Season 7, Episode 5
AI and Creativity: Opportunities and Challenges in Education
If it replaces the stuff we use to be creative – and I don’t think it will – that won’t be good. If its an additional thing that people can develop to meet new needs, that’s kind of interesting.
– Dr. James Kaufman
Hosts & Guests
James Kaufman
Cyndi Burnett
Matthew Worwood
Resources
Episode Transcription
AI and Creativity: Opportunities and Challenges in Education with Dr. James Kaufman
James Kaufman [00:00:00]:
For people who are using chat GPT, this whole idea of prompt engineering is developing as a skill. I don’t think it’s bad. It’s just different. If it replaces the stuff we use to be creative, a, I don’t think it will, but B, I don’t think that’s good. If it’s an additional thing that people are able to develop and use, that’s kind of interesting.
Matthew Worwood [00:00:29]:
Hello, everyone. My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.
Cyndi Burnett [00:00:32]:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.
Matthew Worwood [00:00:34]:
This is the fueling creativity in education. Podcast.
Cyndi Burnett [00:00:37]:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.
Matthew Worwood [00:00:44]:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.
Cyndi Burnett [00:00:52]:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.
Matthew Worwood [00:01:04]:
So let’s begin. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast. And today’s episode is a double espresso with Dr. James Kaufman, who is arguably one of the leading creativity researchers at this time.
Cyndi Burnett [00:01:18]:
Now, if you’re new to the podcast or if this is the first time you’ve heard us talk about a double espresso, we want to offer a little bit of a background.
Matthew Worwood [00:01:26]:
When Cindy and I first started the podcast, we imagined short episodes that you could listen to as you enjoyed your morning coffee. We envisioned our conversations as discussions you’d have with friends and colleagues during a coffee break. However, sometimes we see an opportunity to dig a little bit deeper into our guest’s work or topic, and therefore, we choose to make a double espresso episode, which, in short, is basically where we create two episodes from the same interview.
Cyndi Burnett [00:01:51]:
Now. James Kaufman is a professor of educational psychology at the University of Connecticut. He is the author editor of more than 50 books, including Creativity 101 and The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity. He was also a past guest on the show, and that episode has the most downloads of all of our episodes. So if you haven’t heard that one, go listen to that one first. And we’ve brought him back to talk about his latest book, The Creativity Advantage, which we’ve linked in today’s show notes. So, James, welcome back to the Fueling Creativity and Education podcast.
James Kaufman [00:02:27]:
It’s great to be here.
Cyndi Burnett [00:02:29]:
So there are so many points. As I was reading through your new book, Creativity Advantage, where I left out loud while reading your book, and I just love your approach to writing and how you integrate your own sense of humor. And I have to admit, I burst out laughing when I read the following quote whenever I discover any interesting corner of psychology, my immediate impulse is to see if I can connect it to creativity. It’s like those old Reese’s peanut butter commercials. I’m a guy with a big chocolate bar, trying to combine it with anything I see is a good fit. So given this statement you’ve got your big bar of chocolate, we would love to start out your conversation with how you see creativity fitting with new areas that are emerging.
James Kaufman [00:03:17]:
I mean, I guess like every creativity researcher, but has been absolutely fascinating to me is the link with artificial intelligence. And for somebody who can barely figure out how to use his new laptop, it’s a little funny that I’m thinking about this, but I’ve been working with kind of a large group of creativity folks on planning a couple of different things, including that and in general, just the idea of what will AI do to creativity? Will it in essence, make the rich get richer by having creative people be able to reach even better heights? Or is it going to be something where it equalizes things, but not necessarily in a good way, but rather by having people who might have the traits or abilities to be creative no longer have that kind of creative advantage because anybody can use AI to do stuff. And I’m kind of hoping not the latter in part. It’s actually kind of interesting. I’ve talked about this quite a bit with folks and some people are trying to put a bit of this equality spin where what AI can do is we’ll make everybody equally creative. The reason why I’m not sure that’s a good thing. A I think what will end up happening is that people who have the resources, both access and financial to the latest equipment, they will end up getting boost up. And as it is, creativity is an ability, an attribute, a trait that is already something that enhances equality and equity and bringing in a new dimension. If it does, quote, level the playing field, it really won’t level the playing field. It’ll do it for people who have access to technology and resources. So I’m kind of hoping it’s not that direction. The idea of it being this co creation and of helping boost people’s potential, that I find wonderful.
Matthew Worwood [00:05:33]:
James, over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been thinking more about I responded to I think it was David Cropley had shared something on LinkedIn, and I responded to his post. And I was thinking, in some ways, this discussion and what you shared made me think of the World Wide Web coming about. And we suddenly had increased access to information. And we’re starting to think about how might that increased access to information perhaps support us with research and education and learning. But at the same time there were a whole bunch of skills that you still need in order to evaluate and synthesize all of this information that to a certain extent is just ubiquitous. It’s everywhere. And so that can make it a new challenge that we haven’t faced before. And then the other piece is that we still have the academic community largely distributing knowledge in journals that are protected behind firewalls. And so that knowledge, perhaps, that we as a society consider particularly valuable is not as easily accessible as the information you can easily find on the World Wide Web. And so I’m just listening to you talking a little bit about whether or not certain people are going to benefit more than others. It makes me think a little bit about the World Wide Web, both in terms of its impact in society, but also how it might serve some groups a lot more than other groups.
James Kaufman [00:06:59]:
I think it also speaks to the importance, at least with the World Wide Web example of Curation, where I’m seeing it in so many things, where in the 50s or 60s there would be a certain number of movies made a year, usually by the major studios, there’d be a certain number of records released and so on. Now, I have no idea how many movies are released a year, but I feel like there’s probably more movies released in an average week than were released in an average year in the 50s or 60s. But the flip side is, with so much content, while at the same time you have newspapers closing left and right, and so there just aren’t that many reviews of anything but the major releases. You have all of this, everything, whether it’s information or media, all this stuff available, and yet, with the exception of the most well known stuff, there’s no real way to necessarily figure out, well, what should I watch next? The same way. Okay, I’m going to look up a topic. Well, which link should I click on? It’s the same way that like if for people who are using Chat GPT, this whole idea of prompt engineering is developing as a skill. I don’t think it’s bad, it’s just different. If it replaces the stuff we use to be creative, a, I don’t think it will, but B, I don’t think that’s good if it’s an additional thing that people are able to develop and use, that’s kind of interesting. I mean, there used to be a time before the Web where there’s a reason why at one point we’re taught to memorize mathematical formulas. Now you just don’t need it the same way. If back in 1987, I wanted to think, who the 23rd president of the United States, either I had a book with me, or I had to remember it, and now, oh, just type it in. People who know much more about the brain than I do have talked about how this changes, how we store information, how we process, and I think so much will depend how people use AI. So I’m working on a number of projects with a collaborator, Dana Rowe, who’s a well known theatrical composer. Our first book is coming out in December. Creativity Lessons from Musical Theater Characters. And one of the things we’ve been doing, kind of as we’re getting a website off the ground is we’re using generative AI to produce images that blend two musicals. So, for example, the image of Alphabet from Wicked running through the fields like Sound of Music. And what’s fascinating is we’re becoming little Mini X, being very, very mini. But we’re developing some expertise on this and figuring out, well, what does AI know, what doesn’t it know? And it certainly feels inconsistent. It does feel creative, what we’re doing. It doesn’t feel artistically creative necessarily. Like we’re not taking the photographs or drawing them, but we’re thinking of the ideas conceptually. So it’s almost like we’re using different creativity processes to get a final creative product in a different domain, which is a little weird. And the part of me that is the user is really I did and wants to see what happens next and loves the idea of maybe it’s me chat GPT 8.0, and maybe I wouldn’t even have to write my own book and yet but you know what? I like writing my book and I like having my own style. And it’s also an interesting ethical question. I mean, there’s been a number of issues about is self plagiarism plagiarism? I mean, personally I don’t think so, but people feel very strongly about this. I mean, if there comes a time when AI could write a basic method section just as good or better as any of us, could do any of us like writing method sections? I don’t know. I think there’s me a lot of slippery slopes.
Matthew Worwood [00:11:36]:
Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, Curiosity to Create.
Cyndi Burnett [00:11:44]:
Curiosity to Create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.
Matthew Worwood [00:11:56]:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.
Cyndi Burnett [00:12:10]:
To learn more, check out Curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. Now, James, I’ve been thinking a lot about this and I think I got a little depressed like a month ago because I was like, are we even going to need creativity anymore? If you know what you want to create, even with idea Generation know coming up with unusual ways to approach curriculum. And it was interesting. The other day my daughter said to me, I’d really like to be a musical theater actress when I’m older, but I just think AI will take that over. I’m like, oh my gosh, how on earth could AI take over? She’s like, well, you know, they’ll create images on stage and we won’t have to be there as actors. I was like, that was so outside of my paradigm. But the fact that my 13 year old daughter was thinking about that really shook me.
Matthew Worwood [00:13:03]:
But that’s part of the strike as well. To be fair, that’s part of the writers and actors strike. They want it written in the contract that AI would not replace them.
Cyndi Burnett [00:13:11]:
Right, that’s a good point. That’s a really good point, Matt. I hadn’t thought about that. I was thinking about the actors. But you’re right, the writing has to happen first. But I think about and I know James, you have children who are teenagers, correct?
James Kaufman [00:13:24]:
And almost 17.
Cyndi Burnett [00:13:26]:
Yes. So we’re preparing them, and I have teenagers and Matt has three boys. And here we are preparing them for jobs, and people are asking my kids like, so what are you going to be when you graduate? And I’m like, we don’t even know what’s going to exist in ten years. How on earth are you going to ask them what they’re going to do? And so when I’m looking at the work that they’re doing inside the classroom and artificial intelligence, all I can think is like, is this going to be necessary? So I’m really curious your perspective on that. Are these skills necessary when we see what’s coming?
James Kaufman [00:13:59]:
It’s a good question. It’s an existential question. Right now, if I think about the various jobs that seem to be no longer thriving fields because of AI, there’s some creativity involved, but more conscientiousness, so to speak. So like copywriting or things like that, where it follows a certain parameter, certain set of rules. To me, the scariest thing is we don’t know the rate of acceleration. I was talking to some colleagues about the idea that, okay, AI is pretty good at generating a bunch of ideas, but you still need well, what should be done in the first place. The problem finding all that stuff. AI can still do this, just perhaps not very well. But the thing is, it’s always improving. I mean, just playing around with Chat GPT is as advanced when it first came out to now, it’s getting a little bit better. Like if we think about creativity in terms of, let’s say, the propulsion model, where this is idea, there’s different ways that a contribution can move a field. Certainly replication, AI can do that now. It can do in essence, what’s been done. It can definitely do mean one of the mean. I just enjoy playing around with it, so I’ll do stuff know what would happen if David Bowie’s Life on Mars was written about the declaration of know and just see stuff like that. And it can do that kind of redirection. Well, from this perspective, it can undoubtedly do a basic step forward. I don’t think it can do reinitiation. Doesn’t mean it won’t be able to reinitiation is a totally new thing. But I think the thing that worries me is if the only thing down the road that AI won’t be able to do is this kind of big C genius level contribution. I mean, bluntly, that’s just going to suck because there are so few of any of us who will ever be able to hit that level. And if we’re somehow in a world where it’s pretty much either you do paradigm, it’s a shifting level of work or you are worthless. I mean, that’s a very depressing vision of the future. I am hoping that’s not going to be the case. Pardon me wonders about the ethics of tossing out AI onto the web. I think there’s been a lot of cases and psychologists are not immune. I mean, certainly there’s a number of things that we’ve put out in the web and just tossed out there to the general public before we kind of fully know if they work or not. Certainly it was just kind of dumped out there without any really thinking about what might it do. And I mean, when we think about creativity and valence, something new is obviously not always something good. In some ways I think AI like creativity itself, it’s neutral. Is it good, is it bad, is it going to it depends on what we use it for. And certainly if we end up with the billionaires using it to replace a workforce, that doesn’t sound very good. I mean, the thing at least right now is, yeah, AI could make a rip off Wes Anderson movie but it can’t become the next Wes Anderson and do whatever that random just different from other stuff style.
Matthew Worwood [00:17:36]:
Know? Like I think we do this a lot, particularly at the moment where we kind of make really complex issues somewhat simple perhaps because it’s easier for us to have conversations about them. But the conversation about generative AI can be viewed from so many different perspectives and also domains and it’s going to impact different domains in different ways. And depending on what perspective you take when you’re having a conversation about generative AI, you might think it’s got a lot of potential to do good and of course it will have a lot of potential to do bad as well. But I can’t help but think to a certain extent that and you do this in your book a lot. In fact in your book I think you challenge the reader to assume different perspectives of creativity and make the connection how it relates to their lives and bringing this back to the classroom environment. I think there’s something to be said around Mini C and little C, because I actually not necessarily an opposing view, but it makes me think that using generative AI in the workforce, using generative eye to assist us in interacting and evaluating a massive amount of data or helping us assist. A real huge problem in the world might be where we see a lot of the resources presented. But I also think that there’s lots of opportunities at the Mini C and Little C level. And I’m really fascinated about some of the ways teachers have started to incorporate generative AI in the classroom environment. So, for example, Cindy, you’d referenced ideation. I just worked with a group of teachers recently and had them use AI as almost like a starting prompt to a problem finding mission where they looked at what are the top ten challenges impacting science teachers what are the top ten challenges impacting kindergarten teachers? What are the top ten challenges impacting kindergarten teachers during the first week of school? These all yield different responses and what the responses we were getting were almost like themes because it wasn’t necessarily providing information of how that particular problem manifests in the classroom environment, that teacher’s classroom environment. And likewise, it wasn’t able to predict the type of resources and how that individual teacher interacts and responds to those challenges and their comfort level in responding to those challenges inside that environment. So really it was a good starting point, but it actually laid a foundation for the teachers to engage their own creativity, which I think is talking around that Mini C and Little C level. So I think at least at this time, I see opportunities for teachers to explore how generative AI might assist Mini C and Little C creativity in a classroom environment. And also to that point, we are also introducing generative AI. So long as it’s deliberate, we identify a specific purpose for it in our classroom environment. And we’re somewhat sensitive to how it’s being used. It’s getting young people interacting with this tool. So going to a point you made earlier, learning to collaborate with generative AI. And so the hope is 1020 years now we’ve began to identify, well, when am I going to use Google Search and when do I then go and utilize Google Docs to compile all of the things that I’ve accessed? And then I’m going to synthesize that information to produce my own body of work. So I have hope, and I actually have hope more at the Mini C and Little C levels. To a certain extent, I think there are going to be significant disruption in some ways at the pro C level.
Cyndi Burnett [00:21:14]:
This podcast was produced by Matthew Warwood and Cindy Burnett. The episode was sponsored by Curiosity to create.
How will generative AI impact the future of creativity, and will the rich get richer?
In this double expresso of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Matthew Worwood and Dr. Cyndi Burnett welcome back to the show Dr. James Kaufman, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut and one of the leading researchers in the field of creativity.
In the first part of this double expresso, Dr. Kaufman discusses the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence (AI). He ponders whether AI will enhance or hinder creativity and questions if it will lead to a more equitable distribution of creative advantages. Dr. Kaufman expresses concerns that those with access to resources and technology may benefit the most, further widening the gap. However, he also sees the potential for AI to be a tool for co-creation and boosting people’s creative potential.
The conversation expands to include parallels between the advent of the World Wide Web and the potential challenges faced with increased access to information. They discuss the importance of curation in a world flooded with content, where individuals must navigate vast amounts of data to find what is truly valuable.
Overall, this episode explores the complex relationship between creativity, AI, access to information, and the role of curation. Dr. Kaufman’s insights give listeners a deeper understanding of these topics and the potential consequences and advantages they may have in the field of education.
Guest Bio
Dr. Kaufman is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut. He is one of the leading researchers in the field of creativity, authoring and editing over 50 books. He has published more than 300 papers and three well-known theories of creativity, including the Four-C Model of Creativity with Ron Beghetto, who was on an earlier podcast. He has co-authored several books for educators, including Teaching for Creativity in the Common Core Classroom, Nurturing Creativity in the Classroom, and Being Creative Inside and Outside of the Classroom. His most recent book, The Creativity Advantage, focuses on the benefits of bringing creativity into our lives.
Debrief Episode
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Podcast Sponsor

We are thrilled to partner with Curiosity 2 Create as our sponsor, a company that shares our commitment to fostering creativity in education. Curiosity 2 Create empowers educators through professional development and community support, helping them integrate interactive, creative thinking approaches into their classrooms. By moving beyond traditional lecture-based methods, they help teachers create dynamic learning environments that enhance student engagement, improve academic performance, and support teacher retention. With a focus on collaborative learning and exploration, Curiosity 2 Create is transforming classrooms into spaces where students thrive through continuous engagement and growth.