Artificial intelligence – it can replicate age-old works of art… compose complex pieces of music… write academic essays, and even act as a therapist (though I wouldn’t rely on it). But can AI be creative? This is a question that can’t be answered with a quick ChatGPT prompt. One that speaks to the heart of what it means to be human, and opens the door to bigger
thinking around what creativity is, its role in society, and whether it can be learned.
One of the many definitions of creativity (according to Wikipedia) states that it’s the ability to form novel and valuable ideas or works using one’s imagination. Creativity stems from lived experience. From trying things, getting them wrong, and coming up with new solutions to try again. It’s an instinct born of practice, human intuition, and a unique combination of
references built up over a lifetime. And while these are all things that sound near impossible for a machine to replicate, some AI models do a surprisingly good job of delivering seemingly creative solutions when asked.
Man Against Machine
A 2017 documentary, AlphaGo, pitted man against machine in a match of Go – where one of the world’s greatest players took on a custom-trained AI and… (spoiler alert)… lost. The challenger, Lee Sedol had spent his entire life studying, practising and playing the game,only to be beaten by a manufactured system. And while it might seem menial for a computer to win at a board game, when you consider its three-to-four thousand-year history and near
infinite number of possible strategies, you would hope that the creativity of a seasoned player like Sedol would stand a chance. But it was creativity that allowed the AI to win – thinking (if we can call it that) outside of the box to play moves without traditional logic or rationale, think multiple plays ahead at any one time and adjust its strategy with every move
made.
Another point in the argument for AI’s perceived creativity comes from the labs at NASA, where engineers have adopted algorithms as part of their design process, generating unique and unusual plans for spacecraft antennae and other components. The results may look bizarre, but have been proven to work better than traditional designs – because the AI
system references a much wider database than the human mind can access, inventing new structures with an unconventional approach. Whether or not this can be considered creative is debatable, but the idea of collaborating with the system as a means of finding inventive solutions to a problem certainly can.
The Jazz Continuator
And if that wasn’t enough, there are few things in the world that are quite as creative as jazz music. And yep, AI has had a crack at that too. The Jazz Continuator was an early project by François Pachet, in which an AI system listens to a player’s phrases, builds a model in response to those phrases on the fly, and plays back new ones in a back-and-forth with the
musician. And not only that, the output sounds… pretty good!
But while mastering a game that dates back millennia, designing for NASA, and jamming with jazz players sounds undoubtedly creative, are these examples proof of creativity, as we know it in human form? I would argue that they’re not. Impressive as they are, there’s yet to be an example of AI at work that isn’t mirroring back human insight and behaviour at speed.
A Simulation?
Any creativity on display feels more like a simulation of creativity, reinforced by digital input, pattern recognition and data analysis. The most creative uses of artificial intelligence are always led by the person or the people behind the idea. The ones who came up with the prompt or the system in the first place. And the exciting part really begins when that human starts to collaborate with the machine – pushing its capabilities to dig further, try harder and ‘think’ bigger. The AI doesn’t do that work on its own volition.
If the question is can an AI paint a beautiful picture, then the answer is an easy yes. But can an AI cry at the sound of a well-played piano piece… get its heart broken for the first time…witness the Northern lights or feel the grasp of a newborn’s hand around its finger? It cannot. And it’s those things, the lived, human, rough-around-the-edges and often ugly moments
that string our days together that inspire creativity. Real creativity. The kind that fills pages of bestsellers and sells out stadium tours. The kind that inspires one person to paint a picture that will make another cry, centuries after the painter has passed, in a gallery far from their home. That’s human creativity – and no machine will be able to replicate that, any time soon.
By Lisa Kenney – Senior Careers Features Editor.
