Creative Skills in Crisis: A Constructivist Critique of AI Replacing Creative Skills

Abstract

This thesis investigates whether the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to produce creative outputs devalues human creative skills. Grounded in Christine Korsgaard’s constructivist value theory, I argue that creative skills have objective value as a means and as an end, which is undermined when AI is used in place of human creative skills. Instrumentally, AI reduces the necessity of human creative skills in achieving ends such as income. Moreover, I argue that creative skills cannot be rationally valued as ends when AI-generated outputs replace them, and the necessary conditions for objective value are no longer fulfilled. The result is growing incongruity between the objective value of creative skills and the declining subjective value attributed to them by individuals and society. This devaluation risks more negative consequences, including the loss of meaning in life and diminished recognition of artists. I conclude that acknowledging and responding to this devaluation is crucial not only for supporting affected artists, but also for preserving sources of human meaningfulness in a world with increasing AI-use.