Over the ages the human race has been presented as a superior to all other living creatures. One of the arguments for such bold assumption was that there are attributes unique to humans, such as the ability to use tools, language and form complex social structures. This belief has been long dismissed with scientific evidence, as numerous creatures in the animal kingdom have the same attributes, just expressed in a different way (Bok, 2019). In the era of rapid technological innovations a new philosophical question about the uniqueness of humans has been baffling the minds of people – Are we superior to artificial intelligence?
History tends to repeat itself. So, naturally, in order to answer the question of whether we are superior to AI, humans started to look for ‘unique’ human attributes that will differentiate us from the AI. One trait seems to dominate the discussions as inherently unique – our creativity. The definition of creativity is ‘the ability to produce or use original and unusual ideas’ (Cambridge, n.d.). It has many forms – form painting to writing novels and creating music.
The argument against the ability of AI to be creative is the fact that an algorithm can only preform what it’s programmed to do, thus it cannot achieve anything novel. Consequently, any achievement of the AI is a demonstration of the programmer’s ability, not the machine’s. However, this argument can also be used against human creativity (Vandegrift, 2016). Maybe you believe in God, Allah, Brahma or just Darwin, and if that’s the case, then our creativity can also be considered as a byproduct of someone or something. If we are the divine creators of AI, why shouldn’t we gift it the ability to be creative?
If we go back to the definition of creativity, it states: .. to produce OR use original and unusual ideas. Then if we think about it, AI is indeed using ideas ( given by the programmer) to create original and unusual products. In fact, various algorithms have already been showing creativity in many fields. The painting below is created by an AI that generates it based on a text input (Purtill, 2021).
Currently, there are so many examples of machine creativity that it even has it’s own field! If you are interested, check computational creativity. Below you can also find a very cool example of how humans and machines can work together and create some amazing art!
What do you think can AI be creative? Is it possible or is it indeed a trait unique to humans? Let me know below 😊
References
Bok, V. (2019, September 7). What Distinguishes Us from AI? Retrieved from TowardsDataScience: https://towardsdatascience.com/what-distinguishes-us-from-ai-dc98f71de9a3
Cambridge. (n.d.). Creativity . Retrieved from Cambridge Dictionary : https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/creativity
Purtill, J. (2021, Jul 14). We asked a new kind of AI art tool to make ‘paintings’ of Australia. Retrieved from ABC: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2021-07-15/ai-art-tool-makes-paintings-of-australia/100288386
Vandegrift, D. (2016, 10 Jun). Can Artificial Intelligence Be Creative? Retrieved from Medium: https://medium.com/@DavidVandegrift/can-artificial-intelligence-be-creative-40e7eac56e71
Featured Image source: https://artist.com/art-recognition-and-education/art-and-the-singularity-how-will-artificial-intelligence-creative-robots-change-art/
First of all, what a unique subject to think about. Whenever we think about IT and systems we start to think in terms of logics. All other blogposts follow a similar path where we try to understand and explore the possibilities of technology to enhance our daily life or to make our life easier in some way. Thus, thinking about what technology could do to simply entertain us, is different to me. To get back to the subject at hand, I most certainly do think that AI could one day be creative as well. However, I’m not sure whether we will live to see that day. AI is still in its early stages of development. Don’t get me wrong, AI has been worked on for many years now and is still being worked on, but it’s application for the general public is not yet there. To me it seems more plausible that we still need to discover some kind of new technology that is needed in order to take AI to its next level. Then it could potentially also be that AI itself could become creative. For now I’m sure that there are AI’s out there that are creative, but I think that a human is now still needed to finalize its creations, something that might (hopefully) change in the future.
Hi Dayana! I thought your post was very interesting. I’m personally familiar with the notion that AI cannot be creative. The definition of creativity that you provided definitely contradicts that, particularly the portion that used ideas can be “compiled”, so to say. Whether the AI painting of ‘a summer day’ is true creativity is neither here or there. Perhaps it is just the combination of many pictures related to summer, stacked on top of one another. But even then, it would still count as creativity, employing the definition you have provided.
Maybe the discussion should not be whether AI can be creative, but rather what creativity truly is. When humans are ‘creative’, aren’t we extrapolating from the things we know, to create something new? That would be very similar to what AI does. Would you think that, if an AI has al the knowledge a person would have, the AI could be just as creative as that person?
You could also argue that the AI would be less creative by providing it with more information. A similar discussion is held for humans. Children are often considered as the most creative humans, as they are not yet bound, or programmed, to the limits of reality. If that would be the case, AI could maybe never be creative, as it needs to be told (i.e., programmed) to do something, based on specific information.
Do you think AI can become more creative with more or less pre-given knowledge?