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AI vs. human creativity?

Progresses made in artificial intelligence have given rise to software and platforms that are able to compose music, create works of art, design objects, write a song or a poem in complete autonomy. Does all this help and inspire the human creative process or does it question it? AI can inspire new, agile approaches; it enables the passage from pure imagination to tangible development to take place very quickly, exploiting and combining unexpected and diverse sources of information. In the field of design and architecture, many are asking themselves: will creatives continue to do their jobs if there is an artificial intelligence that can replace them? However, that’s not exactly how it is. The right question is: what is the relationship between human creativity and artificial intelligence? AI and creativity are two fundamaentally different concepts: the first analyses and interprets data, following a set of instructions, while creativity is relating things that at first sight may seem to be distant from one another, looking at a problem from different angles, finding unexpected solutions. AI however can aid creative processes by automating certain activities - for example helping, with its generative speed, in the brainstorming phase. We wanted to ask studios of architecture and design what they thought, formulating six questions from which they had to select two. Some preferred not to respond while others declined by replying that nothing could be further from their design approach. Among the thousands of inventions received with scepticism one comes to mind: movable type printing. Not everyone welcomed this revolution with enthusiasm. In his In Praise of Scribes, from 1492, the abbot Johannes Trithemius decreed the moral superiority of copying writing by hand. Ironically, his words found diffusion precisely thanks to movable type printing. And in the first fifty years following Gutenberg’s invention, around eight million books were printed in Europe. Changing the history of the world.

by Marina Jonna

What is the relationship between human creativity and artificial intelligence? We asked architecture and design firms to answer two of the questions below. Here are their answers.

1. Does AI technology that generates images with textual input elevate human creativity or make it obsolete?

2. Can technological tools come to replace professionals in the creative sector? Will we see some professions disappear and new ones emerge?

3. In some contexts, robots increase job opportunities. In your opinion, could this also be the case?

4. Is there a machine and/or software that you wish you could use but does not yet exist?

5. Will the way you design be affected by technological evolution?

6. Does it make sense in your opinion to equate human creativity and “artificial creativity”? Is a deep interaction between them possible?

Acpv Architects

Replies by Paolo Mazza, partner of the studio

2. In a certain sense the answer is yes. Though I believe that machines and software will never be able to replace people, they will change the way we work. We will concentrate much more on data and input, and less on execution. In our work, technological tools can speed up design processes – but they can’t fix everything. I’m talking about the sphere of perception: there are spaces where you need to create a sensation of welcome, while others foster personal interaction. These aspects cannot be measured, so it is very hard to use the complete force of the software. 5. With recent developments in the field of AI, it is possible that also in architecture we will be seeing powerful technological infrastructures, which equipped with solutions of machine learning and deep learning will be able to analyze huge quantities of data for the development of buildings that will improve our quality of life.

BIG-GAME

2. Automatic translation is a great way to communicate quickly in a different language, but translators have not gone out of jobs, simply the way translators work is just different – it is now more about fine-tuning and checking computer-generated translations. In the creative field too, there are numerous examples of computer-assisted processes that modify the way we work. No profession will disappear completely, they will simply evolve. 6. Navigation programs can help you get to your destination faster, even if you know the way, because they can warn you against traffic jams. But if you go somewhere you don’t know, they allow you to find your way directly, which is amazing. The creative tools will probably work a bit in the same way.

Angeletti Ruzza

1. We believe that human creativity will always be superior, in any context. Someone said the heart belongs to us and no technological tool will ever have a heart like ours. In the heart we have poetry, soul, magic. We see marvelous things being done with new software and new technologies. New conquests in the field of architecture, graphics and design. But we are thrilled by our eyes, not those of a computer. 5. We have already been influenced. We began by using the drafting machine and the airbrush to “color” our projects. We bought a computer and a printer and they just sat there for months, because we didn’t really know what to do with them. Today we use powerful software to make renders, and programs for models. But we still verify our ideas on paper, using a pencil. We will continue to use technologies and programs, to be quicker and clearer in our presentations to clients, but the design method will always be connected with ideas and pencils.

Giulio Cappellini

2. Technological tools can and should help professionals in the creative sector, but the human involvement can never be replaced. These tools can undoubtedly create perfectly useful and functional objects, but with a level of surprise equal to zero. The roles of many professionals are rapidly changing: managing technology will clearly be a profession of the future.

6. It makes no sense to put human and digital creativity on the same plane. A correct interaction of the two can certainly be reached. We are going through a period in which we see projects of high quality but low creativity, far from the courageous creations that make the history of contemporary design. Let’s try to prevent further uniformity, erasing the signs of human ingenuity.

Carlo Colombo

2. Absolutely yes. Apart from a consolidated approach in the design phase, I immediately started to experiment with the world of AI. Together with my team, we have devoted time to experimentation in this area, using software like Midjourney, for example, an extremely powerful tool “trained” to develop billions of images and text, giving back an artistic result. Today it is part of a workflow I cannot live without. 3. Data processing systems have evolved to the point that AI can effectively help in the invention of ideas. Artificial intelligence create the image for us; so where can we find the human-artistic contribution in the making of these contents? This is the point of interaction; it is precisely in communication with artificial intelligence that we can find the human contribution: in the ability to clearly sum up a concept that has not yet been visually expressed.

Debonademeo

1. Human creativity is a form of technology itself, that feeds on experience and knowledge. Text input is processed by AI, but it is generated by the user who defines its entity, its juxtaposition and verbal value. 6. In our view it is not only possible, but the interaction is necessary as well. To create means doing, and every action requires expertise, but also a taste for risk and novelty, using all possible tools as long as they are guided by knowledge and awareness. The same goes for AI, through strings of text – if you ask the right questions, you will get the best answers.

2&6. Due to pure frenzy, the world today tries to clumsily gauge the success of an idea only from its result, and I think that in this context speed can be confused with efficacy. For me, artificial intelligence is and will remain a tool. Seeing human creativity as obsolete is extraordinarily unrealistic, in my view. Human perception of the world is an unfathomable mystery, the interplay between logical and sensory connections makes us competitive, to triumph over any computer that has been generated by us. The complexity of sight and hearing, touch or smell, the culture of error and the beauty of useless things are human tendencies that AI is ontologically unable to grasp, or at least unable to do so with the elegance of human beings, the result of instincts honed over thousands of years. So I think of AI as a useful tool for the technical world, for calculation, for the prediction of scenarios, as happens today in generative design, with amazing potential. This does not rule out the idea that we can use AI to generate art or creativity, but the work of art has to be identified in the process of generation of the input required by the computer, so it can begin to work.

1. I think human creativity is much more based on the individual experience, intuition and emotions. I do not see here a competitor at all. It is the same with a hand sketch, there you can find always the very personal touch and spontaneous attitude which is impossible to achieve with AI. 2. I prefer the idea of working together, on one hand with traditional thinking based on our human norms and behaviors and on the other hand the technological progress. Here it is more important to set general conditions to respect the human cultures and rights. We are already in this metamorphosis from a very man made driven production to a more AI driven one. Still we need to understand that technology or machines are not the better craftsmen at all.

Matali Crasset

1 . It is undoubtedly interesting in intellectual terms, as is ChatGPT, but nevertheless when asked if mare’s eggs are larger than those of a dinosaur, ChatGPT responds that they are rarer. For me, architecture is above all a relationship with the client and the discussion of a “program.” How can we exercise the critical meaning of the project with AI? In my view, a project has meaning only if it is seen as a response to a context and an ecosystem. It has to be framed and contextualized. 2 . This is a debate that is far from new, having existed since the days of the Luddites in 19th-century England. In our context of climate crisis and passage to an ecological society, we can also ask ourselves about the price of these new methods in terms of energy, calculation and memory, while a human being seated at a table thinks and reproduces with a pencil. Aren’t these methods equally obsolete, or are they the symbol of an ecocide, like commercial space flights?

DRAGA & AUREL

1. Human creativity is also made of emotion, manual skill, ingenuity, and in this sense it cannot be completely replaced by artificial intelligence. Technology will increasingly be a partner in creative professions, providing tools to simplify and optimize work and production. 3. The second could not exist without the first, and precisely for this reason they cannot be placed on the same plane. The challenge for the future will be “staying human,” in the creative process and every aspect of life.

GAMFRATESI

2. Design is often a combination of logic and creativity. Both have to coexist. Technological tools help us to speed up the combinations and possibilities during the process, but we are not sure that these combinations can replace human intuition and sensitivity. 5. If there are programs or tools that facilitate the practical part of work, they will obviously be introduced, but an analog, manual part will never be forgotten – this may be nostalgia, but it will remain part of our work process.

Massimo Iosa Ghini

3. Asimov’s dream of robots at the service of humankind is filtered by the dystopian visions of Philip Dick, with the doubt and suspicion that something will go wrong.

4. What is lacking in our civilization of the imagination is a composer of atoms that makes it possible to put words into concrete order. AI brings the concrete formulation of our ideas closer to us, bringing the atom closer to the bit, as foreseen by Negroponte. Clearly certain passages are missing to make complex functions practicable, but the impression is that the path towards automation by AI of our lives has been traced, and is clearly visible today. It is equally true that whether this will generate better conditions of existence remains to be demonstrated. Like all tools, first you have to understand them and then to optimize their use, in the hope that they will remain tools.

Ecos – sustainable circular economy

The virtuous use of the wood.

Roberto Lazzeroni

1. Artificial intelligence and robotics face us with innovations and challenges, but also with new questions: is human creativity elevated or surpassed by AI technology? I believe technology is a tool at the service of mankind; in a dystopian vision of the future, we can think of different scenarios, if we do not put the progress of the human being at the center. 5. Our way of design has always been influenced by technological evolution. My generation started out with drafting machines, with lead and ink on tracing paper. Computers and all the programs were a true revolution that has changed the work of the designer in important ways. I think AI technology will change it even more.

Map Project

Emilie Robinson, Lead Designer at Map

2. Some professions will disappear as automation increases but the creative opportunities that will emerge as technological tools advance are super exciting. I see it as a new creative challenge, a chance for designers to equip themselves for the future world. 6. For me, human creativity is something that can’t be replicated. Artificial creativity can have a positive impact in a range of industries but it doesn’t capture the joy of design in the same way - celebrating the process, failing and learning from it, interacting and connecting with people. Design should always be human-centred. At Map Project Office, we focus on the blend between the digital and the physical. It’s our responsibility as designers to explore and redefine deeper interactions between human and machine.

1. I asked ChatGPT to answer this! The use of artificial intelligence technology (AI) to generate images starting from text input can be seen as an opportunity or as a challenge for human creativity. On the one hand, AI can help to free human creativity, enabling it to generate ideas and images that would otherwise be hard to invent or to make. For example, designers can use AI to rapidly create design sketches based on text descriptions, which helps them to experiment with and process ideas in a quicker, more efficient way. On the other hand, the use of AI to generate images could also undermine human creativity in certain cases. For example, if the technology becomes so advanced that it can generate images that seem very realistic, designers could become dependent on AI to create work in their stead, rather than trying to develop their own creative ideas. In general, AI can be a powerful tool to improve human creativity, but it is important that professionals remain aware of its limits and continue to develop their own creative ability in an independent way. 4. At times I would like to have a machine that can modify time.

Piero Lissoni

4 . No, there isn’t – it is enough to use one’s brain. 5 . My way of designing has always been influenced by technology, and it will be in the future. Being a designer does not mean only working on style; there is always an interaction with technology and innovation, and the worlds often mingle: technology influences style and vice versa.

Alberto Meda

2. Professionals who develop ideas based on a linguistic type of approach may be impressed, while those who use a “constructive” approach, developing ideas and putting them into form, consistent with the physicality of a material and its technique, will not be impressed at all! Because they know the potentialities, as sentient beings. AI doesn’t know what a cat is, it only knows the set of pixels that represent the cat. 5. Yes, because the new technologies are “storerooms” of creative suggestions.

MIST-O

1. It could elevate creativity if a direction exists, upstream, towards which to move, and an idea of what we want to obtain in order to control the output. Otherwise we don’t know if we can still call it creativity. 3. As with any revolution, new work opportunities will increase and be born, but at the expense of many existing categories. The risk is that the expenses will be too high and man will become “useless.”

Paola Navone

1. Technology doesn’t scare us. I think the autonomy of AI with respect to human creativity is still far away... I can’t wait until it really works. 6. The interaction between human and artificial creativity is a reality. I think it will be the job of the younger generations to open up to the infinite possibilities technology offers, and to find a way to express beauty, creativity and poetry with new media and new languages. An interesting challenge that will lead to unexpected results, but definitely not to the renunciation of creative thinking.

Palomba Serafini

Ludovica Serafini

1. I think about the work of Refik Anadol, who has created “Glacier Dreams” using a drone to shoot 4 million images. These images are then processed by software that combines them through mathematical functions, giving them rhythm through music, creating a digital work that continuously evolves. The question is who is the maker of the work: Refik or AI? 2. I have always thought that AI is like a pencil in the hand of a creative person. AI can be an opportunity for the creation of new tools and processes, permitting creative people to explore new frontiers and to generate ideas that would not otherwise have been possible. Human creativity and innovation are fundamental. Technology can improve the creative process, but it cannot replace it.