Executive Summary
Headlines claim AI is more creative than humans. But Yale researcher Dr Zorana Ivcevic Pringle reveals what the research actually shows—and why the comparison misses the point entirely. While average AI performance exceeds average human performance on creativity tasks, top human creativity remains unmatched. More fundamentally, AI cannot do what sparks creativity in the first place: take initiative.
Core insights:
- AI cannot take initiative—the emotional experience that drives human creativity doesn’t exist in machines
- The Instacart example: its founder hated grocery shopping, and that emotional frustration became creative inspiration. AI doesn’t have that.
- Research showed AI outperforms average human creativity—but human creativity was never about averages
- Top-tier human creative performance still surpasses AI, with no overlap
- AI can generate ideas but cannot build them into reality
- The photography parallel: when invented, people predicted the end of painting. Instead, it catalysed impressionism, expressionism, and surrealism.
- New tools don’t eliminate creativity—they transform it
- AI panders to us; genuine creativity requires adversarial perspectives
What AI Can and Cannot Do
AI generates excitement and fear in equal measure. It produces summaries, transcriptions, and thematic analysis with remarkable speed. But what can it actually do in terms of creativity?
“There are some things it can do, there are some things it cannot do,” Zorana explains. “So what can’t it do? Well, it cannot take initiative.”
This distinction matters profoundly. Human creativity begins with noticing something in the world and asking “What about…?” The founding of Instacart illustrates this perfectly. Would AI have invented it?
“I don’t think so,” Zorana says, “because how it happened in real life is that its founder really hated everything about the grocery shopping experience. So this emotional experience became inspiration and became impetus for action. Now the machine does not have that.”
You must feed AI the information from which it can draw something. It cannot generate the frustration, curiosity, or insight that sparks creative initiative in the first place.
The Average vs Top Performance Distinction
When large language models first appeared, research papers proclaimed AI more creative than humans. But the methodology deserves scrutiny.
AI systems were given problems like “come up with different uses for a brick”—the same exercise creativity researchers use with humans. With the knowledge of the entire internet in its memory, AI can reproduce long lists containing creative ideas.
“When we compare it to humans, to human performance, it turns out that the average performance by the AI engine is higher than the average performance of humans,” Zorana explains. “Now that, if you just end up with that as a headline, sounds sensational.”
But here’s the critical question: “Was creativity, was human creativity ever about averages? Or was human creativity about something that is different than the average, that is above the average?”
When researchers examined top-tier creative performance—”which we really mean by creativity”—humans remain distinctly ahead. “There is no overlap there. Humans are in that higher level. They stay more creative.”
And that’s just coming up with ideas. “Humans can take those ideas, build something with them, make something in the real world. The AI is not the builder of ideas in the real world.”
Connections to Previous Arkaro Insights
This finding connects to themes explored across the Arkaro Insights podcast series.
Scott Burleson’s work on Jobs to Be Done revealed AI’s limitations in the convergent phase—it lacks the emotional sense of what matters to one customer segment versus another. AI struggles to make the choices about what’s important because those choices require human judgement.
Scott Anthony highlighted the wisdom of powerful prompting—humans must write the prompts that extract value from large language models. The machine amplifies; humans direct.
Vlad Glaveanu’s concept of “slow AI” offered another perspective: spend more time asking AI for questions that inspire the human mind rather than answers that dull it.
Zorana’s research meshes with all three. AI has genuine utility, but its creative contribution operates at the average level. The exceptional creative leaps—and the judgement to recognise them—remain distinctly human.
The Photography Parallel: Transformation, Not Elimination
History offers perspective on technological disruption of creative work.
“Almost two centuries ago now, photography was invented,” Zorana recalls. “And there was a lot of writing at the time about photography is going to be the end of painting, the end of art, the end of visual art at least.”
That prediction proved spectacularly wrong. “Actually what happened is that whole new approaches to art were invented. You had impressionism that said, we can take these shimmers of light and portray the sensory richness and discover the nature of the world through that. We had expressionism, which was focused on emotions. We had surrealism that dug deep into the psyche.”
These movements had nothing to do with portraying the world literally—the photographer’s domain. Meanwhile, photography itself developed as an art form.
“New tools do not eliminate existing art forms. They transform it.”
The same transformation awaits AI adoption. “We are going to develop ways of using it. We are going to learn what it can do, what it cannot do.”
The Limits of Prompting
Prompting exemplifies both AI’s potential and its constraints.
“We as humans need to be the prompters,” Zorana observes. “But we also know the limits of prompting because AIs are built in a way that really pander to you. They are going to tell you, yes, you are great. You have a great idea.”
Genuine creativity requires something different. “We need something that is more adversarial. We need something that is a new perspective.”
AI won’t naturally challenge your assumptions or push back on weak ideas. That adversarial function—essential to creative development—requires human intervention.
“So we need to learn where the limits are and then go beyond those limits, use it for what it can do and work around it for what it cannot do.”
About the Speakers
Dr Zorana Ivcevic Pringle is the author of The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action and Senior Research Scientist at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, where she directs the Creativity and Emotions Lab. Drawing on over two decades of research, her work focuses on the intersection of emotion, emotional intelligence, and the creative process. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and co-editor of The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity and Emotions.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zorana-ivcevic-pringle/
Mark Blackwell is founder of Arkaro, specialising in change management, innovation, and commercial excellence for the agriculture, food, and chemicals industries. Arkaro’s collaborative “do it with you” approach works through four steps: Understand, Co-create, Enable, Sustain. We don’t just coach—we get on the pitch with you.
Where Does AI Fit in Your Innovation Process?
AI generates excitement—and confusion. It can accelerate research, produce variations, and surface patterns. But it cannot take initiative, feel the frustration that sparks innovation, or make the judgement calls that distinguish exceptional ideas from average ones.
Understanding what AI can and cannot do is essential for integrating it effectively into your innovation process. At Arkaro, we help organisations build innovation capability that leverages AI appropriately whilst preserving the distinctly human elements that drive creative excellence.
Contact Mark Blackwell: mark@arkaro.com
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrblackwell/
We work with organisations in agriculture, food and chemicals to build innovation capability that combines human creativity with appropriate technology. We don’t just coach—we get on the pitch with you.
Related Reading from Arkaro
On AI & Human Collaboration:
- Constraints, Playfulness & Ethics: 3 Lessons for Leading in the AI Age – Dr Vlad Glaveanu on “slow AI” and why creativity requires constraints
- Wisdom Is the Unlock for AI | The Right Way Is the Hard Way – Scott Anthony on why shortcuts destroy value
- AI and Jobs to Be Done: Where Human Judgement Trumps Technology – Where AI enhances innovation research and where human expertise remains essential
- Why AI Implementations Fail – and How PEOPLE Can Fix It – The SPACES framework explains why human factors predict AI success or failure
On Innovation & Creativity:
- Jobs to Be Done: The Missing Link in B2B Innovation – Scott Burleson’s pyramid framework reveals why B2B purchasing decisions involve emotional considerations
- Why Smart Companies Miss Disruption: The 3 Ghosts Blocking Innovation – Scott Anthony on organisational ghosts that prevent innovation
- Innovation Strategy & Process – How Arkaro helps organisations establish effective ideation processes
External Resources & Further Reading
- The Creativity Choice on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Choice-Science-Making-Decisions/dp/1541704320
- Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence: https://www.ycei.org/
- Dr Zorana Ivcevic Pringle’s website: https://www.zorana-ivcevic-pringle.com/
Stay connected: Subscribe to Arkaro Insights newsletter for regular perspectives on innovation, AI adoption, and building adaptive organisations in complex industries.
