Generative AI For The Rest Of US

Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal

The phrase "Good artists copy; great artists steal" is often attributed to Pablo Picasso, the Spanish painter and sculptor. The quote encapsulates the idea that true creativity involves taking inspiration from existing works and transforming them into something new and original. Picasso's own artistic career exemplifies this principle: He drew inspiration from various artistic traditions and styles to create works that were uniquely his own. Take the example of Cubism, a style of art that Picasso co-created with Georges Braque. Picasso was not the first artist to experiment with the angular, abstract forms that characterize his Cubist paintings. Ancient Africans had been doing it for centuries. Borrowing from African art, old Iberian sculptures, and the works of Paul Cézanne, Picasso and his contemporaries developed Cubism and added a new chapter to the history of modern art.

Isn't this what Generative AI models do? They learn from existing data to generate new content, drawing on patterns and structures present in the training data to create new outputs. In this sense, Generative AI could be seen as a new Picasso, but one that operates on a larger scale, powered by more data and inspirations.

Even the greatest human thinkers and artists have drawn on the ideas and works of others to create something new. Aryabhata, the ancient Indian astronomer, built on the mathematical knowledge of earlier civilizations to develop his theories. Similarly, Al-Khwarizmi, the Persian mathematician, introduced the concept of algebra by building on ancient knowledge. Fibonacci discovered the '0' and decimal mathematics from Arab traders that he met while accompanying his father on commerce excursions in Tunisia. Shakespeare borrowed plots and characters from earlier sources like Plutarch and Ovid to create his plays. Leonardo da Vinci studied the works of Giotto, Masaccio, and Verrocchio to build his own style. Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, relied on the work of Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell. The examples are endless. But in each case, the creative act involved taking existing ideas and transforming them into something new and original.