Issue 105: A Bulletin for Big Ideas and Better Business

OPINION / AI

Why Creativity Will Matter Even More in an AI Age.

Rishad is the author of Rethinking Work and Restoring the Soul of Business: Staying Human in the Age of Data. Rishad was the former Chief Strategist and Growth Officer of the Publicis Groupe.

💬 Rishad Tobaccowala

Here are five reasons why creativity is likely to matter even more in the AI Age:

1. AI is a spur to creativity: AI is making very powerful tools affordable to everybody. A new palette with which the individual can express themselves. Increasingly the gap between idea and reality is closing. Today, one can code using English vs knowing computer languages. Every advance in technology has spurred a new canvas and possibilities for creativity.

2. Human Voice: Sir John Hegarty, in a podcast conversation with me a few months ago, defined creativity as follows: Creativity is an expression of self.Listen to the greatest creative people and you will hear them saying: “Here is what I wanted to say,” “This is what I wanted to show,” or “What I am trying to build.” This innate voice feeds on curiosity, instinct, exposure to differing perspectives, feelings, and things that do not compute.It will be a human creativity of self-expression and not a machine variation of optimization and data co-relation.AI will unleash human creativity but will not replace human creativity.

AI will unleash human creativity but will not replace human creativity.

3. Human Choice: The French Philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote, “We choose with our hearts and use numbers to justify what we just did.” The most valuable brands differentiate on craft, provenance, storytelling, design and desire, which are all about how someone feels. All these are driven by creativity versus computation.

4. The Age of Poetry vs Plumbing: Most digital media, which is today the dominant media, has in the past been optimized on finding the right person at the right time in the right place. It has optimized for plumbing because technology had not enabled matching this with the right interaction until now. With generative and other AI tools, we are now likely to be able to not just be relevant, but to resonate by marrying math and magic at scale. We will enter the age of Poetry and Plumbing, and not just plumbing.

5. Conversational Interfaces Spur Storytelling: Until now, most media has been streaming or scrolling, but now the new interface will be conversations. One of the most intriguing findings of a human interaction with a chat bot is the depth and range of conversation. It will allow for responses to be far more calibrated and human by marketers. They will rely on actual preferences vs modeled or guessed preferences, allowing for greater impact. This is a new age of two-way storytelling.

We asked Rishad a couple of questions on how he personally relates to creativity, here’s what he had to say…

TBOC: What is your creative North Star?

RT: “Err in the direction of kindness” – George Saunders.

TBOC: What has inspired you lately?

RT:Vince Gilligan, who created “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad,” has a new show on Apple TV called Plur1Bus which combines storytelling, cinematography, and an innovative, never-before-seen plot that is the very definition of creativity.