Beyond AI Slop: Pride, Joy & Creativity in a World Created by AI

Is generative AI killing creativity or helping us find new ways to be creative? In our latest AIR|GPT episode, we take on Charlie Warzel’s article: A tool that crushes creativity. He argues that generative AI is destroying creative work and polluting the digital world with “AI slop.” You can listen to the full episode by following the link below or on your favorite podcast app.

AIR | GPT: Beyond AI Slop: The Pride and Joy of Creativity Is Alive and Well, What’s Slowly Dying Is How We Define It

In our conversation, Caroline Kurban, Liz Kolb, Ruben Puentedura, Helen Crompton and I (under Errol St. Clair Smith’s smart guidance) explored how AI can both interrupt and inspire creativity. We also acknowledged the real challenges: students and teachers skipping the hard parts of creativity, the growing need for human connection, and the barriers to fostering original work. What may be slowly dying is not creativity itself, but the way we define it in the age of Gen AI.

One idea that emerged from Liz has stayed with me: the role of pride in creative work—the deep satisfaction that comes from making something yourself. This has sent me in some interesting new directions that I hope to explore in an upcoming post.

---

Below is a list of all the episodes of AIR | GPT

1. The Creators of SAMR, TPACK, Triple E, SETI, and GenAI-U Launch New Podcast With a Review of NoteBook LM
2. Para-social Relationships: The Pros and Cons of Falling in Love With Generative AI
3. 2024 Mic Drop on the AIR GPT Podcast
4. AI Schools Are Catching On: What They Get Wrong, What They Get Right, What They Are Teaching Us About Teaching
5. Some Think More Deeply With Gen AI, Some Less: Here’s What’s Behind The Emerging Critical Thinking Divide
6. The Science and Art of Teaching Creativity in the Age of Gen AI: What Every Educator Needs to Understand
7. The Blindspots in AI Guardrails, Guidelines, and Good Intentions: What We Need, What We Don’t, and Why
8. All Gen AI Studies Are Not Created Equal: What These Two Highly Cited Studies Overlooked, Why It Matters
9. Grok This: When AI Goes Off the Rails, What Educators Need To Know About the Root Causes
10. Three Years of Gen AI: The Lessons We’ve Learned, What We Plan to Do Differently As We Head Back to School
11. Pedagogical Debt: What We Owe Our Students in an AI World
12. Beyond AI Slop: The Pride and Joy of Creativity Is Alive and Well, What’s Slowly Dying Is How We Define It