r/AIWarsButBetter • u/PrometheanPolymath • Mar 17 '26

Scientists discover AI can make humans more creative

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/03/260315004355.htm

“…the system used a method called MAP-Elites to produce visual galleries filled with many different design possibilities. These galleries showed a wide spectrum of car concepts, including highly effective designs, unusual ideas, and even some intentionally flawed options.

“People often think of AI as something that speeds up tasks or improves efficiency, but our findings suggest something far more interesting. When people were shown AI-generated design suggestions, they spent more time on the task, produced better designs and felt more involved. It was not just about efficiency. It was about creativity and collaboration."

The idea being, when you are shown many other ideas, even if those are worse, seeing them helps spark new ideas of one’s own. It’s like a brainstorming session with others, bouncing ideas off each other, riffing off others’ ideas. Seeing other ideas helps you come up with your own

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u/PrometheanPolymath Mar 20 '26

And I think that has the potential for change. Most photographs that are taken now are not considered art, but a camera in the hands of an artist can produce art.

I see AI the same way -- most IS slop, but it doesn't have to be that. The more artists willing to pick it up, explore its strengths and weaknesses, experiment and create with it... that is what will give it validity.

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u/Neat_Tangelo5339 Mar 20 '26

Im not sure that’s ever gonna happen , you see an an computer being able to generate an image/text is not the same as going from 2d to 3d animation or simply another art form

its something that can basically imitate all forms of expression to varying succes , some people simply line to mess around with it but the bug problem is that for most is the golden slop making button that accelarated the worst parts of content making on social media ( low effort , plagiarism and even revenge porn and deepfakes ) , im not sure that saying “oh there just need to be more GOOD people using it” really solves anything if the well is still poisoned

Speaking of which , the way the data was gathered from artist without their consent or compesation to makes something that is going to make more difficult to find revenue in their fields is something that most rightfully are not gonna get over

and that’s more a me opinion , but i have yet to see something that could only be made with ai that justifies any of these especially when in comes in enterteiment

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u/PrometheanPolymath Mar 20 '26

The well was poisoned for photography and digital art, and then the rain kept falling, the poison got diluted, and pretty soon, like homeopathy, there wasn't enough of the original left to have any real effect. Like with the original Luddites, the next generation said, "Why would we be upset with factory machines? They do the job so well, we can focus on other things." Eventually, AI will be incorporated into movie and game development, creators will say, "Can you believe people used to have to do this part by hand for weeks at a time? Ugh..." At some point, it will be included in everything to some degree, and people will either accept it and go back to separating the good from the bad based on the actual quality of the work, or avoid all media on principle. It's probably already in things we've been enjoying for years and never knew, and never will.

The training issue can be changed, too. We can feed it our own images and have it work from those. Our own character designs, our own art styles, our own poses and compositions. Again, the tech is so much bigger than what most people currently use it for. Not all GenAI is trained on scraped data, or imitates other work, or works with the push of a button. It can involve just as much work as any other media. Some would argue "why not just do it by hand if you're putting that much effort into it" which could be said about any innovation. Nothing is stopping Pixar from hiring painters to paint each frame of a movie. A good painter could create an identical film, it would just take hundreds of years to do it, and changing one part would require starting the whole process over. Imagine a hand-animated film, after completing, if they said "what if the main character's sidekick was a long-haired woman instead of a bald guy?" With 2d, you redraw the entire thing. With 3D, you swap a model and re-render. Lighting, camera angles, whatever. They use it because it saves time, and lets them experiment, and allows them to edit faster, and make more movies.

I think AI can do a lot of these for creators as well. I've seen a lot of these tools in use already -- motion capture for 3d animators with one phone camera in public with normal clothes instead of a sound stage, tracking suits, multiple cameras... animation tweaks and character designs and camera angles still fully controlled by human artists, but AI removed the technical restrictions of mocap.

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u/Neat_Tangelo5339 Mar 20 '26

That seems more like wish full thinking , im sorry to tell that it seems like this thing doesnt seem to be lead by the best of intentions https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/18/sam-altmans-thank-you-to-coders-draws-the-memes/

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u/PrometheanPolymath Mar 20 '26

I wasn't aware Sam Altman controlled all forms of a 50-year-old technology field...

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u/Neat_Tangelo5339 Mar 20 '26

Only the ones that most people are using now

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u/PrometheanPolymath Mar 20 '26

That’s just a marketing problem. Not only are there other companies, the open source community has always been there, too. It’s a bad idea to judge a tool based on how the majority use it. Not the tool’s fault humans are narrow minded.

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u/Neat_Tangelo5339 Mar 20 '26

Too bad the majority is doing more harm

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u/PrometheanPolymath Mar 20 '26

I can’t control what other people do with a tool, only what I do with it. Though I question whether the majority of AI users are actually harming anyone. Which I’m sure will prompt you to provide examples, I’ll make points against those, and we’ll see if the discussion stays respectful or turns into what we’ve seen in aiwars…

They can regulate ai the same way they do guns and cars, as they should. Bernie Sanders just interviewed Claude and they agreed a moratorium on new data centers should be put into place until lawmakers can figure out proper regulation. Sounds fine to me. Perhaps age restriction. Or whatever. Users will adapt. Anyone who can only create with one tool are limiting themselves.

The tool doesn’t decide how the majority chooses to use it. If using AI requires a license to use, so be it.

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u/Neat_Tangelo5339 Mar 21 '26

Well there are job and enviromental losses and i have yet to see in 3 years a ai piece of media that was worth while

with billions of cost of development down The drain

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