Tackling the AI-Creativity paradox: How educational innovation and knowledge unlocks positive-sum dynamics?

Artificial intelligence’s (AI) rapid growth in creative industries has created a difficult choice: While companies can use AI to work faster, this often reduces human creativity and innovation. We show how educational institutions can resolve this by bringing together different groups to work collaboratively rather than competing against each other. We use a mathematical model to study how four key groups interact: creative companies, government regulators, educational institutions, and creative professionals. Our model tracks these interactions over 20 time periods, measuring three important factors: creative resources, trust between groups, and technology advancement. We compare scenarios where education plays different roles, from being a passive follower to active coordinator. Surprisingly, we find that when educational institutions actively coordinate between the other groups, everyone simultaneously benefits. Our 20-period simulation reveals that compared to pursuing automation-only strategies, companies following education-mediated strategies achieved 139 % higher profits (scenario simulation ceiling). Instead of being a zero-sum game, all groups achieved better outcomes together. This is because that educational coordination preserves and enhances creative resources while enabling sustainable technology integration. Thus, education is not simply a cost that responds to technological change. Rather, it is a strategic tool that can transform competitive dynamics into collaborative innovation. Educational institutions provide the long-term perspective, neutrality, and knowledge integration needed to align different interests around sustainable AI-creativity partnerships. However, educational coordination faces profound limitations, including structural power asymmetries wherein multinational corporations possess superior resources compared to individual artists, cultural incompatibilities rendering Western frameworks inappropriate across diverse contexts, and funding challenges undermining institutional neutrality. Rather than providing universal solutions, we offer diagnostic tools for understanding when coordination mechanisms may be feasible. Meanwhile, we also acknowledge that many contexts require alternative approaches or may experience ongoing efficiency-creativity tension as an inevitable feature of contemporary creative industries.