Cultural stagnation: “You & AI” instead of “AI first”
I recently described what using AI without a high level of awareness does: I become less critical and have less access to my creative abilities. And voilà, I keep stumbling right now as I write this text without AI.
Chunked up to the business or societal level, today I learned the term “cultural stagnation”: the slow flattening of creativity into what feels like uniform mush. I am not saying “AI is evil.” The machine does what it is supposed to do: it delivers the most probable.
The problem is that the most probable is, by definition, what already exists a thousand times over. AI reproduces the middle of its training data. At the same time, we are filling the web with more and more AI-generated material on which the next generation of AI is trained. It is a systemic effect. If none of this bothers me, our taste gets used to exactly this inbred tone until we no longer recognize mediocrity because it is already everywhere. At the same time, annoyingly, it often reads brilliantly.
Anyone who reads a lot of LinkedIn knows what I am talking about. The same rhythm of language (can you already tell GPT from Claude?), the same types of hooks, the same three thoughts. I no longer like reading some of my own AI-assisted posts from last year.
I find it very important, on the subject of AI, above all to move forward consciously and to take insights of this kind into account. Everything that makes organizations valuable, that makes us valuable, lives on deviation, after all. On a position of one’s own, even if it is sometimes odd or half-finished. A tone of one’s own and, above all, ideas of one’s own that are not obvious.
If I funnel all my communication, strategy work, and idea generation through the same tools as everyone else … what am I producing with that? The only word that fits is “interchangeability.”
So the point is to take the more laborious route: first your own odd draft, then let the machine push against it. Cultivate sources that not everyone has: books, conversations, and please, loads of your own experience. And as an organization: protect and encourage deviation instead of using AI to optimize it away.
The strange idea in the meeting must not be treated as noise; it may be the only thing that sets us apart from the competition.
AI can do so many things better than we can. Much better. Uniformity too, to carry the notion of interchangeability into the kinesthetic.
What is peculiar—what is our own—remains our job!
Suggestions:
- Make sure things arise from within you. Don’t immediately tell the AI “just do it.”
- Keep your style.
- Set limits for the AI. Only one pass for improvement, not seven.
- And if you do go further, take time for thorough prompting, so that as far as possible the AI doesn’t just fill the gaps on its own.
What does a whole workday without AI feel like? For me it is already something like leaving the house without a smartphone.
#CulturalStagnation #AI #Creativity #Leadership