Creation is the Point
Creating is one of our deep human purposes. We would be wrong to remove ourselves for those acts or to avoid them.
The Point
Creating is the point. This is what makes life satisfying. Creation > consumption. It feels different. It speaks to us. It's in our nature. It's a part of our destiny.
It requires skill. We master something. We grow as we go. We leave something behind.
Procreation is the greatest power God has given to man. God, who created the worlds, now shares His creative attributes with us.
To be able to create is an essential reason for our birth.
Do it For Me
As a rule, it is spiritually destructive to leave for others to do for us what we can do for ourselves.
My mom will pick up my room. My dad will pay for that. My roommate will clean the kitchen. My coworker will pick up the slack. And on. We can sense the lack of dignity, the missed opportunity. There is something missing here.
AI Will Do it For Me
Artificial Intelligence seems to has recently advanced rapidly. What possibilities! AI's going to do it for me. That will no longer be my responsibility. I can relax. I won't have a job.
This attitude tends toward laziness and meaninglessness. We shouldn't remove the very meaning of our lives.
Abstraction of Work
But what if I'm excited that AI will do the menial stuff so I can do the real creative stuff. Sounds good.
If AI is an abstraction, a tool, so that I can accomplish something higher and greater, then purpose is still in that.
Change of Work
The advent of widespread AI will surely change things. If it changes that kinds of things we create, that could be fine. Similar to the advent of the tractor during the industrial revolution, now we're not threshing fields. We can move on to the other needful work of the farm.
Still Create
It is folly to avoid work. God decreed that by our own sweat and effort we would sustain ourselves. This, in physical and other ways. Work is the point.
Don't give work to the machines because you think they're better and then sit on your hands.
Act or Be Acted Upon
LLMs are acted upon: As we learn more about LLM AIs, we discover how much it takes to get them to the state they're in. Years of development. Gobs of human creation as input. Armies of programmers and other humans to input data. They only have the associations they were given. They only have data input up to a point in time. In a way, they're not all that interesting -- old news, in fact. Last year's cover band, operated from a joystick.
We act: Isn't it great to be different and higher than such a machine! We are meant to act and not to be acted upon -- agents unto ourselves. We are not helpless. The power to create, fresh and new.
Someone's Always Better
As in any comparison, someone's always better than you. Even at your favorite creative endeavor. Maybe a machine will be sometimes, at some things. But you don't learn helplessness. You don't pity yourself. You don't stop creating, considering yourself surpassed and unworthy.
If AI is better at something than you, determine if you care. Or even how to incorporate it into your creations.
Be more creative, not less. Put more of yourself into your creations, because that's the point.