Just posted to my Forbes column about a fascinating new study suggesting AI may actually be making us less creative, even as it makes us more productive.
In a conversation on TechFirst, Professor Saeema Ahmed-Kristensen shared research from the Digit Lab in the UK comparing 600 human participants with 12,000 ideas generated by large language models. The finding is striking: AI is incredibly fluent, producing a high volume of ideas, but humans are far more flexible, generating ideas that truly diverge from one another. That divergence, she argues, is where real novelty lives. It also helps explain why 78% of creatives say AI makes work feel soulless, even as 70% worry it could replace them.
“A lot of the ideas that are produced by large language models … are very similar and grouped around similar concepts. Human beings are much better at creating ideas that are very different.”
The good news is there’s a fix.
Ahmed-Kristensen doesn’t reject AI.
She uses it deliberately: write first, AI second; use it to refine tone, not invent substance; treat it as a checker, not a creator; and avoid overreliance so your creative muscles don’t atrophy. The takeaway is simple. AI can amplify average work, but truly novel thinking still belongs to people.