A week or so ago, I was discussing AI with a professor of art; his outlook was very pessimistic. When the topic turned to creativity, he went into a small tirade about the potential impact of AI on creativity. He said:

I also wonder what it will do for creativity. Will it help or hinder? Already my students look to social media and the web to find inspiration for problem solving. They don’t look into themselves for ideas and possibilities. They want to see what someone else did and mimic that. It’s easier, and, of course, there is no baseline for quality in that research.

And he went on to elaborate.

Of course, he’s right—some people will always take the easy way. For example, I know of a small graphics department at a nearby company that, since the advent of the World Wide Web, has not created a single piece of creatively original work. They spend their time “researching”—which really means finding something to mimic, if not copy outright. In their defense, however, I must note that they are terribly understaffed, and are often faced with unrealistic deadlines, so copying and rearranging is simply a method for survival.     Not everyone, however, is interested in taking the easy way.

We know that students do spend enormous amounts of time on their phones, as do we all. But are we all looking at TikTok or Twitter or playing video games? Or are we rather doing legitimate research by using the tool that is most easily available? My guess is that there is a mix, and I have discovered that it is a fool’s game to try to guess what someone else is looking at on their phone at any particular time. Just yesterday, I was having lunch with a friend and we were discussing a movie, the name of which neither of us could remember, although we remembered the actors and the plot quite well. The answer was right there on the phone once we asked the right question. That was not exactly creativity, but it was legitimate research, albeit for conversational purposes.

And when one is working creatively, who is to say that looking one place is superior to looking another? Artists might well look into themselves for inspiration, but that self-search might well trigger the need to do some outside research, and there is no tool handier than the phone. Of course, one might prefer a desktop or laptop or a physical library or museum. The point is that in finding creative solutions to problems, one might use whatever technology is at hand for research. And that research can then trigger ideas and original solutions to whatever problem is being considered.

Certainly, we all know that it is really easy to waste time using technology. Whether one does that or not has nothing to with technology itself, but rather to do with personal discipline. We can fritter time away on various web sites, or we can utilize the same tools on different web sites to find that piece of information that we need to continue the project at hand.

To not use technology to aid creativity seems to be crippling ourselves for no good reason. If the tools exist to aid our creative work, we should learn to use them, and then pick the best tool to do the job.

The current state of affairs in American school districts, some libraries, and arts organization is that it only takes one complaint to cancel what the majority might benefit from if these organizations weren’t so easily intimidated. Two recent cases illustrate this trend, one in Florida and one in Utah.

In Florida, one parent complained to the Miami-Dade School District about Amanda Gorman’s Inauguration poem, “The Hill We Climb” along with several other books. The complaint was promptly referred to a committee, where it was determined that one of the books was “balanced and age appropriate and would remain available for all students.” The others, including Gorman’s poem, were restricted to middle-school students only.

A not dissimilar situation recently unfolded in Utah. Again one parent was the complainant. The complaint was that the King James Bible was unsuitable for children due to “vulgarity and violence.” The parent did provide eight pages of passages to show that the Bible is inappropriate. The Davis School District committee concluded that the Bible “does not contain sensitive material” according to Utah’s criminal code, which defines pornographic and harmful materials. Thus, the book was allowed to remain on high school library shelves. It was, however, removed from elementary and junior high schools. This complaint and result was quickly followed by a second complaint by an individual demanding that the  Book of the Mormon be removed from the Davis School District school libraries due to violent content.” The same committee will review the book.

In both of these cases, the books were not banned outright, but restricted because they were “age inappropriate.” One has to think that all the books in an elementary or middle-school library have been vetted by educators and librarians, only to have their judgment “corrected” by an individual parent.

And the threat of a single complaint is spilling over into public libraries and the arts as well. The complaint of a one parent caused a Texas elementary school trip to James and the Giant Peach to be canceled, thus depriving an entire class the opportunity to experience a children’s theatre production rather than keeping one girl home. A theatre director I know is, because of the touchiness of her administration, very concerned about receiving any complaints at all about any production. Needless to say, this has a chilling effect on the choice of plays and the manner of production.

One wonders whether the schools and libraries who cave to the demand of a single complaint have it right. It is, after all, a single complaint, not a majority clamoring for the removal of a certain title. Wouldn’t it be more responsible to say to that individual, “don’t read it,” or “don’t let your child read it,” rather than penalize all who use the library? Perhaps the library in question could keep a list of restricted patrons rather than a list of restricted titles. That way, the vast majority of those who don’t object to the material being available could be better served than by removing the book from availability because of single complaint.

And all of that goes double for those books that are not just “restricted,” but entirely banned. It is obvious that most of the book-banning and book-restricting demands are politically motivated—and do not represent a majority of library patrons. And let’s not forget that the majority of books being banned are by minority authors, many of whom, as Gorman says, “have struggled for generations to get on the bookshelves.” Perhaps author Stephen King has put it most succinctly: “Book-banners, after all, insist that the entire community should see things their way, and only their way. When a book is banned, a whole set of thoughts is locked behind the assertion that there is only one valid set of values, one valid set of beliefs, one valid perception of the world. It’s a scary idea, especially in a society which has been built on the idea of free choice and free thought.” And it only takes one.