Automation Won't Kill Creativity – But Your Mindset Might

Mar 28, 2025

Are you a writer? A developer? Maybe, you're a creator of some sort.

Anyhow, if you're human, you've heard about artificial intelligence–unless, you've been living under a rock.

So, allow me a couple of minutes to take you on a journey.

It's going to get dark, but there's a reason I need that to happen. I want you to have a bigger picture, a clearer picture before I show you there's light at the end of this tunnel.

Without further a due, let's begin.

I'm going to assume you are a creative person. Not sure what other kind of person would be interested in reading my ramblings on creativity, and technology.

And I'm sure you've heard about artificial intelligence. You've probably used ChatGPT, or Claude. Maybe you've even ventured into trying DeepSeek despite the security concerns—I know I have, always with proper caution.

I'm not going to give you a full-fledged explanation of artificial intelligence, but there's one key concept to remember: the large language model—LLM from now on. I'll use LLM and AI interchangeably throughout our journey.

So, let's keep it simple: a LLM is artificial intelligence trained on massive amounts of text data.

Now, I want you to follow my lead, open your favorite AI chat, and try out the following prompt.

Write a scene set in a futuristic world where creativity, duty, and love collide. Society is struggling to find its footing after most machines abandoned humanity, leaving people to rebuild among the ruins. The cityscape is a fusion of neon-lit towers and ancient Eastern architecture, standing beneath twin moons.

Your protagonist is Kaito, a leader burdened with responsibility, torn between rebuilding a fragile society and his own doubts. He feels abandoned, lost in the weight of expectations, believing that art and creation are meaningless in a world fighting to survive.

The only person who sees beyond his doubt is Sayuri, a woman who has guided him through the darkness. She meets him in a hidden sanctuary—an old temple tucked away from the city's struggles. Sayuri urges him to see creativity not as a luxury, but as the foundation of a new world. But Kaito resists. To lead, he believes, he must sacrifice. To create, he must first survive.

As they stand at the edge of a choice, emotions rise. There is longing between them, an unspoken love neither has dared to name. Sayuri tells him she won’t stay forever. Kaito must decide: embrace the role of a leader and reshape society, or leave it behind to be with the only person who ever truly understood him.

Write the scene in a poetic style, balancing fantasy and sci-fi elements. Focus on the emotional weight of Kaito’s decision and the tension between duty and desire.

If you followed my lead, and pasted the prompt in your nearest LLM—it gave you a whole scene in a matter of seconds.

Does it matter how good the scene is? No.

What matters is the potential of these systems, and how much faster they produce results compared to humans.

How long would it take you to come up with a scene like the one the LLM wrote?

It would've taken me, at least a couple of days. You have to come up with the characters, world setting, the scenery, dialogue, conflict, and some kind of plot where the scene would fit in.

When I read the scenes ChatGPT and Claude wrote, a familiar knot formed in my throat. I thought I was getting good at disregarding their potential, but the speed at which these machines produce and improve—it's staggering.

How am I supposed to compete against them?

As a developer, and writer, the pressure is starting to increase. People say there’s a window that’s starting to shrink—and I have to do everything I can to get through, fast.

Build your brand, sell a product, have an audience, make money—do it all, and do it now.

And by the way, start using artificial intelligence. It’ll write your content for you. And automate all of your tasks.

Don’t have tasks to automate? Don’t worry, make them out. So, you’ll need AI no matter what.

But wait, shouldn't I be telling you about how amazing artificial intelligence is? After all that's what everyone is doing right now.

And I'm one of those people who believes there’s something to artificial intelligence. It 's right there in my newsletter description.

Yet, before I talk about any kind of potential—I’m taking you through my own journey. I still have these doubts gnawing at me. I’m learning to face them, and I want you to face them too.

To face doubt and fear, you first have to recognize them and understand what they’re trying to say. Else, you won't be able to break through them.

So, where was I?

Oh, right. Making out tasks for the AI to automate. Those dollars can’t be spent in vain.

As people start to rush, and scramble on their knees to be a part of a trend—I start to wonder what’s driving all the action.

The reason is the same one driving all the fear: our sense of purpose.

As abundance pours into some parts of the system and the economy shifts, sifting through jobs where human intervention can be reduced or eliminated, the question grows louder.

People are feeling the rumble inside their hearts.

What are we supposed to do now?

Is it true I won’t have to work to survive?

No, I have to get on any, every possible trend now. And secure my future and my family’s.

If artificial intelligence is taking over my job, I’ll be left behind poor and suffering.

What if I get on the trend and focus on making money? Who cares if I don't have a purpose or a vision to guide me?

And I wonder, what could happen to a society without purpose? Can we afford such a loss?

A human being who doesn't care about meaning, and lacks any direction in his life is prone to anxiety, depression, and addiction.

Now, imagine billions of humans struggling with their minds. And believing there's no purpose to their lives, since a machine does everything and does it better.

That's a bleak picture of the future.

But as I read the book “AI 2041” by Chen Qiufan and Kai-Fu Lee, I realized AI is another way for humans to keep delegating their decisions to someone else—or rather, something else.

Because our problem is not a lack of purpose, meaning, or vision. We're great dreamers, we have big imaginations. But we're terrible at taking ownership.

So, if we let that depressing future happen, it's on us.

We have this nasty habit of following someone else’s path without the awareness that it’s not ours. And artificial intelligence is just making that habit that more obvious.

What if there's a way to break free from that pattern? A tool to keep us in charge?

Well, I'll break it to you: there's no such tool. There's something better. A feature in humanity that sets us apart from artificial intelligence.

Agency. Intentionality.

Agency is when we wonder when and why some decisions are better made by a machine. And when and why, our choices as humans are the best fit. After all, no matter how much data you feed a machine, it still can’t understand all the complex emotional process behind that data.

But all those complex emotional processes, coupled with the complex world we live in become a labyrinth we have trouble navigating. So, we shut off and hope a machine will start to magically have the answers for us.

It's so easy to let it make the decisions. And yet, we have to find the way to stay at the helm.

And since I have agency, and a clear vision for my life I choose to ask: what if there's a way to use all this amazing technology as a catalyst for human creativity?

Wait, why are you choosing creativity? You ask.

Well, creativity is how we set ourselves apart. Creativity is not just the artistic results you might be thinking about.

Creativity is intention. It's skill, serendipity, wonder, imagination, innovation, agency.

Creativity is humanity. It's our door to creating a different future.

That's why I choose creativity as my focus for technological development.

After all, without it, there would be no artificial intelligence.

So, how could I be a part of this? How to make technology the creative infrastructure of humanity?

My first realization was that I had been looking for ways for a LLM tool to do the writing for me. As you read in the prompt at the beginning, there are some instructions related to the story. But, I was relying on the tool to do the rest of the work for me.

And that's just a lazy way to use such a powerful tool.

It also gives results that are mediocre when it comes to creative writing. Whenever I read a piece of content the LLM wrote, I had this sensation that the result was missing something.

Yet, every time I used AI to write content for me, I disregarded my gut feeling, copied the result, and hit publish. I wasn't interested in the writing style most people preach about around the internet—I wasn't going to spend time honing a skill I didn't care about.

Again, what a lousy perspective to hold on onto.

Until a live event with Kortex and Lawrence Yeo woke up the storyteller in me. Instead of trying to imitate someone else's style, I decided it was time to hone my storytelling skills.

And that's when the second realization hit me: if I want to be a part of building a future where technology is the catalyst for human creativity, I can't be just a developer. Or just a storyteller.

To build solutions I need to understand both sides of the coin.

Then my third realization made its appearance: What if we're looking at this from the wrong perspective? What if it's not about AI increasing speed, but quality?

To understand what’s possible, I had to let go of the perspective that LLMs are a mathematical algorithm with huge amounts of data and processing power.

Albeit there’s some truth to that statement—the shield it provides to my ego, it also keeps me from seeing the bigger picture.

Instead of competing against artificial intelligence, why not figure out the ideal symbiotic relationship?

How to use a LLM processing power to my advantage?

I thought I was going to find the magical answer to that question. A simple prompt, or a complex one—but at the very least the one prompt strong enough to get me immediate results.

Change is a complicated thing. You think you have it figured out, and yet find yourself following the same patterns. Like me, looking for an easy answer once again.

Problem is, when it comes to technology there's no easy answer. And there's no "one prompt to solve it all".

No matter how long or complete a prompt looks, there's so much going on under the hood that simple prompting doesn't seem like the way to go.

At least not for me.

Don't get me wrong. You need to learn how to get the best results from the LLM through your prompts. But I wonder if there are skills more important than prompting. Skills that will prove their worth in the future.

— — —

As I wrestled with these questions, I realized I wasn't alone in this struggle. Across the creative landscape, others were asking similar questions about AI and creativity.

I found myself drawn to the stories of fellow creators—people who were neither blindly embracing nor rejecting AI, but genuinely curious about what might emerge from the collaboration.

One story in particular resonated with my own journey.

My third realization—that AI might be about quality rather than just speed—found validation in the work of Sudowrite, a company that has spent the last four years exploring the intersection of AI and storytelling.

Like me, they straddled two worlds—the founders were both developers and storytellers. And they embodied the mindset I was starting to value: they were curious creators at heart, willing to experiment, fail, and discover rather than just following the beaten path.

As storytellers they're aware of the shortcomings of current LLMs. And they're also aware that fast advancements in infrastructure make it possible for them to play with the models and adapt them to the needs of a fiction writer.

So, they finetuned Muse—finetuning is the fancy term for adapting—a large language model exclusive for fiction writing. They're making sure writers can focus on great storytelling instead of endlessly tweaking their prompts to get a decent piece of creative writing.

You'll wonder, why does finetuning a large language model matter? And what's this curious creator mindset I mentioned about?

Like with the prompt I gave you at the beginning, most of us are happy just using whatever prompt we find on the web believing it will give us the right answer. And that's not always the case.

Use a prompt, and you get confidence. And the gnawing feeling that the answer could be better, but you don't know how to get there.

And you don't know how to get there because you don't have the expertise. You don't know what you don't know. You haven't put on the years of practice.

You're not aware of your creative style, and yet you're waiting for the AI to understand your intentions, and write authentic pieces for you.

Those are all reasons for why is important to finetune a model. Someone already has the expertise, and is going the extra mile to help you out in your journey.

Now, what does a curious creator mindset mean? How do you know if you have it?

Let's answer a couple of questions:

• Do you follow the fixed path? Or do you prefer to follow your curiosity and discover something new every day?

• Are you willing to play and experiment with the tools around you?

• Do you sense AI's unrealized potential and feel genuine curiosity about how to tap into it?

• Do you let fear paralyze you? Or do you rather dig deeper than let fear stop you?

• Would you rather become a curious creator than stay a passive user?

Curious creators are the ones who will shape the future of technological innovation. They're the ones who see its weak points, and figure out ways to improve it.

So, while others insist on using tools without understanding future implications—it's these creators, these creative people the ones looking for and building their own solutions.

Solutions other people will be able to use better than a simple chatbot.

Companies like Sudowrite are proof that we're on the right track to make possible every creator gets to use artificial intelligence as a part of their creative infrastructure.

But technology develops at such a fast pace you might be wondering if you'll ever be ready. What if you find a way to implement AI into your creative workflow and by that time a new technology comes up? What then?

Well, then the cycle of anxiety, fear, and frustration starts again. You'll fear that new technology will replace you, you'll wonder what makes you human, and if there's even a purpose to all the madness. And you'll probably have to go through this multiple times in your life time.

But is this how you want to live? I'm sure as hell, that's not the life I want.

It's time to stop relying on the next trend to know how to work on your craft.

Remember my question at the start of all this? I was wondering how to use AI potential to my favor—I went through a whole journey with you. I said the answer was not about one tangible solution, but a set of skills I could carry with me and adapt to whatever technology shows up.

But, what if the answer is not about a set of skills?

What if the answer lies in developing a curious creator mindset?

Let's take a brief detour and visit a gold mine.

It's dark, filled with dirt, and explosives. Those explosives go off once a day, with the hope of unearthing the gold ore—a gold ore is a rock large enough to contain a good amount of gold. An amount that justifies all the resources needed to exploit it.

But finding that gold ore demands resources: time, money, explosives, patience, experience, and luck.

What if using artificial intelligence as a catalyst for creativity is exactly like mining for gold?

An AI model has been trained on tons of data, good and bad alike, which means there's a lot of dirt you have to sift through in order to get the gold.

How do you sift through that dirt?

What are the resources you'll need in this gold mine AI is?

Would these resources still be useful to you if better technologies appear in our lifetime?

Okay, time to dig deeper into this curious creator mindset. I explained it as if only developers and entrepreneurs had access to it—and you might not be one of those. So, what now?

At the very least you're a creative person. You're human, creativity is an intricate part of you—and if you don't believe it, then a creators mindset is what you need to bring your creativity to the forefront.

My journey as a curious creator began with something deceptively simple: playing with AI prompts to see what happened.

I'd find promising prompts online, but rather than using them verbatim, I'd dissect them like a curious child taking a toy apart—examining each component to understand how it worked.

I found out there are three components to good prompting: intention, problem, and context. I studied the prompt I wanted to use and made sure those three components were present.

Then, I'd asked myself how those components compared to my goals, and needs. And I used the answers to tweak the prompt, and then fed it to the AI.

I played with the answers, imagined possibilities, and experimented with them.

This experimentation is key to a creator mindset. Instead of looking for one immediate answer, I rather look for the answer that suits my needs best.

I also used AI's processing power to my advantage. I could tweak my prompt as many times as I'd like and get 10 good answers in less than an hour. And there was one added benefit: the more I played with my prompts, the better I got at distilling my problems, and at discerning great answers from average ones.

Once I got an answer I felt attuned to, it was time to follow my curiosity. Something easier said than done.

What does following my curiosity mean?

It means getting out of the chat, and start trusting my mind and experience to give me the missing pieces.

When an idea from the AI caught my attention, I found myself wondering: What questions does this spark? Where else might I explore this thread? Not in the chat—that would be too easy—but in books, conversations, or my own scattered notes from months ago.

I wrote down every idea, question, and answer I found throughout my day.

After days of this wandering exploration, I'd return to the AI with a strange mix of excitement and skepticism.

Let's see if you can help me connect these dots, I'd think, crafting a prompt informed by my real-world discoveries.

What new problem am I facing?

How has my context changed?

What questions could the AI help me answer?

Then, I'd hit enter.

— — —

If we talk about writing a story, your process would look something like this:

You write an outline, bounce off ideas with the AI, write the draft, do some research, ask the AI for editing advice, go back to the drawing board, publish what you got, jot down lessons learned.

Rinse, and repeat.

You could use this same process with any project you have: a software idea, a business idea, a life project. The essence remains throughout it all: play, experiment, explore.

With time and practice you'll start to feel different. You'll notice your mind works in a different way. You no longer look for a one size fits all kind of answer.

You have a clearer idea on your intentions, and your creative style. You've been using the AI, but you're the one making the final decisions.

You're staying at the helm.

You're becoming a creative director.

This is what creativity is all about—have an idea, find the limits, tinker with them. Who knows, you might be the person who figures out new ways to tell stories.

There's always new ways to do something, ways no one can even imagine right now. And we get to discover this new ways when we adopt a curious creator mindset.

Look at the technology, the tools around you. How are you going to use them?

How are you going to lean on your experiences, your skills, your intentions, your dreams, your fears, and your desires to reach new levels of creativity?

Remember, agency is the feature that sets us apart from artificial intelligence.

And agency is our willingness to look for different solutions. It's our drive to improve. It's our intention to put things into motion. It's our self-awareness that helps us in adapting to the world around us.

AI isn't here to replace us as humans, it's here to challenge us—to push us to go deeper into ourselves, to stop our complacency, and start seeing life as our playground. A place where we get to explore, and experiment with different ideas.

Are you still afraid of AI and its potential?

I'm not. I realized I stop this fear through creation. Through the simple choice of becoming the creative director in my life, and every project I choose to pursue.

A simple choice. Hard to follow. But rewarding for those willing to step into the unknown.

So, are you ready to take the lead? You are not competing with AI. You are directing it.

AI isn’t the creator. You are. Own it.

Become a creator. I'll see you on the other side.

Nat.