Creativity and the human skill AI can't replicate (Day 3) | Open to Work

**Helen** (0:00)
Aneesh, welcome to the Squiggly Careers podcast. We're on day three of our series on Open to Work. So, so far, let's do a recap. We've covered curiosity, we've covered courage, and today, we are going to focus on the skill of creativity.
And I feel like people are already brought into this. People love creativity. So, why does this make the, there are five capabilities that are going to help people stay ahead in the age of AI. Tell us a bit more about creativity.

**Aneesh Rahman** (0:26)
Yeah, there are a few reasons I love creativity. I love all the five Cs, but this one in particular for a few reasons. First, creativity is, to me, the imagination of what's never been. And as we think about AI and a lot of the fear of AI and its ability to do things like write really quickly or create videos really quickly, to do a lot of the technical analytic tasks, creativity has been under duress. You look to the creative professionals who are justifiably really afraid of how this tool is going to replace them. But AI is going to just make generically creative content widely universally available. And the human bit of creativity then becomes an even higher premium.
But at the end of the day, like innovation and entrepreneurialism, which is our best articulation of what work becomes for us all, is a creative endeavor. I mean, it is the ability to imagine something that's never been at a small level, a process that company hasn't had before, a job that's never existed before, a career that's never existed before, but also a business that's never existed before, an industry that's never existed before, a societally organizing entity like the nation state or the monetary order that's never existed before. That's all creative art. And so I love creativity in part because it really bucks a lot of assumptions about what AI can do and reminds us about how core creativity has been to what we can do. The other reason I love creativity is while it's more in the mainstream, it's still largely seen as a talent.
People think some people are creative and some people aren't. And if I'm not creative, that's just not who I am. Creativity is a skill. I mean, just all of these five C's are skills that you can get better at no matter who you are through deliberate daily practice. But creativity is the one I like to demystify the most because it is for so many of us, the most representative of a talent that some people have and that others don't. And if you do the work every day with these tools that help you be more creative, you get more creative. And so that's another reason I really love creativity.

**Helen** (2:27)
So I have a bit of a personal reflection on this with creativity because I do definitely think that everyone can be creative and it's not just confined to a role. But I feel like I have ebbs and flows of creativity. I love my creativity more consistent. But sometimes I'm just a bit tired.
And when I'm tired, I default to doing the same things and I spend time in my inbox and all that kind of stuff. And I wondered if I could go from tired to inspired, more often, I think I would be more consistently creative.

**Aneesh Rahman** (2:57)
One of the big things that was revealed to Ryan and I as we thought about this book is the differential between how much funding and focus is on artificial intelligence and how much funding and focus is on human intelligence. Hundreds of billions of dollars are going into the better understanding of and the building of artificial intelligence. Hundreds of millions are going across states like across the sectors in the US alone, let's say for neuroscience.
Now where there is research happening, creativity is actually the center of it. We're in a hockey stick moment right now for neuroscience research on creativity. One of the books we talk about in our book is Peak by Anders Ericsson. Flow is another book that talks about the neuroscience of creativity. What we know about the brain is it at our best when we are most creative, we are in a state of flow where we are almost removed from the process.
Our brain is just connecting dots and finding things in the universe and coming up with new ideas and people in sports that are coming up with new moves. It's a state of flow where you're not tired or energized or exhausted or enthralled, you're just there as part of it. To get to that state of flow, you need to be well rested. You need to have time and space to think creatively by going on hikes, by doing nothing as a productive endeavor.