AI for Creativity

Niklas Hageback

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000456912
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Semantics
• Index: Computer Science

What is computational creativity? Can AI learn to be creative?

One of the human mind's most valuable features is the capacity to formulate creative thoughts, an ability that through quantum leap innovations has propelled us to the current digital age. However, creative breakthroughs are easier said than done. Appearing less frequently and more sporadically than desired, it seems that we have not yet fully cracked the creative code. But with the rapid advances in artificial intelligence which have come to provide an ever-closer proximity with the cognitive faculties of mankind, can this emerging technology improve our creative capabilities? What will that look like and will it be the missing link in the man–machine enigma? AI for Creativity provides a fascinating look at what is currently emerging in the very cutting-edge area of artificial intelligence and the tools being developed to enable computational creativity that holds the propensity to dramatically change our lives.

1

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

DOI: 10.1201/9781003194941-2

Creativity is a yearning for immortality.

Rollo May, American psychologist (1909–1994), The Courage to Create (1975), p. 27

One of mankind’s most important traits, the ability to innovate, has taken us from the brutal lives in caves to the modern-day digital era, and compared with other primates, creativity appears to be a defining characteristic for the human species. History provides us with the insights that human advances often happen through innovative jumps; quantum leap technological breakthroughs that have elevated our civilisation, from the discovery of fire, applying wheels for transportation, up to the splitting of atoms and beyond, of the former we know little of the creative process, of the latter a lot, at least at the superficial level.

According to legend, it was when the Greek universal genius Archimedes stepped into the bathtub and noticed how the water levels raised, a sudden insight came over him on how to calculate volume, proclaiming Eureka! (I have found it!). Or when a falling apple provided the cue to the English physicist Isaac Newton that allowed him to formulate the laws of gravity. Or the German-American physicist Albert Einstein’s imaginary vision of riding on a beam of light that allegedly played a significant role in his development of the General Theory of Relativity. And whilst some of these historical accounts are claimed to be, in parts at least, of a fictitious nature, the phenomena they highlight are not.

The process of creativity has been closely linked with these Eureka moments: sudden cognitive breakthroughs that, whilst being rare, unfold a previously unthought perspective and provide annotative knowledge surpassing the existing scientific doctrine. They allow for paradigm shifts of the thought narrative. Sometimes, it carries the traits of the aforementioned sudden revelation of sorts; at other times, it is part of a more gradual process where the levels of insight advance step by step. “Thinking outside the box” plays an important role as part of the ability to view the world differently than contemporary scientists, but not just in a random manner. This is also a madman’s worldview that differs from the normative perspective, yet he does not manage to proceed beyond disarray, whilst the truly innovative individual, in contrast, manages to out of the chaotic find order that delivers new insights and augment our understanding of certain phenomena. However, creativity as manifested in innovative achievements and the great arts seems bestowed only a few. It appears that creativity, of such highly abstract calibre at least, must be viewed as an add-on to what can be defined as “normal” human thought patterns. This is highlighted from the recognition that a considerable number of innovations originate from the so-called lonely genius, characterised through a combination of obsessively hard work, the courage to see things through against the reigning, often hostile, convictions, and the ability to view the world through a distinctly different spectrum. What sets the genius apart is that what appears to be a chaotic chasm in the process of creativity to the layman is where he through a structured process, albeit the innovator himself generally is at pain of explaining it, often manages to produce new valuable insights. Domain expertise plays a key role in designated creativity taking into account a well-organised knowledge base, much as the mathematician needs specific tools to solve mathematical problems, something which the layman lacks. Creativity in that sense assumes a certain level of expertise: a mathematical illiterate will not, if ever, be able to understand and explore mathematical concepts and then identify creative solutions. However, domain expertise carries a danger; in it lie tacit assumptions that can become cognitive chains that are being taken for granted, and it thus becomes hard to detach oneself from intellectually as they serve as edificial axioms.

By exploring various innovative exhibits, it provides us with a better understanding of the human mind and why its breakthrough creative manifests appear so relatively few and far between. To start with, a crisp definition of the word “creative” is needed; such as it being an intelligible, whilst unorthodox and by the standards of the day even bizarre, manner of approaching a situation or a problem, and arriving at a previously unthought value adding solution. The mysterious part of this process, which will be explained in detail further on, is when creativity calls upon factors not seemingly accessible to our rational thought process, structured through some sorting mechanism where in hindsight the solution often appears to always have lingered on, it is just that there and then everything comes together, and it becomes the proverbial eye opener. In essence, to understand creativity is to understand the importance of a relatively rare and elevated human condition, with the view that what one can understand, one can also attempt to model, which is the main purpose of this book.

The Historical Perspective

Creativity was early on associated with divine inspiration conferred through the mercy of God, a privilege for only certain entitled individuals who were provided a gift of grace that brought insights to what was considered to be hidden knowledge. Thus, sudden revelations were considered externally induced with humans acting as agents temporarily equipped with divine wisdom. The Greek philosopher Plato (428/427 or 424/423–348/347 BC) argued that creativity was also influencing poets and artists, receiving inspiration from non-human sources, and that their artworks were therefore really God’s creations and not the artists. Creativity of the level that it could render artistic masterpieces was viewed to be distributed through divine favouritism and therefore not something that humans could ignite themselves through extensive training.^1,2

At the moment of inspiration, it was considered that the rational personality subsided, and emotions overcome the artist that were applied to elaborate on his fantasies, and often it was a highly subjective experience that transcended both time and space. This celestial aspect is not only found within Christianity but is a domain that exists in many religions and is not always regarded as positive, where elements of ecstasy and mysticism, sometimes regarded as delusional, have been noted. It was, however, first during the Renaissance that creativity started to be viewed as a human faculty coming from within rather than outside, and it was regarded as one of the specific characteristics of the human genius, the Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) being a case in point, as individuals with multitalented capabilities. This more human-centric outlook of the world, playing down the influence of divine forces came in the 18th century further in the forefront, and the links between imagination and creativity were highlighted, coinciding with the Age of Enlightenment, as well as the connection with levels of cognitive ability. Science was then also able to make a separation in the levels of intelligence, enabled through the first methodological research and the introduction of IQ tests which could distinguish between talent, high intelligence, and genius, where creativity was largely seen as a characteristic of the latter but not the former.^3,4,5

Graham Wallas

One of the first systematic studies of the process of creativity was that of the English psychologist Graham Wallas (1858–1932). In his book from 1926, The Art of Thought, Walls identified four stages of creativity:

1. preparation;
2. incubation;
3. illumination; and
4. verification.⁶

As part of the preparation phase, the problem, or issue, at hand is detailed and defined, and the data and information required are collated and categorised. The background material is analysed, and a knowledge base is being accumulated. The preparation phase also entails the planning of the project.

Differing from the preparation, which is a consciously active and deliberate phase, during the incubation phase, much of the problem-solving activity is conducted in an unconscious manner. This is in a sense the most mysterious part of the whole process, where the conscious consideration of the problem is replaced by unconscious contemplation in which Boolean logic is relaxed, and association-based thought processes, also of the bizarre kind, are engaged. In Wallas’ own words:

Voluntary abstention from conscious thought on any problem may, itself, take two forms: the period of abstention may be spent either in conscious mental work on other problems, or in a relaxation from all conscious mental work. The first kind of Incubation economizes time, and is therefore often the better.⁷

This incubation phase often comes with a great deal of frustration and anxiety, in that usually large numbers of proposed ideas prove futile. The emotional stress that builds up brings further coercion on the unconscious mental processes. Obviously, a lot of research projects end at the incubation phase, as they fail to find a workable solution, but in some instances, a creative idea out of the chaos, or simply void, arises. Some describe the incubation phase as that the characteristics of the problem are hypothesised into an abstract mental representation and then are tweaked, distorted, and rearranged in various manners in the unconscious part of the mind, and at best resurfaced into awareness as a viable solution.

The arrival of the solution, the Eureka moment, represents the third phase of Wallas’ model, the illumination phase. It cannot directly be consciously forced or provoked to conclusion, but a solution is largely dictated by the unconscious’ ability to form variations of the mental model representing the problem. Once a solution has emerged, it needs validation, and to formulate the often highly symbolic vision into proper prose and mathematics, much like Einstein transformed his vision of riding a lightning beam into the general theory of relativity. This is manifested in the verification phase.⁸

The Various Facets of Creativity

Creati...