Today, in early 2024, new AI platforms and capabilities are causing shockwaves through the creator economy and creators’ lives. But creators can outsmart ChatGPT with a powerful advantage.

Platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, as well as a number of A.I. graphics engines, are demonstrating their clear and present threat to the work of many creators. The quality, depth, and speed of AI-generated text and images are amazing and alarming.

These AI systems, such as Chat GTP, are good — really good — at gathering existing facts, data, knowledge, and content from across the Internet and crafting readable and coherent copy. As Microsoft’s latest updates to Bing and the Edge browser demonstrate, the tools are superb at finding, prioritizing, filtering, sorting, organizing, comparing, and related content tasks.

But creators can offer so much more to their audiences. We can and should emphasize, enhance, and empower the experience of authentic humanity in our work.

Here are only a few examples of the brilliance that creators should master in the face of these apparent threats.

All these qualities have always been essential for creators, long before AI graphics engines and ChatGPT. But their power, impact, and the ways they differentiate human creators from the machines are now critical for creators’ survival, sanity, and sanctity as creators.

• Relate personal stories and experiences from your life and the unique insights and emotions that emerge from them.
• Write in eloquent, articulate, passionate ways that bring out your humanity and speak to the humanity in others.
• Generate new ideas, innovate, and spark creativity in your audience. This is a human capacity that AI developers continue to struggle with.
• Use the power of AI to gather the facts, data, and existing content. Then color, enhance, and humanize it all using the methods above.

Someday AI will probably figure out how to do all this and possibly do it better than creators. That will be a sad, tragic day, as the machines finally suck the creative soul from the human race. That will mark the official validation of the ‘last invention of the human race.’

As musician Nick Cave quoted when a fan used ChatGPT to create a song ‘in the style of Nick Cave’: “The apocalypse is well on its way,” he wrote. “What ChatGPT is, in this instance, is replication as travesty,” he said.

He went on, “Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend.”

He continued, “… thanks for the song, but with all the love and respect in the world, this song is bullshit, a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human.”

Well said, Nick.

My quest for authentic experience and humanity

I keep extensive journals on a variety of philosophical, spiritual, and contemplative themes. I’ve usually assumed most of that writing is private and personal and wouldn’t apply or appeal to a general audience.

But as I consider how to up my game to stay ahead of the algorithms, I’m learning how to reframe much of that content in the following ways:

• Share lessons learned and insights I’ve gained along the way as an artist and a creator.
• Explore examples of compelling and memorable experiences in my life and in the stories of others that raise intriguing questions and inquiries and that spark new thinking and new perspectives.
• Demonstrate ways to show my work with practical tools and processes.
• Demonstrate ways to show my thinking, to help others with mindset, organization, and productivity.
• Demonstrate ways to show my feelings and reactions, what attracts and repels, and why.
• Experience and express simple wonder by pointing out and commenting on and marveling at the beauty, mystery, goodness, and love all around.
• Use the amazing AI tools to check myself on an unlimited number of topics and subject matter, to ensure completeness, accuracy, and currency in my content.

I suspect chat GPT is not very good for any of these — yet! So in the meantime, until the machines catch up, I’ll keep my humanity, and I’ll keep sharing it with the world.

All this has me wondering about online content in general. Content was king in the first phase of the Internet, and in the second phase, social was dominant but is starting to fade as it gets more and more trite, repetitive, abusive, and dangerous.

The next phase of online activity and financial incentives will be driven by AI. That is already happening as Google and Microsoft battle it out, with Bard in Google search and OpenAI integrated into Microsoft’s Bing.

As that battle intensifies and drives ever-more-powerful algorithms, we must now ensure that the light of authentic humanity burns higher and brighter. We must dig deeper, get personal, tell our stories, and emphasize the experience in all we do. Algorithms don’t have experiences, but we do. That’s our language and our voice.

I encourage creators everywhere to not go quietly into that dark night.

Even if the AI gets better at all these mechanistic tasks, it will never achieve that highest state that makes us sentient beings: the experience.

The AI will never experience love, tragedy, triumphs, true creativity, friendship, a mountain meadow at night, a baby’s first smile, the taste of fresh brewed coffee, and a brilliant spring morning.

As Nick Cave said, “It doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience.”

Content is the realm of ChatGTP and AI at the moment. But content is only the beginning of what we can accomplish as creators and only one dimension of how creators can and should engage their audiences and the world.

For example, I’m using content as an introduction and a doorway to all the human activities that I pursue, that the machines can’t touch: speaking, teaching, interviewing, coaching, and general creative and helpful outreach.

If all we do as creators and creators is the generation and production of content, then yes — there is a new player in the game with some vast skills that we cannot match. The abilities of that new player will only accelerate and expand in the coming years.

But humans can play a far bigger game than this programmed combatant is capable of. And we can make allies with the opponent on his narrow playing field because we can invite him on our team to contribute to and enhance all we do.

I’m an introvert by nature. This increased dedication to authentic connection and human outreach will challenge my social bandwidth. But I’ll rise to the challenge. I’ve become far better at interpersonal, human, and public interactions as I’ve matured into my 60s. But my capacity for many relationships and frequent social exchanges has always been limited. So I’ll be challenged to expand my human bandwidth beyond that content playing field that’s getting redefined before our eyes.

I hope this article exemplifies the principles that I’ve shared here.

So, be accurate, informed, and educated, to learn, grow, and earn an honest living.

Be inspired, motivated, loved, and validated, to feel alive, human, and valued.

That first imperative is the realm of data-driven AI. That second one remains the realm of the creator and our capacity for authentic humanity, intimacy, and experience.

Let’s answer that call.

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