How are human and AI entities (whether embodied or disembodied) similar and/or different in terms of their ontologies? How do those similarities/differences impinge on how we conceive of the autonomy, agency, and creative capacity of AI? To what extent is AI agency different from human agency? Can AI only augment human creativity, or does it enmesh and interact with it in ways that genuinely co-produce the “novelty and appropriateness” of something that has never previously existed (or been attainable)? How do the answers to those questions impact how creative engagement with problems and tasks is conceived, approached, and conducted in organizations? What difference does it make to boundaries that are constructed (or lack thereof), the way organizations and individuals interact with AI and are changed by AI, and with what assumptions and effects? To illustrate how these questions are already impacting organizational contexts, I will provide a recent case illustration in the full paper that was recently featured in a widely circulated news outlet, The New York Times (the question of AI and its relationship to spirituality and spiritual organizations such as churches and synagogues). I will explore the question of how one segment of society that has not typically been reliant on emerging technologies (AI), and in which its use is highly controversial, is dealing with ethical and moral questions that have AI’s capacity to “create” at the heart of the issue.
