# Transcript: Thrive or Survive: Why Creativity is the Key to an AI-Future **Date:** March 12, 2026 · 10:30 PM **Session:** [Thrive or Survive: Why Creativity is the Key to an AI-Future](/sessions/2026-03-12/pp1162418-thrive-or-survive-why-creativity-is-the-key-to-an-ai-future) ## Summary A panel at SXSW 2026 exploring how over-reliance on AI is weakening human creativity, particularly for younger generations who may never develop the creative 'muscle' that comes from struggling with blank pages and unstructured problems. Panelists from Microsoft, Emory Law School, and education research discussed the neuroscience of creativity, the risks of cognitive atrophy, and what individuals, tech companies, and governments can do to preserve human creative capacity in an AI-saturated world. ## Topics `creativity` · `artificial intelligence` · `brain development` · `intrinsic motivation` · `education` · `workforce skills` · `ai regulation` · `adolescent development` ## Key Takeaways 1. Always turn to yourself first before reaching for AI — the struggle of starting from scratch is what builds and maintains creative capacity. 2. Brains develop in the ways they are used: outsourcing cognitive work to AI, especially during adolescence, risks short-circuiting the prefrontal cortex development essential for problem-solving and emotional regulation. 3. The most important outcome of adolescence is not academic achievement but the brain you develop — unstructured play and passion pursuits are critical for building intrinsic motivation and stress tolerance. 4. We need 'society in the loop' not just 'human in the loop' — governmental AI regulation modeled after seatbelt mandates can make the industry safer without destroying it. 5. Human-generated work will remain the competitive differentiator — AI output is recognizable and less interesting than authentic human creativity. ## Full Transcript My name is Andrea Virgin. I was a former professional ballerina and civil engineer. Creativity made me the best engineer in South Florida, and it's something I'm deeply passionate about — bringing to more people the knowledge that creativity lives within all of us. We need to dispel the notion that some of us are creative and some are not. We are all creative. Here at South by Southwest, a place to express and support creativity, I'm here with these amazing panelists to say that I feel a sense of weakening in my creativity over the last three years since AI was introduced. It's not to say that AI is a bad thing, but sometimes those quiet signals we feel need attention because they might be telling us something. I suspect by you being here, you might be feeling that quiet whisper that perhaps something's not quite right. Think back to before AI was introduced three years ago, when you opened a blank document — an email, a presentation, a script. It was just you and that idea you were trying to get out of your head, with that familiar struggle, trial and error, frustration and tension of figuring out how to begin. Eventually you gave yourself patience and grit, and ideas started to flow. Now fast forward to today — it's you and AI, with endless possibilities and that frictionless start. But the question that's crept into my mind: if AI was suddenly unavailable today, would it be harder to start from scratch than it was three years ago? For me, it has. It's almost become automatic to begin with AI. As adults, we can get back on the analog bike of creativity we grew up learning as children — we might be rusty, but we can get back on. But what about the generation growing up behind us, the ones becoming not just digital natives but AI natives? Imagine a kid today handed not the bike we grew up on, but an AI bike with a motor built in, perpetual training wheels, and a built-in GPS. They don't need the energy to take off, they'll never fall, and a prompt whisks them to a predetermined destination. So what happens to all that tenacity, rigor, failing, falling, wandering and exploring? First up, we have Mike Pell from Microsoft, a futurist, innovator, and hugely passionate about human creativity alongside technology. Next, Dr. Ifeoma Ajunwa, author of The Quantified Worker, who explores how data and algorithms shape our workplaces. And finally, Ned Johnson, co-author of The Self-Driven Child, whose work focuses on how young people develop autonomy, motivation and agency. Mike Pell: I work with AI every day as an envisioner for Microsoft in New York. AI helps with exploring new ideas — the machine thinks of things I would never have thought of. But if you lean on it too much, you stop using your own creativity. I'm a very analog person despite being in the digital world — I write on paper with pens. Instead of turning automatically to AI, we should be turning automatically to ourselves first, always. Dr. Ajunwa: I echo this idea of turning first to ourselves. With my law students, I always encourage them to think through what are all the wrong answers and why. That's what law school teaches — critical thinking. In my practice as an author, I guard myself against instinctive dependence on AI, especially ChatGPT. Yes, it can spit out an outline in seconds. But you miss all the connections you could have made in your failed outlines. There is a predetermination that goes along with AI — you close yourself off from the multiplicity of ideas you have as a human being. We should think of AI as a helper, an amanuensis, rather than a driver or manager. Ned Johnson: I may be the control study — someone who uses AI very little. As an author and educator, my curiosity is around how brains develop. I'm interested in young people developing intrinsic motivation, stress tolerance, resilience, and creativity. I have great concerns. We need to be very thoughtful about the use of rapidly developing technologies on rapidly developing minds, knowing that adolescent brains are far more malleable but also far more vulnerable than adult brains. Data shows that nearly all four to five year olds are creative, but we lose it along the way. By adulthood, creativity drops to about 2%. The MIT study shows that our brains are less active when we use LLMs compared to writing from scratch. What is that telling us? Ned Johnson: Brains develop in the ways they're used, pure and simple. The prefrontal cortex — right behind the forehead — houses executive functions: organization, planning, problem solving, cognitive and emotional flexibility. We need friction, heat, and hard work to develop that part of the brain. I had a student who let his other tutor do his test prep work. I asked him — do you lift weights? You can't let someone else do the heavy lifting for you and expect to get stronger. We want to use technologies that give us just enough but don't deprive us of the opportunity to do the hard work that develops brains. Forty percent of kids surveyed said AI pulls their creativity back because it felt like it was taking them in a direction that didn't feel their own. Ned Johnson: Motivation requires three psychological needs — competence, relatedness, and most of all, autonomy. These kids put their finger on it: why work hard at something if it doesn't feel like my work, my choice, my direction? When people lack intrinsic motivation, it shows up in anxiety, depression, substance use disorders. When we support their autonomy and intrinsic motivation to creativity, we're helping them be better learners, better employees, and better people because their mental health is better. Andrea: I'm afraid AI is acting like a snowplow parent for many people, and they're not even trying anymore. Dr. Ajunwa: In The Quantified Worker, I looked at how employers were trying to quantify workers and slot them into roles — and it was backfiring. It wasn't producing bigger productivity gains; it was stressing out workers through surveillance. Now employers are seeing you can't just dismiss human skills. AI still needs a lot of managing. The skills humans need to thrive in the AI workplace are the so-called soft skills — critical thinking, adaptability, creativity. These are actually essential skills. We need to think of ourselves as always acquiring skills, being lifelong learners. Mike Pell: I've argued with the heads of Harvard, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon and Parsons about putting humanities at the center of education. There is something wrong with the educational system. The people side of the equation is always most important. What we look for in hiring is curiosity — people who are willing to try, learn, experiment and fail. The critical thinker is the person we'd look at more closely than an AI expert. Ned Johnson: There's a brain network for big-picture dreaming called the default mode network, and an executive control network for getting stuff done. We need both. We need time in our own heads to daydream and mind-wander — that's where creativity comes from, not from being up to your eyes in spreadsheets. Anything that just speeds things up is boxing out the time we need to think about what we want before we start thinking about how to do it. Dr. Ajunwa: When we had Taylorism, the idea was quantifying the work so it could be taught to workers. Now we've evolved to quantifying human beings themselves — from social media behavior to genetic quantification. Instead of quantifying people, we should be thinking expansively. We all have different capabilities, different propensities, different creative expressions. Ned Johnson: Anxious brains don't work well. Stressed people are not high performers. The strength of connections between the prefrontal cortex and amygdala is the single strongest neurological marker for mental health. The most important outcome of high school and adolescence is not the college you get into — it's the brain you develop and carry into the building. We need to be very thoughtful about how we let children and teens use these technologies. Mike Pell: Yes, AI tools can absolutely be designed to preserve a human-first approach. I ran a capstone with NYU where I challenged students to create an AI system with friction built in — more conversational, not just an answer machine. It's incumbent on the tech industry to design systems that push back on the notion of "just give me the answer." The education system is broken. Students are coming into the workforce without the ability to debate, argue, or make a point without looking at their phone. Ned Johnson: For young kids, the most important thing is play, full stop. For adolescents, it's the passionate pursuit of pastimes — coding, rock climbing, sports, music, anything where people work harder to get better. The second big thing is autonomy: give young people as much control over their lives as possible. A low sense of control is the most stressful thing we can experience. Dr. Ajunwa: We need to push government to create guardrails — for technology companies and for educators adopting AI in the classroom. Right now it's the wild west. We need society in the loop, not just a human in the loop. I've written an article called "The AI Commission" inspired by Ralph Nader and Elizabeth Warren. Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed led to mandatory seatbelts — and rather than ruining the auto industry, safety regulations actually helped it grow. We need a federal agency devoted to regulating AI development and deployment. Mike Pell: In general, the tech industry has learned lessons from social media. Microsoft delivered a report to the Biden administration about AI regulation and has had a Responsible AI group for many years. Dr. Ajunwa: We shouldn't leave regulation just to the technology companies. We need governmental action, actual policies and mandates promoting safety. Ned Johnson: The best solutions are societal, not individual. It's unfair to ask one child to observe self-control when no one else has to — it feels like unilateral disarmament. We need to design systems that are conducive not only to productivity but to human development. Mike Pell: I can tell when something is AI-generated, and it's not as interesting as when a person wrote it themselves. Look at LinkedIn — almost all AI-written captions, and it's not interesting. You'll actually be more competitive when you write it yourself. Ned Johnson: In order to be creative, you need ideas in your head to connect — and that requires reading. Smart people are better at answering well-defined questions, but most questions about happiness and meaning are messy. We need more time dealing with questions where there isn't one right answer. This creates friction, brain development, and ultimately greater happiness. --- *Source: stt · Language: en · Model: claude-opus-4-6* [← Back to session](/sessions/2026-03-12/pp1162418-thrive-or-survive-why-creativity-is-the-key-to-an-ai-future)