AI Isn’t Just a Tool for Producing Creative Work. It’s a Catalyst for Understanding the Depths of Your Own Creativity.
Here’s how you can use AI without losing the personal, human qualities that make your work unique. FREE bonus content excerpted from Creativity Unleashed.
Practical Ways to Combine Your Strengths with AI
Creativity isn’t just personal -- it’s collective. It’s how we solve problems, connect communities, and inspire hope. Following as a bonus article for subscribers to The Myers Report is an excerpt offering practical tips, tools, and ideas for combining your strengths with AI. Jack Myers’ new 350-page how-to book Creativity Unleashed: How AI Can Supercharge Your Ideas is now available at AMAZON for $2.99 and is your invitation to tap into your creative potential, whether you’re in business, science, art, or activism. By combining human ingenuity with AI, you can overcome limitations, inspire others, and contribute to a brighter future. Continue to scroll down for how you can use AI without losing the personal, human qualities that make your work unique
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Use AI to Refine, Not Define
Let AI provide a framework or suggestions but take the time to inject your voice and perspective into the final product. Whether you’re editing AI-generated text, enhancing a design, or remixing music, remember that AI is your assistant, not the creator.
Balance AI-Generated Ideas with Personal Insights
If AI gives you a data-driven insight or suggests a creative direction, use it as a starting point, but consider how your own intuition or personal experience might shape the idea differently. Trust your instincts and make adjustments that feel authentic.
Keep Your Cultural Awareness Front and Center
When working on projects with cultural significance, rely on your understanding of social context, symbols, and human nuances. AI lacks this sensitivity, so let your experience guide how you interpret and present AI’s outputs.
Embrace Imperfection and Experimentation
AI often aims for optimization, but creativity thrives on mistakes, experimentation, and risk. Don’t be afraid to introduce imperfections, try unconventional ideas, or take your work in unexpected directions.
While AI might seem like an endless source of creative potential, it is limited by its lack of true experience, emotion, and understanding. What makes creative work resonate isn’t just technical skill or pattern recognition — it’s the authenticity, emotion, and connection that only human beings can provide. Your work’s impact will ultimately come from your willingness to bring yourself fully into the process, using AI to support and expand your ideas but never letting it define them.
In the end, creativity isn’t a competition between humans and machines. It’s a collaboration, where AI’s analytical strengths meet your unique insights, emotions, and experiences. The result? A creative process that is richer, more expansive, and distinctly human — because that’s what you bring to the table.
Learning from AI – What AI Teaches Us About Ourselves
As we navigate this journey with AI as our partner, there’s an unexpected benefit: working with AI can teach us a lot about ourselves. When we engage with AI, we’re often prompted to reexamine our assumptions, rethink how we approach creativity, and explore new ways of problem-solving. This section will explore how AI can be a mirror, reflecting our creative processes and biases back to us, and offer guidance on how to harness this reflection to grow as creators.
Let’s start by looking at insights from experts and authors who have explored this topic, as well as practical, “how-to” steps for self-reflection and deepening your creative journey.
The Power of Self-Reflection: Insights from Thought Leaders
In his book The Age of Em, economist Robin Hanson explores how AI and advanced technology might reshape our work, creativity, and even our sense of self. Hanson suggests that interacting with AI can be a powerful way for humans to test the limits of our thinking and challenge what we believe to be true. By working alongside an entity that “thinks” differently, we’re pushed to question our assumptions about intelligence and creativity.
Another influential voice in this space, Sherry Turkle, explores the impact of technology on self-reflection in her book Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Turkle suggests that our interactions with technology prompt us to examine how we define connection and creativity, ultimately giving us new perspectives on our own processes. By observing how AI approaches tasks, we notice our preferences, biases, and routines — qualities that make us unique.
Author Cal Newport also offers a relevant perspective in Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. While Newport’s focus is on the power of uninterrupted focus, his ideas about intentional, mindful engagement with technology can help us approach AI thoughtfully. Newport’s emphasis on clarity and deliberate practice can guide us to use AI not as a quick fix but as a means of understanding and refining our own approach to problem-solving and creativity.
What AI Teaches Us About Our Creative Processes
By working with AI, we gain insights into our habits, assumptions, and creative strengths. Here are some areas where AI can help us become more self-aware:
Understanding Our Creative Biases
AI’s logic-based approach often differs from our own instinctual or emotional reactions. When AI suggests a solution or generates ideas, it may seem off-base at first, but this reaction can reveal our own creative biases. For instance, if you consistently reject AI-generated ideas that fall outside your comfort zone, you might discover a tendency to play it safe creatively. AI encourages you to question why you gravitate toward certain approaches and avoid others.
Seeing Patterns in Our Problem-Solving
AI can quickly offer various solutions to a problem, sometimes highlighting methods we might not have considered. By observing AI’s “thinking,” we can learn more about our default approaches and see alternative paths we might overlook. This exposure can push us to rethink our habitual problem-solving methods, fostering a more flexible and innovative mindset.
Rethinking Originality and Innovation
When we see AI create a piece of art, compose a melody, or write text, we’re often struck by the familiarity of its output — it’s trained on existing data, after all. This prompts us to ask: What makes something truly original? By reflecting on this question, we can define what originality means to us and discover ways to incorporate more authentic elements into our work.
Embracing Experimentation and Iteration
AI operates through rapid experimentation, testing and tweaking until it reaches a satisfactory result. Watching this process can inspire us to embrace iteration in our own work rather than aiming for perfection on the first try. This iterative approach can improve our resilience, open-mindedness, and willingness to revise, ultimately leading to stronger creative outcomes.
How-to Guide for Using AI for Self-Reflection
For those seeking to use AI to deepen their self-awareness and introspection, here’s a practical roadmap:
Identify a Creative Task and Observe Your Reactions
Start with a small creative project or problem, and enlist AI to help you generate ideas, solutions, or insights. Pay attention to your initial reactions to the AI’s suggestions. Do you resist certain ideas? Do some resonate more than others? Take note of these responses as they reveal your natural inclinations and biases
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Challenge Your Assumptions by Embracing AI’s Approach
If the AI proposes ideas that seem “wrong” or unusual to you, try to entertain them anyway. Ask yourself why you find them unappealing or surprising. This practice can help you identify personal biases or limitations and encourage you to broaden your perspective.
Use AI to Experiment with New Techniques
Let AI guide you through creative exercises outside your usual style or approach. For instance, if you’re a writer, try letting AI suggest genres, tones, or structures you wouldn’t ordinarily use. If you’re a designer, experiment with AI-generated color palettes or layouts. Pushing beyond your comfort zone can teach you more about your strengths, preferences, and areas for growth.
Create a Reflection Journal
As you work with AI, keep a journal where you document your thoughts, surprises, and challenges. Reflect on how your process or approach changes over time and note any new insights. This record can help you track your growth and the ways AI has influenced your creativity.
Engage in Regular Self-Check-Ins
After each creative project involving AI, set aside time for a “debrief” session. Reflect on how AI influenced your process, identify any new perspectives you gained, and consider what you learned about your own preferences, strengths, and assumptions.
Embrace a Growth Mindset
Above all, approach AI with a growth mindset. View each interaction as an opportunity to learn more about yourself, rather than focusing solely on the end product. By engaging with AI openly and curiously, you’ll gain insights that support your long-term creative evolution.
AI isn’t just a tool for producing creative work; it’s a catalyst for understanding the depths of our own creativity. By observing AI’s processes and outputs, we’re able to see ourselves more clearly — our assumptions, strengths, and areas for growth. Embrace this reflective process and remember that AI’s real value isn’t in replacing us but in helping us better understand what it means to be human, to be creative, and to continually evolve in our work. The journey of learning from AI is, at its core, a journey of self-discovery. Order the full 350-page how-to book Creativity Unleashed: How AI Can Supercharge Your Ideas, now available at AMAZON for only $2.99. It’s also a great gift!