The Creativity Code: (re)Creating Creativity [Part 2]

The problem of pinning down, understanding, defining and reproducing creativity is where Artificial Intelligence meets Cognitive Science. In order to recreate creativity, we first need to see into the human code, that is, the conditions of possibility for human creativity. A distinction between Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science is similar to the distinction we have made previously in “Tinkering Production”: Defining Bioengineering between engineering and biology in order to define the techno-scientific notion of bioengineering. If the cognitive sciences attempt to understand and describe the human code, studies in Artificial Intelligence seek to reproduce it.

Human creativity is broken down into three main subgroups:

1. Exploratory Creativity — Involves the investigation of limits. A creative explorer is someone who, when confronted with a system or a set of rules, like a game, immediately begins to search for the outer boundary. Think atonal music, syncopated rhythmical patterns, experimentations with space and meaning in surrealism, shapes in cubism, or continuity in impressionism. Computers seem to be particularly well suited for this in one way, but also highly deficient in another. “…pushing a pattern or set of rules to the extremes is perfect for a computational mechanism that can perform many more calculations than the human brain. But is it enough? When we think of truly original creative acts, we generally imagine something more utterly unexpected” (Du Sautoy, M., 2019).
2. Combinatory Creativity — Philosophers are particularly familiar with this. One of the more praiseworthy traits of an original thinker is to take two apparently distant concepts and two combine them either by pointing to their commonalities or producing a third hybrid concept as a synthesis of both. The same naturally applies to artists and even (according to Sautoy) mathematicians.
3. Transformational Creativity — This is where the mystery comes in. Transformational creativity refers to the moment of absolute metamorphosis. An individual paradigm-shift that resets the rules. A leap of faith as the peak of artistic creativity. “A truly creative act sometimes requires us to step outside the system and create a new reality. Can a complex algorithm do that?” (Du Sautoy, M., 2019).

Computers make decisions using the data they are fed. In a sense, they cannot move beyond it. Does this imply that machines cannot act randomly? Evidence seems to point to the opposite, in fact, one of several things that machine learning can achieve, is to program an algorithm to behave irrationally.

Sautoy makes a similar point in reverse, concerning the creative process of mathematicians and artists alike. Many creative minds attribute their talents to a divine power which inspires their outstanding output. Sautoy argues, it is not that there is no underlying set of rules that dictate their behavior, but that these rules are unconscious. Hidden from the eyes of those who follow them.

“Yet the fact that an artist may be unable to articulate where their ideas came from does not mean that they followed no rules. Art is a conscious expression of the myriad of logical gates that make up our unconscious thought processes” (Du Sautoy, M., 2019).

Creativity always requires a context of disciplined training. But it also transcends its own conditions of existence. This is what separates genius from mastery. The additional element of leaping forth onto a new level of order, establishing something new that derives from previous knowledge without being derivative.

But as we said before, novelty itself is not enough. Creativity implies originality that is of specific value. This is where the distinction is drawn between psychological creativity and historical creativity. I might discover something on my own, that is, without learned skill or being taught by someone, but in retrospect, in terms of established knowledge, I may have done nothing outstanding. It could still count as an achievement of a personal kind. Historical creativity implies an objective breakthrough in terms of the current state of human mastery within a specific domain. Eventually, psychological creativity could lead to historical creativity.

Whether its exploratory, combinatorial or transformational, one of the most underrated skeleton keys to creativity is failure. This is what fosters the correct attitude to persist through acts of psychological creativity. Failure is the most efficient navigational mechanism for self-improvement, a way to draw up a map of unfamiliar territory and to experiment. The question is, can we teach an algorithm to fail creatively?

REF

Du Sautoy, M. (2019). The Creativity Code: How AI is learning to write, paint and think. HarperCollins UK