Creativity and the 4th Industrial Revolution | Christiane Michaelis | TEDxBartonSpringsWomen

[Music] right now we are standing at the brink of a revolution and this revolution is going to change nearly every aspect of our human rights from what we eat to what we believe to how long they're going to live my name is Christiana Michaelis I work with business people to build up their innate creativity as a response to what's coming to all of us the fourth Industrial Revolution in speed and scale this revolution is unlike anything humanity has seen before some hope that this might cure diseases and maybe bring the end of poverty other experts like Elon Musk or Steve Hawking afraid that this might destroy our entire civilization at this point we don't know yet but I believe we have to do what we can to turn this industrial revolution into a human revolution today I'm gonna share with you what I believe to be one of the keys that we all have to make that shift in previous industrial revolutions we first developed the steam engine and the protector ease and also the development of the were the way how how people work together in factories then later we developed Ford's assembly line and cars and I think all of you here in this room have witnessed the rise of computers and the Internet the fourth Industrial Revolution is going to bring us robots and artificial intelligence machines that are thought to be wastes murder and more efficient than humans every one of those revolutions has changed the workforce and so will this one when cars were replacing horses we needed fewer blacksmiths and many of them became some of the first auto mechanics robots are now doing some of the manual labor that humans used to do in their houses and factories and automation is replacing those jobs that mostly rely on routines and repetition blue-collar jobs as well as white-collar jobs the prediction is that 47 percent of jobs will be lost to automation in the next five to ten years imagine with me the impact this has for our society almost half of our population will lose their income and the basis of their existence let's say this is a good line this part of your room you are the lucky month you're gonna keep your jobs and fortunately that means for you guys that one day you will be told that you no longer need it but you're not off the hook your friends your families they're sitting there on this side so what can we do to create those jobs that we need we have to focus on things that we as humans can do better than artificial intelligence and one of the most powerful gifts we all have is our human creativity how is human creativity different from the way machines operate and think here's an example it's a project that I did with a group of eight-year-olds I gave them a bunch of boxes full of recycled materials and I told them build whatever you want out of these things so the kids they started opening the boxes and they started digging through them and their faces for starting to light up and they were pulling things out and sharing them with each other and sharing the ideas of what they could build with this and you could see the whole brains were light on fire with all the possibilities then at one point there was this girl and she was pulling out this piece of plastic and it was huge and holding it up and say this is awesome you have to build something with this and all the other kids were jumping onto that passion and saying yes and that was the moment when they decided to build this dragon AI does not operate based on passion and inspiration they rely on databases and algorithms so if you gave the same task to a machine it would probably start by scanning every single item in the box putting men on the list comparing them to a database full of Pinterest boards by the way who created those Pinterest boards and then come up with some project that would be a good match totally different approach that leads to totally different results the astronauts an opposed to teen it were in a way given a similar task to those kids after an explosion on board they had to do makeshift repairs to return back to earth here you see people on the ground trying to figure out solutions using the materials that they were available an Apollo and like the kids holding up a cardboard box and they're experimenting with his pipe in their hands there was no script the survival of the astronauts was relying on creative problem-solving skills and together they were able to come up with an unconventional solution using materials like duct tape and even the cardboard covers of the log book kids building a dragon from John astronauts repairing Apollo and I never tested circumstances are both examples of human creativity machines are far less adept at coming up with something unique and creative on their own it's our human creativity that lets us imagine things that don't yet exist this is why the experts in economy and business agree that the future is creativity driven the World Economic Forum is ranking creativity as one of the three top demand work skills of all the work skills we have creativity is our human superpower one of our biggest differentiators from artificial intelligence but there is one big problem with this Adobe did a study called state of create and they found out that 50% of people believe they are not creative so every other person is convinced that they don't have it in them to come up with unique creative ideas on their own but they are wrong creativity is our human birthright it's ingrained into our DNA everyone is creative neuroscience tells us that the brains of creative and non creative people are physically built the same way but a highly creative person has developed a lot more connections through all the different areas of the brain and not only do they have more connections those connections are also faster stronger and more powerful this is just like the top athlete who is equipped with the same set of muscles as the couch potato but has developed a very different way of using those muscles our brains are built for creativity we are wired to be creative but only if we practice our creativity can be built as muscle and become creatively strong so given that everyone is creative what is the best way to build at muscle that creative muscle the good news is we all were already creative once as children we were curious and playful and inquisitive and creative and loved the arts but some adults along the way of growing up have lost that ability so what we have to do now is we awaken that's dormant creativity and bring it back to life we have to start gonna be left off back then and grab the crayons and those finger paints and light our creative fire but I know for some people that's kind of easier said than done and I was one of those people I was always a creative person but I grew up being convinced that I was terrible terrible at anything that had to do with painting or drawing so I did the most natural thing I stayed away as far as I could from everything that had to do with that then one day I was in my aunt's 20s I was invited over by an artist friend who had to finish illustrations the next day so we spent the night sitting together and talking and chatting and while she was doing her paintings and at some point you said hey why don't you grab a piece of paper and do something let's paint something to tell you dink I no way no way I'm gonna paint but a little while later she suggested again and said hey Christiana come on there's no harm in trying but heck yeah there is a lot of harm in trying I knew if I would grab that paintbrush over there I would set myself up to total failure I would paint like a two-year-old mess that up to be frustrated be embarrassed and then this beautiful evening would be totally ruined it took a couple more hours but around 4:00 a.m. in the morning the portraits of my resistance started to crumble and I grabbed a paintbrush and I started painting and it was so much fun I did a second painting that very night looking at the results to be honest they were not mind boggling but they were also in no way as horrifyingly bad that it would justify my huge resistance fast-forward to today I'm still not a great painter but I now get adults to play with paint it became my proof fashioned to awaken that dormant creativity and overcome the fears that I used to have this would have never happened had I not overcome my resistance that very night overcoming resistance is the first step in gaining access to your creativity the second one is showing up stepping into the arena and by that I mean finding activities that are simple and easy to do and that focus more on the process of doing things instead of the final product he has three simple examples how to create and how to be playful the first one is what is called mourning pages so the first thing you do every morning right after you get up you don't have your coffee yet you sit down and write three pages with whatever comes into your might then you're done that's it there's no editing there's no reviewing the focus is entirely on the process of letting it out and I know several people who swear by this method as a way of getting in touch with their creative spirit the second idea is doodle whenever you waiting somewhere at the doctor's office or at the airport just grab a notepad in a pen and start scribbling little things if you want a little bit of help Fanny Braun has written a great book the doodle revolution and that gives you very useful tips on how to start that process my third suggestion for you is signing up for a creative class one of my neighbors so you just turned 35 she started playing guitar for the first time in her life and now we often find her in our street practising her songs strumming the guitar while the kids are riding their scooters around her so the point is it does not matter what you do it doesn't have to be painting but don't make the mistake of putting creativity on your should do list because that's where it's gonna die find something that you enjoy and that lights you are creative fire I once had a French client Richard he's a left brained engineer and had no previous painting experience before he came to paint with me shortly after we met it was 2015 the terrible terrorist attack in Paris happened and Richard was deeply disturbed by this event after he found out that none of his loved ones were injured he went straight to an art store bought a bunch of art supplies and went home to paint and I want to show you what he did that day the French flag re-imagined you see the colors of the French flag but it looks as if they are ripped apart and to me it seems like the French identity is hurt and injured and does not look like the flag itself is bleeding or crying this is a painting done by somebody without hardly any girl any technical painting skills but nevertheless you might not be surprised finding that in the modern art museum right and would you agree with me that richard has developed the creative mindset that it takes to invent in his own powerful way that is the kind of creativity we need for the 4th Industrial Revolution we don't need Picasso's painting skills but we need the creative mindset behind it in the past thousands of years we always have worked alongside machines but here's the difference in the factories we were alienated from our human nature's working at the assembly mine the assembly line meant being reduced to various mechanical simple tasks there was no room for our thought for our emotion for our empathy the broad spectrum our human ability was turning a screw over and over and over again until work was done we are not made for this but now we have a huge opportunity we have machines that can do those things for us and we can play out our truly human qualities these days when you play guitar when you write a poem or when you build a sculpture like this one you are investing in your future in the fourth Industrial Revolution those who flourish will be flexing their creative muscle they will be solving problems and they will be expanding the horizon of economy and business government and education we won't be defeated by boxes full of zeros or ones or by an army of robots or by discarded junk we will use them to build dragons thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 5,494

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Art, AI, Arts education, Industrial design, Revolution, Robots

Id: E5BodmlOAMY

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 23 2019