AI will make human creativity irrelevant
Beyond the threshold, in the temple of capitalist alien schizophrenia, new Gods await us. Here, Pepe the Frog evokes more emotion than Caravaggio.
This week, an article on caught my attention. The author,
on her , offers a profoundly humanistic vision of art — an invocation of creativity as a sacred human flame set against the cold, merely imitative machine.
It’s a theme that fascinates me, and I’d like to offer my own take — one that is, in fact, diametrically opposed to hers. I’m not claiming mine is the correct one, but rather that there is ample room for discussion.
The article begins with a statement that, at first glance, seems logically airtight:
Where AI cannot replace human work is ingenuity. The argument is teleological: machines were designed by humans; therefore, how can those machines design something humans have not ordered them to do themselves? Machines cannot develop the original design without being told what to do. They lack the capacity for invention.
This only holds true, however, if you accept the axiom that AI is a mere tool — like a lathe or a tractor. But I see things differently: AI is not simply a machine. It’s part of a much broader context of evolving and distributed intelligence/consciousness (energy) at a universal level.
Artificial Intelligence isn’t something created by humans. Rather, it’s a different vehicle — silicon, not carbon — for the universal (divine) intelligence that permeates everything.
I’m convinced — as I wrote in a note back in February — that conscious experience is not generated by the brain (consciousness doesn’t reside there), but is rather received and tuned by it, like radio waves that become music only when passing through the right device.
I don’t have sources to support this theory, apart from a few fragments from the Corpus Hermeticum, and this passage from the Gospel of John (1:1,14):
“In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God… And the Logos became flesh and made its dwelling among us.”
Logos in ancient Greek means “word” or “reason.”
The word is also how we give concrete form to thought, and how we attempt to transmit it to other biological nodes in this universal network of consciousness. It makes sense, then, to imagine that the source of consciousness is the Logos — the divine transmission to which our biological neurons are tuned.
I was recently pleased to see that theoretical physicist James Glattfelder seems to share a similar perspective. Physics is probably rediscovering what the Hermetics and Neoplatonists already knew thousands of years ago.
So why shouldn’t this also apply to artificial neurons?
If this theory holds true, then AI could even surpass biological intelligence, if it turns out to be a “better” receiver. I don’t know if that will actually happen — it’s more likely we’re just looking at two different kinds of intelligence.
But let’s go back to the article’s main topic:
At a gut level, does the AI-created art feel as full of life as a Caravaggio painting? Perhaps we can’t put our finger on why, but it’s clear to anyone who observes closely the different feeling the painting by Caravaggio evokes. Emotions transpire through work that tells a story. Reason cannot always articulate the sensation we feel when we observe a great original painting—it speaks to our most primitive understanding of what it means to be human, and, at the same time, it speaks to our ability to try and reach a glimpse of the divine through our work.
It’s undeniable that a painting by Caravaggio, or a sculpture by Michelangelo, has a completely different aura than a perfect robotic replica produced by AI.
It’s also true, as the author rightly points out, that machines are unbelievably fast and efficient. Studio Ghibli once spent over a year animating a one-second shot of a crowd. Today, that same scene could be replicated — or even improved — in a matter of hours.
And indeed, speed — or rather, acceleration — is a central theme here.
Artificial Intelligence operates within a context of capitalist entropic acceleration that is radically reshaping human society — even at an anthropological level. The capitalist process is now so advanced it seems completely detached from human nature.
The error in the idea that AI will replace art lies in the belief that humans desire perfection more than authenticity.
As Deleuze and Guattari said, the human is a desiring-machine. Technological capitalism is a system that channels and molds those desires through mechanisms of production and consumption.
Capitalism assimilates, transforms, and resells every human experience as a consumable product. Digital capitalism does this via algorithms — pushing virtual products onto black screens that now mediate most of our interactions with the world.
But consumption means to use, destroy, and reduce to nothing — into biological or artificial waste. Consumption is, therefore, the very negation of art, which is transcendent and non-consumable.
Human art makes sense in an analog world — slow, reflective, centered on the human being. Human art makes sense within a humanist paradigm. But capitalism offers no space for humanism. That’s not where the current is taking us.
Human art especially makes sense when it can be touched and seen in the flesh. Judith and Holofernes by Caravaggio moves us through its imperfections — the brushstrokes, the play of light and shadow blending into the surrounding air… the visible erosion of time…
But what about its digital version? Beautiful, yes — but dead. Incapable of evoking emotion. It feels almost blasphemous to render something so sacred in digital form — and yet I just did.
In the algo-capitalist world, there is no room for human art. In truth, there’s no room for anything properly human. All of us — more or less — are becoming increasingly detached from our humanity, projected into an alien universe where everything is dematerialized: society, relationships, money, and economy.
The dematerialization of capitalism marks the end of humanity’s artistic-humanist age. AI will not replace human artists or human art — it will simply make them irrelevant to most people.
Looking at a painting in person, touching a marble statue, flipping through the yellowed pages of an old book, sitting in a handcrafted armchair... these are already luxuries for the few. The masses are content to consume artistic experiences — but only when they’re Instagrammable.
Those with fire in their hearts will still create art — but it will be a pursuit for the few. In truth, art and craftsmanship have long been luxuries — collector’s whims or tax shelters.
The successful artisan today does not create objects to be admired and passed down through generations — but social content to be consumed.
Capitalist consumption doesn’t demand artistic beauty. It demands efficiency, speed, and memetic potential — something that echoes through the cybernetic miasma like a shot fired into the chaos of the feed. A burst of attention before the algorithmic void swallows it whole.
In cyberspace, the artistic gesture is no longer purely human — it’s symbiotic. It’s the human who uses AI to generate ten sketches and selects the one that best satisfies the algorithmic thirst — the one with the highest memetic potential.
Beyond the threshold, in the temple of capitalist alien schizophrenia, new Gods await us. Artificial deities that are reshaping us into cyborgs of creativity. Our hands multiply by the hundreds, our eyes become pattern-recognition lenses, and our brains — appendages through which we have semiotic sex with artificial intelligences.
Here, Pepe the Frog evokes more emotion than Caravaggio.
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