned into objects of art and luxury, valued for their uniqueness and craftsmanship.
What is happening now with AI amazingly resembles this revolution:
- Accessibility - just as the printing press made texts accessible to the masses, so AI makes design skills, programming, text writing — practically any creative processes — accessible.
- Crisis of certain professions — many routine tasks that previously required special skills (basic programming, simple graphics, standard copywriting) can be automated.
- Standardization of results — AI products have a certain "flavor" of uniformity, just as the first printed books lost the individuality of handwritten ones.
- Growth of a new type of "literacy" — more and more people can create content of acceptable quality without years of training.
- Rethinking of value — just as handwritten books did not disappear but acquired new value, so human creativity is not devalued, but changes its meaning.
From the Information Age to the Age of Ideas
That is, in fact, we see in these examples that the cost of development is dramatically decreasing, but the cost of ideas - on the contrary, will seriously increase in price.
In a world where AI makes technical execution accessible to everyone, the value of original ideas, unique vision, and deep understanding of context increases. Not the ability to paint "like Van Gogh," but the ability to see the world in a new way, as Van Gogh did in his time.
We stand at the very beginning of a new Era, which has replaced the Information Age - the Age of Ideas!