The Work That Refuses to End: Creativity, Authorship, and the Limits of Artificial Intelligence
The Work That Refuses to End: Creativity, Authorship, and the Limits of Artificial Intelligence Carl Jean Abstract This essay examines how artificial intelligence transforms creativity by separating creative output from creative formation. It introduces the concept of creative displacement , defined as the transfer of generative processes from human struggle, revision, and embodied judgment into automated systems capable of producing sophisticated artifacts without undergoing the conditions that traditionally form originality. Drawing on Margaret Boden’s theory of transformational creativity, Walter Benjamin’s account of technological reproduction, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault’s critiques of authorship, and contemporary analyses by Kate Crawford, Matteo Pasquinelli, and Andy Clark, the essay argues that AI does not end creativity but alters the conditions under which creativity can be meaningfully attributed. While creativity has always been distributed across tools and cul...