Creativity in the Era of Machine Intelligence

The Compass and the Handbook

A lecture for the students of the Design school of the Alexander College in Cyprus.

Consider, for a moment, the word "future." What feeling does it evoke? Fear? Hope? Excitement? Uncertainty?

Now think about "value" or "capital." How would you define what really matters in life? What has true worth? What constitutes our most important capital?

If there's one thing we can agree upon, it's this: The greatest value in life is time. It is the only resource we spend and never recover. When we contemplate our future time, we feel uncertainty. Or anticipation.

"In the debate about human nature, virtually no one denies that humans have an impulse to search for meaning, to ponder the perennial worldview questions, and to wonder about the supernatural. Even naturalistic atheists such as Russell, Sartre, and Dawkins concede the fact as they lament it."

CS Lewis Institute (2012, February 9). The Image of God, Religion, and the Meaning of Life.

The Nature of Fear and Progress

Fear serves as one of the most useful emotions for all living beings. It functions as an alarm bell, alerting us to potential danger and logically prompting us to prepare our defenses. The primary source of fear is the unknow. It's what differs from the familiar. Millions of years of evolution have taught humans to fear the new, the unexpected, the different. This response is entirely normal.

However, most humans transform fear into action, into protection, into learning. While some animals freeze when confronted with fear, accepting their fate, and others overreact, humans possess a unique capacity. We can freeze, we can attack, but we also love risk and embrace challenge. Our bodies generate energy that awakens us from fear, propelling us to act and emboldening us to be brave. (Note 1: In "further reading")

Young people navigate more unknowns while fearing danger less. They possess a vast capital of time, feel no urgency, and wrestle with their circumstances. Not all of them follow this pattern, but all humans share the same fundamental instincts, each person transforming them differently.

What distinguishes young people from those of us with more years behind us? Experience, which is memory of past events and the conclusions we draw from them. Experience has value because many things unknown to young people are familiar to us. People like me fear fewer unknowns, but we face a problem: we often believe our experience is universal, that our conclusions are final. Yet life is not a single experiment. No laboratory has tested every possible scenario.

“It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt, Looking Forward (1933).

The Compass and the Manual

This brings us to two fundamental concepts: the compass and the manual. My suggestion is this: focus primarily on the compass. Use manuals, try them, but remember there are many different approaches, and some may not even exist yet.

Throughout history, humans have created religions, ideologies, and worldviews. All share something in common: they all possess a compass. They all believe that human life has purpose. Living without direction, without a compass, proves extremely difficult. (Note 2 in "Further Reading")

Most people already have one. The difference lies in how they attempt to reach their destination. This is where manuals emerge. For example, a religion values temperance. One manual for temperance prescribes fasting; another advocates avoiding pleasure. But temperance isn't abstract—it's practical, especially in societies lacking hygiene, medicine, or contraception. The compass comes first. The manual follows. The compass is always survival, and after survival, a better life, a higher quality life. Each of us defines quality differently.

Some might wonder whether this is a discussion about theology or politics. It is neither. This is about design. I propose creativity as a compass. For me, this compass has been creativity throughout my life. I believe this holds true for all humans—my creation simply used images. Everyone in the design field shares this same compass: the desire to create art, communication, solutions, design, beauty, emotion, challenge.

The reason we study design is not only for the compass but also for the manual. We seek education to find a path, a way to walk toward a brighter destination. Today, when fear is particularly strong—because we are in transition, because there are many unknowns—this search becomes even more crucial.

I could afford to buy my first Mac when I was 26 or 27. Maybe I was lucky to be trained as an analog designer first.

Lessons from My Laboratory

Let me share lessons from my own laboratory ie my life. First, something crucial: no school in the world can teach you everything. If someone claims otherwise, it isn't true.

When I was a student, AI didn't exist. Design was analog. My first computers were enormous machines costing millions and accomplishing almost nothing. At 26, I bought my first Mac and used Photoshop 1 and 2. No one taught me Photoshop. Ιt didn't exist in schools. No one taught me web design. No one imagined smartphones. No one discussed AI.

I consider myself very lucky to have been taught digital imaging from the early stages. Photoshop 1 was a short program that I could master in a few months. Especially for me, who had knowledge of the previous analog technology. Even the icons were directly related. (Note 3 in "Further Reading")
On the contrary, it’s so difficult for a young student to understand why the burn or dodge tool has these icons. (Note 4 in "Further Reading")

So what did school teach me? They taught me how to learn. They taught me that my compass is knowledge and education. These 2 are related concepts, but not identical ones. They taught me the method: find sources, evaluate sources, experiment, fail, try again. That is the manual. It sounds simple, but it isn't easy.

Here's a story from my journey. I left my hometown to pursue a Master's course in Milan because I felt my knowledge of color was inadequate. There, I encountered a very strict teacher who believed in one red, one blue, one yellow. We painted eggs for hours to understand color space. We had to read book X, then Y, then Z. We thought he was a dictator. He was not.

After one year, Augusto Garau told us, "Now destroy these colors. Create your own." It was beautiful. And frightening. Some students never progressed beyond that point. Others understood something important: a manual is not dogma. It is a path. It fits some people, not others. (Note 5 in "Further Reading")

I anticipate that visual designers with a classical background and strong drawing and design skills will be highly sought after in future creative teams.

Facing the Unknown: Artificial Intelligence

Today, we confront new unknowns: artificial intelligence, fear, big words, big headlines. I am not a futurist; I don't know the future. But I have lived through many transitions. I am afraid, too, but I neither freeze nor attack the unknown.

My first suggestion: define the unknown.
When someone discusses AI with you, ask them: "What is intelligence?" Ask this first. (Note 6 in "Further Reading) We don't even agree on its definition. How can we fully understand artificial intelligence if we don't fully understand intelligence itself?

Let’s make this clear. If we don’t completely understand intelligence, we can’t truly create it. Many people confuse knowledge or education with intelligence. While knowledge is useful, it isn’t the same as intelligence. (Note 7 in "Further Reading")

Here is my position, not as dogma but as a working hypothesis: No, AI will not replace us. Not because it is weak. It is already stronger than humans in many tasks.

A language model can speak 200 languages. No human can achieve this. But this isn't a competition. We don't compete with machines; we compete with humans. A horse runs faster than we do, a car too. We use them. We don't race them.

AI has consumed more text than we could read in billions of years. But without human meaning, this has limited value. Language represents only a small part of the world. A four-year-old child possesses more real-world data than any language model: five senses, a body, DNA, and millions of years of evolution. A giraffe walks within minutes of birth—not because it was trained, but because it inherited this ability. Machines can master chess or code because these domains have limits and rules. The real world does not. It keeps changing.

For me, AI represents another tool. I loved algorithms because of my engineer father. I loved art because of my decorator mother. Different intelligences live within me. But my compass remained the same: creativity.

If you consult any LLM for definitions of intelligence, you will find that a single, definitive definition is difficult to identify.

Working with Creative AI

So my advice: examine the creative side of AI. Let AI remove boring tasks, but don't remove thinking. The mind is a muscle. Running one mile differs fundamentally from driving one mile.

Don't believe AI is magic. People said the same about cameras and computers. Creation doesn't reside in the tool. It resides in the mind.

Learn what is really valuable. Find good sources. Don't be fooled by the mass media news stories. They have limited value as their business model is to primarily atract attention, sell advertising or communicate press releases. Common press is good to have an understanding of the business side. But you need the scientific and technological information the most.

Look to scientific papers, textbooks, academic institutions, and corporate research. Follow inspiring individuals of the industry, prominent names of the industry, and academia. Study their work. Use AI to understand concepts, texts, and problems you cannot easily get on your own. This is the true gift of technology.

Using RAGs like NotebookLM and others you can teach yourself new topics and approach knowledge that seemed impossible before. You can convert multiple sources to podcasts, infographics, or mind maps. You can listen to them as audio lessons while designing. Create your own tools with generative AI. If you try and stay focused, you can achieve this.

ComfyUI is hands down my favorite GenAI tool. Its developers like to call it the GenAI Operating System. I agree with the term.

Use open tools. Free tools. Learn how things work. As designers, try systems like Ollama, LMStudio, AnythingLM, and many others. Try local models: American, European, Chinese. As designers, try systems like ComfyUI not because it's pretty, but because it's honest. You see the process. You understand what happens between input and output.

When I was learning Photoshop 1 and Illustrator 1, I wasn't really learning some branded software. I learned what bitmap and vector images truly are. How compression works. How my ideas could be represented in pixels on a screen and dots on the printed paper. Now I learn new concepts: latent images, denoising, control nets, and workflows. This is training the mind, not being lazy.

Don't be fooled by the hype of corporate branding and advertising. Working with the most advanced model does not guarantee the most advanced output. Owning a Ferrari does not make you a great driver. A new driver cannot really learn on a Ferrari. And for most uses, you don't need one. On the contrary, it's much more educational to mess around with a completely open model like Molmo. You can download the whole thing, including the datasets. You can really get the full logic. It's like Photoshop 1. It's the foundation. You can build upon it.

Here's something important I would bet on: designers who can truly draw will be in the highest demand in the future. Because they will have trained the best brain-to-image model that exists. In professional environments full of prompters who would fight with their GenAI tools for the perfect output, a minimally skilled drawer will be irreplaceable.
Some agencies recently asked me what course they could offer their creative teams to make them more productive and creative. They were expecting me to suggest an AI course. Of course, I would be glad to suggest some very interesting ones. But to be honest, to make a team really productive and deliver the highest ROI, I would suggest a weekly drawing course. And a detailed workshop on Gestalt psychology and design. These disciplines will transform teams into cutting-edge ones even in our era of machine intelligence. Maybe more than ever.

Remember: The tool is not communication. It has its value. But what is the real thing is the message. It's not how but what you have to say. What is your subject, your message? The tool serves the idea, not the other way around.

"While these models process text data equivalent to 450,000 years of human reading, a four-year-old child who has been awake for 16,000 hours has processed 1.4 x 10^14 bytes of sensory data about the physical world through vision and touch."

Pearl, M. (2025, November). Yann LeCun Is Reportedly Leaving Meta to Chase "World Models." Winsome Marketing.

Building Your Own Path

Stay close to academia. It represents the most honest and qualitative environment. Of course, issues exist everywhere, but in academic settings, we discuss design for design's sake. We examine compasses and handbooks without chasing quick profit. Some things you encounter today will take years to understand. This is normal. It took me 10 and 20 years to understand the value of some lessons, but this is the nature of these investments. It's long-term, not short-term.

Be open to the new, the different, the unexpected. One day, it will feel smaller.

Finally: test my handbook. Walk my path if you like. But then tear it up. Make your own. Build your own compass.

Because success is not the true North. Happiness is.

The manual? The roadmap? The handbook?
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, this is more challenging. But it's within you.

Many thanks to the students, the staff and the management of Alexander College in Larnaca, Cyprus for their warm welcome and the very interesting conversation.