Title: AI and Creative Process

Speaker: Jie Gong, The University of Hong Kong

Time：2024/12/23 13:30-15:00

Venue:106 Zhonghui Building

About the speaker

Dr. Jie Gong is an associate professor of economics and management and strategy at The University of Hong Kong. Dr. Gong’s main research area lies at the intersection of organizational economics, personnel economics, and labor economics. It focuses on human capital accumulation and explores how firms can design organizations and operations to better manage their talents. Recently, Dr. Gong has studied topics on automation and human-machine complementarity. Dr. Gong has published in leading academic journals such as the Management Science,Journal of Labor Economics, and the Journal of Public Economics.

Abstract

This research investigates the impact of AI on creative professionals, focusing on how AI transforms the input-output relationship and how artists adapt their strategies in response. We conducted an experiment involving over 200 artists, each tasked with creating two illustrations: one without AI and another with access to text-to-image AI technology. We find evidence of both technological shifts and artists’ economic responses. AI elevates the time-quality curve, with the most significant changes occurring in the early stages of production. Artists exhibited diverse choices; notably, one-third chose to have lower quality when utilizing AI, accompanied by significant time savings. While on average, AI accelerates the creative process and enhances quality, artists’ strategies show greater polarization. Our findings highlight the implications of technological change favouring time efficiency over quality improvement. Firms should consider the type of technological changes in conjunction with potential worker responses when formulating their AI strategies.