The Generative Animal
What value remains in human creativity in the age of AI?
There is no good reason a creature like this should exist.
A soft-bellied mammal that teeters about on two legs, spending energy on tasks that serve no clear survival function. The culprit, really, is the brain in charge of this bipedal frame – an organ that demands an alarming portion of the metabolic budget only to fritter it away on frivolities like Mario Kart. It worries, too – about things far beyond its immediate interests. Things that haven’t yet occurred and likely never will.
It worries about Mario Kart. What a scandal of biology.
This creature, poor thing, cannot be satisfied by its own improbable existence. It must also imagine existence, narrating imagination into poetry, paintings, and for some reason, stand-up comedy routines.
And now, within the span of a decade, this creature has built a class of machines that do many of the same things, only faster. These systems mimic what once felt like the crown function of the human mind: creativity.
