I can't promise I'll get back to you on the hour, or whatever, but you can play against me.

A key disconnect I'm noticing is that, and this is common with STEM people, you do not view the programming itself, that is the software as written, as an expression of art or creativity. You lack a degree of respect for the profession and the work it produces.

I think, because you are only concerned with the end product. A website can be beautiful for more reasons than just the colors it chooses, you know.

I also see you trying to reduce this to a binary decision on the matter, that if you can prove an iota of creativity, then the entire project is creative, but that's not really how people think about these things.

There is a spectrum of effort. Everyone can cook, but not everyone is a cook. And not every cook is a chef. There are varying levels of skill and application being described here.

To borrow someone else's creativity, with a recipe, or pre-seasoned meat, or a javascript library, might leave people with the feeling that the project is still wholistically creative because the parts you had not touched were still touched by someone. But this only goes so far: people are good at subtracting others' efforts from your own, and if you're work is too derivative, people will not feel as if you've added anything.

The problem with referencing something like Wix is that Wix already represents a diminished creative effort. You as a Wix user make fewer decisions; there are fewer opportunities to express your creativity and skill.

This doesn't mean a Wix website isn't creative whatsoever. It just depends on what you're measuring.

You use this word, 'better', but I don't know what this word means. Is writing vanilla javascript better than writing React? Better in what way?

With regard to creativity, I would argue that vanilla JS is more creative: the brainwork of React's pre-made solutions can't be used, so new ones must be thought up.

If you're following, you should be able to see where the argument that AI isn't creative comes from. The more decisions it makes for you, the fewer decisions you are making.

Art and creativity are affects of the social realm. For something to be creative, you have to be involved. You have to be able to show what it is that you did and why you did it, what thoughts and feelings you had while making it—otherwise, no one will care.

Nor should they. You understand the frustration people feel when calling a customer support line and getting an automated system instead of a real person, yes? Art isn't that different.

Art is conversational. If you listen to high-end art people talk about it, they use this term a lot. They don't mean that art inspires conversation, they mean that it is conversation, like body language.

I would not seriously argue that an AI user has never been creative, that an iota cannot be found. But, generally speaking, they tend to let the AI make so many decisions that I do not think they are involved in the conversation of their own work. I could not ask them and they could not tell me.

And this poses a problem even for work that isn't meant to be consumed publically, like software code. If a person isn't much involved in the coversation of their own work—if they don't know the words they're using or why—then I can't trust their work.