The Journey Is The Reward: Musings On ChatGPT And "The Creative Process" "Nothing worth having comes easy."

By now, all of you must have heard about ChatGPT, a new online chatbot powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that is being made out to be a gamechanger in terms of how its conversational model allows it to support users with everything from writing essays and scripts, to validating code and equations.

Having given ChatGPT a try myself, I found myself agreeing with the general sentiment that it is mind-blowing technology, and it was certainly able to make doing at least a few of my tasks -say, putting together tweets, to, well, perhaps even penning such an editor's note- a lot easier than "the creative process" that I cite to typically get them done.

But wait- hasn't it been drilled into us from time immemorial that "nothing worth having comes easy," and if so, what is to be inferred about us when we take an obviously unchallenging route to get what we want? Now, of course, an argument can be made here that there is no real victory to be gained by doing the mundane- let's move past the tasks that we can optimize or outsource, and instead focus our energies on more important, more meaningful uses of our time on a day-to-day basis.

However, isn't there something to be said about the joy of getting a task done from A to Z- and can we just skip the not fun rites of passage that is the process? My point is that if it isn't hard, or rather, if it's too easy, with the pieces of the puzzle simply handed to us, well, will the outcome even matter once the job is done? Might it even -dare I say it- become a reason for us to not care about the task that we have on our hands? After all, when we look back at our most meaningful accomplishments, aren't they often the ones that had the most challenges, and aren't those achievements memorable especially because of the fact that we managed to get past all of the hurdles in our way -from the banal to the bizarre- to get to our end goals?

Now, all of my musings here should not take away from the positive impact that I believe ChatGPT and other technologies like it will have on our daily lives- that said, I also think it's worth being mindful about the kind of work we're trying to pawn off to them. And before anyone says that I feel this way because I think AI is coming for my job, let me state for the record that I'd love to see it try, but I think the more important thing to contemplate is whether you, dear reader, would find it worth your while to engage with AI-generated content in the first place?

Well, think about that the next time you interact with a chatbot.

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