A recent peer reviewed study of the words we use and the ideas we express found that texts aided with AI sounded more creative, but that the ideas we express are less diverse. This should raise the alarm with everyone involved in working with ideas whether it be business creative, coding, or writers of all genres.

“The Creative Link Between Words and Ideas is Weakening in the AI Era” is written by academics associated from some of the best universities in the USA (see link in the comments). The authors suggest that LLMs enhance superficial semantic diversity while homogenizing the underlying ideas at the same time. That’s what I would coin “the creative curse of the LLMs.”

If you read articles on LinkedIn frequently you cant have missed the many posteds that claim that “we are using AI for everything” and that “companies that don’t use AI now are gone by Christmas!” (I’m pushing the envelope, but you get the point.) What concerns me the most is the argument that AI homogenizes ideas.

Ideas are the most precious commodities of any venture. Regardless whether you sell insurace or trying to code the next Tik Tok, the quality of your idea is at the essence of creating a great end product. My understanding of the use, and dependency on LLMs, is that they break the creative link between what stirs an idea in your head, your internal thought process, and finally, your own creative output expressing your process.

A paradox in the study is that we readers rate text generated with (the help of) AI as more creative than text written by humans only. I believe that is explained by the fact that the AI uses more diverse language than you and I would, though the idea expressed is less diverse than what we would come up with on our own.

My thought now is that this is very bad news indeed. If the habit is using AI for brainstorming, and perhaps a bit of creative help, it will slowly grind down our ability to create, design, and express ideas of our own. I leave you with that thought, and apologize for this ‘dirty’ text that hasn’t spell checked or aided by any tech tools.