Why Are We Letting Tech Companies Tell Us How to Be Creative?

Apple was once renowned as one of the most innovative companies around, so why are they advertising an AI tool designed to eliminate creativity and promote laziness?  

You can’t imagine Johannes Gutenberg telling his master craftsman to just capture the gist of the Bible.

Academics believe it took the German inventor of the first movable-type printing press somewhere between four and five years to print his first Bible, before subsequent editions of what is now the world’s most valuable book were trimmed down to a brisk three years.

But at no point can you imagine Gutenberg leaning over to his one-time printer Peter Schöffer and saying: “oi, Pete! Don’t worry about Deuteronomy. We’ll just do an abridged version”. 

Although movable type had been in use in China for more than 600 years, it was Gutenberg’s invention in around 1453 of a mechanical printing press that revolutionised the world as we know it.

“The script is extremely neat and legible, not at all difficult to follow,” wrote the soon-to-be Pope Pius II in a letter to Cardinal Juan Carvajal in March 1455.

“You would be able to read it without effort – and indeed without glasses,” he added.

Despite the ringing endorsement – nor the fact the printing press is often regarded as the single-most important invention of all time – Gutenberg never got rich from it.

He was sued by his former financier Johann Fust in 1456, with a court in Mainz awarding Gutenberg’s busy Bible-printing workshop to Fust and his future son-in-law Schöffer.

The pair promptly published the world’s second printed book – the Mainz Psalter – and were quick to add their printer’s mark at the front, with no mention of the man whose invention made the publication possible in the first place. 

Gutenberg died in 1468 and his grave was soon lost. 

But his invention inspired a wave of intellectual creativity and spawned the rise of the global publishing industry – an industry now worth an estimated $AU230 billion in 2023 alone. 

The Outsourcing of Creativity

“In shallow men the fish of little thoughts cause much commotion,” wrote Paramahansa Yogananda in one of the most widely-read spiritual books of all time, Autobiography of a Yogi.

“In oceanic minds the whales of inspiration make hardly a ruffle.”

It’s hard to know how Apple Intelligence – the new artificial intelligence suite now powering a range of Apple products – might render such a sentiment.

Which is awkward for Apple, because the company’s co-founder Steve Jobs was such a fan of the book he reportedly re-read it once a year and gifted a copy of it to guests who attended his memorial service.

These days, the company Jobs helped transform into one of the most innovative in the world is spruiking the new artificial intelligence on offer in iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia by running ads of a bored office worker using its AI writing tool to re-write emails.

“Hey J,

“Been thinking, this project might need a bit of zhuhzing. But you’re the big enchilada.

“Holler back,

“warren”

It’s a message so unprofessional in tone, it’s hard to know whether Warren - sorry, warren – is emailing a colleague or working on the first draft of a screenplay about a 90s ska band touring the American southwest. 

Not to worry.

All Warren – sorry, warren – has to do is hit the Professional button on his Apple Intelligence writing tool and the AI spits out a new version of the email that makes him sound like the snooty headmaster from Dead Poet’s Society. 

“Hey J,

“Upon further consideration, I believe this project may require some refinement,” his email suddenly reads.

“However, you are the most capable individual to undertake this task.

“Please let me know your thoughts.

“Best regards,

“Warren.” 

The ad lit up comments sections online – not surprisingly, since it’s so mind-numbingly stupid.

And we shouldn’t be afraid to point a collective finger at Apple and call them stupid for thinking that what the world needs right now is to outsource creativity.  

The War on Humanities

Here’s a revelation that will surprise no one who’s made it this far: I have an Arts degree.

As the youngest in my family and the first to attend university, I used to spend at least two hours a day making the 40-kilometre, one-way trip to the University of New South Wales.

My parents came from the farm. I’d never even met anyone who went to uni by the time I attended my first class.

So to say I wasn’t fazed by getting what many would now call a ‘non-vocational degree’ would be an understatement.

I didn’t go to uni to get a job. I went to get an education.

Which is a point that seems to be lost on all the tech bros and their global corporations who now wield worrying levels of influence over the world.

There’s a metaphorical war going on against humanities led by the type of people who think every problem in the world can be solved by technology.

Which is ironic, because Steve Jobs – the deeply spiritual, Japanese art-loving Apple co-founder, who was inspired to design multiple typefaces on Macs because he’d once taken a calligraphy class at a liberal arts college in Portland – was clearly interested in the humanities.

We don’t need technology to do our thinking for us. The human brain does that perfectly well.

What we do need a little more of, it would seem, are the types of people who possess the critical thinking skills to look at a feature that turns office workers into vapid wastes of space and say: ‘these are not the principles this company was founded on’.

I’m sure Apple Intelligence will have its uses.

But the first question I’d be asking it is why a company renowned for its Think different slogan now expects users not to think at all.