Artificial Intelligence & Creativity
Creativity is a fundamental feature of human intelligence and a challenge for Artificial Intelligence. AI techniques can be used to create new ideas by producing novel combinations of familiar ideas, by exploring the potential of conceptual spaces and by making transformations that enable the generation of previously impossible ideas. AI will have less difficulty in modelling the generation of new ideas than in automating their evaluation.
Creative programs could be very useful in the laboratory or the market-place. AI models intended (or considered) as part of cognitive science can help psychologists to understand how it is possible for the human mind to be creative. In my opinion, creativity is neither a special “faculty” nor a psychological property confined to a tiny elite. Rather, it is a feature of human intelligence in general. It is grounded in everyday capacities such as the association of ideas, reminding, perception, analogical thinking, searching a structured problem-space and reflective self-criticism. It involves not only a cognitive dimension (the generation of new ideas) but also motivation and emotion, and is closely linked to cultural context and personality factors. Current AI models of creativity focus primarily on the cognitive dimension.
Creative ideas have already been generated by AI programs, ideas which include novelty in 2 senses: (1) with respect to the mind of the individual or the AI system concerned and (2) so far as we know, to the whole of previous history. The ultimate vindication of AI creativity would be a program that generated novel ideas which initially perplexed or even repelled us, but which was able to persuade us that they were indeed valuable. We are a very long way from that.
