AI & Creativity : Thanatos & Eros, respectively
There is this staple text I assign to my Writing & Composition class—Sidekick by Elizabeth Price. It documents, almost obsessively, her process of building Boulder, an artwork formed by wrapping tape around itself for years until it becomes a massive, almost absurd sphere. At some point, Price begins to doubt the work entirely: what if Boulder is hollow?
The question seems simple, but it fractures everything. Does the value of the work lie in what it is, or in how it was made? Would it matter if the process was a lie?
What Sidekick makes painfully clear is that creation is inseparable from experience. Writing, at its core, is an act of communication—translating something lived, something felt, into form. This is where AI fails fundamentally. It cannot experience, only replicate. It cannot feel urgency, doubt, or obsession—only simulate their patterns. What it produces is not creation, but an echo.
