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How to Use AI for Creativity, Unintended Creative Moments of Joy
Read time: 3 minutes
Welcome to Future-state Thinking, my weekly newsletter where I give actionable content, insights and tools for business and personal growth from my experience as an innovator and entrepreneur.
If you’re looking for my Cheat Sheets and Infographic PDFs, the vault is at the bottom of this email!
Reach your future-state by learning today:
- The Big Risk of Relying on AI
- The Pros and Cons of Using AI for Creativity
- 5 Tips For Using AI in the Creativity Process
- Unintended Creative Moments of Joy
Hi Reader,
I mentioned last week that I’m co-authoring The DUCTRI Playbook with the creator of The DUCTRI Model, Dr. Christian Walsh.
The human-centred innovation mindsets, tools and techniques from the DUCTRI Model that has been field-tested over 5+ years and we’ve often been asked for a practical guidebook.
So, we’re building it. And, it will be full of real-world case studies from global innovators and change-makers to help you right away.
Right now it’s an early-stage prototype being tested alongside of new and experienced innovators. So, I’m building a waitlist of those who want exclusive updates and a chance to help me build this and/or to be at the front of the queue when the book is available for pre-order. If that sounds like you, claim your spot on the waitlist.
Alright, let’s get to this week’s newsletter…
The Big Risk of Relying on AI
In a study involving 758 consultants from Boston Consulting Group, GPT-4 was used for two tasks: generating new product ideas and analysing a complex business case with qualitative data to make recommendations.
Participants who used GPT-4 within its area of competence showed significant performance improvement.
However, those who used GPT-4 for tasks outside its capabilities performed worse than those who did not use the AI tool at all.
How to Use AI for Creativity
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionising many aspects of our lives, and the ideation process is no exception.
In creativity workshops, integrating AI tools like ChatGPT has significantly enhanced the early phases of idea generation. By leveraging AI, we can increase the quantity and quality of creative ideas.
However, AI comes with its own set of pros and cons. Understanding these can help us effectively use AI as a co-creator in the ideation process.
Pros of Using AI for Creativity
- Increased Number of Ideas: Introducing AI into creativity workshops has significantly increased the number of ideas generated. AI can rapidly produce many suggestions, providing a broad base from which to work.
- Enhanced Novelty: AI’s ability to generate novel ideas has significantly benefited. By structuring prompts to influence creative aspects deliberately, AI can offer high levels of originality, leading to more innovative solutions.
- Diverse Perspectives: Making AI an active participant in the team has yielded diverse and unexpected ideas. This diversity is crucial for breaking out conventional thinking patterns and exploring new possibilities.
- Structured Creativity: AI can be directed through specific prompts to focus on certain aspects of creativity, helping to structure the ideation process more effectively and leading to more targeted and relevant ideas.
- Quality Improvement: By assigning specific roles to the AI and providing detailed context, the relevance and quality of the ideas generated are improved. AI can help refine broad concepts into more actionable ideas.
Cons of Using AI for Creativity
- Dependence on Human Oversight: While AI can generate numerous ideas, balancing AI output with human input is crucial. Humans provide the necessary experience and nuanced understanding that AI lacks, ensuring that ideas are creative but also practical and relevant.
- Context Sensitivity: For AI to be effective, it needs comprehensive context. Providing detailed background information and defining the AI’s role is essential. Without this, the AI’s contributions might be less relevant or off-target.
- Risk of Over-Reliance: There is a risk of becoming too reliant on AI for creativity, potentially stifling human ingenuity. It is essential to use AI to enhance human creativity, not replace it.
- Quality Control: Not all AI-generated ideas will be helpful or feasible. Human oversight is needed to sift through them, refine them, and discard those that do not add value.
- Ethical and Bias Concerns: AI tools can inadvertently perpetuate biases in the data on which they were trained. Ensuring ethical use and mitigating bias in AI-generated ideas is an ongoing challenge that requires vigilance and active management.
5 Tips For Using AI in the Creativity Process
To maximise the benefits of AI in creativity, it’s essential to integrate it thoughtfully into the creative process.
Here are some critical steps to effectively use AI as a co-worker in generating innovative ideas:
1) Define the Role
Start by assigning a specific role to the AI in your prompt. This helps contextualise the AI’s responses and makes them more relevant.
For example, “You are a development engineer at [Company] working on [Problem]. You are working in a team of [x] people.”
2) Describe the Situation
Provide a detailed description of the problem, including its history, current relevance, and future implications. This should include:
- Past Context: Explain why and how the problem has been handled.
- Present Context: Discuss why the problem needs addressing now.
- Future Goals: Outline what you hope to achieve by solving the problem.
3) Provide Maximum Context
Include all relevant information, data, and constraints in your prompt to give the AI a comprehensive understanding of the task.
The more context provided, the better the AI can tailor its responses.
4) Human-AI Co-Creation
Use AI-generated ideas as a starting point and allow human team members to refine and build on these ideas.
This collaborative approach leverages the strengths of both AI and human creativity.
AI can generate numerous ideas quickly, while human expertise and intuition can filter and enhance these ideas.
5) Iterative Process
Regularly iterate on the prompts and feedback to improve the quality and relevance of the AI’s contributions.
An iterative approach allows for continuous refinement and adaptation, ensuring that the AI remains a valuable tool throughout the ideation process.
Summary
AI has the potential to significantly enhance the ideation process by increasing the volume and some novelty of ideas.
However, its effectiveness depends on thoughtful integration and balanced use with human oversight.
By understanding the pros and cons of using AI for creativity and following best practices for integration, we can harness AI as a powerful co-creator to unlock new levels of creativity and innovation.
Unintended Creative Moments of Joy
One of the biggest hurdles for creative thinking is the fast-pace of change combined with the ‘always on’ business as usual (BAU) mode.
We need to make space to think, to reflect and to be creative. By doing so we let our analytical minds rest and allow the subconscious to work too.
Things like, going for a walk, sleeping on it and coming back with fresh eyes all help to not rush to judgements.
The thing we struggle with is how uncomfortable it feels to not have an answer, so we rush to ‘solve’ a problem rather than let it sit and play with ideas.
Another important factor is changing the environment. That’s exactly what Christian and I did recently when iterating The DUCTRI Playbook ‘prototype’.
We headed to a local craft brewery to focus on one thing and got side-tracked talking about recent feedback from people testing the playbook.
Dr. Christian Walsh in hyper creative mode
All of a sudden Christian was sketching out a new idea on some napkins.
And, there it was. An unintended creative moment of joy.
PS – This took a few hours to put together, can you take a few seconds to comment and like this post on LinkedIn – click the button above.
That’s all for this week.
Thanks for being here and see you next Wednesday (NZ),
Vaughan
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