Artificial Intelligence and the Arts: Toward Computational Creativity. Part 1.

Ramón López de Mántaras has posted his reflections in the article Artificial Intelligence and the Arts: Toward Computational Creativity. Let’s listen the first part of the his speculations:

 New technologies, and in particular artificial intelligence, are drastically changing the nature of creative processes. Computers are playing very significant roles in creative activities such as music, architecture, fine arts, and science. Indeed, the computer is already a canvas, a brush, a musical instrument, and so on. However, we believe that we must aim at more ambitious relations between computers and creativity. Rather than just seeing the computer as a tool to help human creators, we could see it as a creative entity in its own right. This view has triggered a new subfield of Artificial Intelligence called Computational Creativity. This article addresses the question of the possibility of achieving computational creativity through some examples of computer programs capable of replicating aspects of creative artistic behavior. We end with some reflections on the recent trend of democratization of creativity by means of assisting and augmenting human creativity.

Computational creativity is the study of building software that exhibits behavior that would be deemed creative in humans. Such creative software can be used for autonomous creative tasks, such as inventing mathematical theories, writing poems, painting pictures, and composing music. However, computational creativity studies also enable us to understand human creativity and to produce programs for creative people to use, where the software acts as a creative collaborator rather than a mere tool. Historically, it has been difficult for society to come to terms with machines that purport to be intelligent and even more difficult to admit that they might be creative. Even within Computer Science, people are still skeptical about the creative potential of software. A typical statement of detractors of computational creativity is that “simulating artistic techniques means also simulating human thinking and reasoning, especially creative thinking. This is impossible to do using algorithms or information processing systems.” We could not disagree more. As is hopefully evident from the examples in this paper, creativity is not some mystical gift that is beyond scientific study but rather something that can be investigated, simulated, and harnessed for the good of society. And while society might still be catching up, computational creativity as a discipline has come of age. This maturity is evident in the amount of activity related to computational creativity in recent years; in the sophistication of the creative software we are building; in the cultural value of the artifacts being produced by our software; and most importantly, in the consensus we are finding on general issues of computational creativity.

Ramón López de Mántaras

https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/artificial-intelligence-and-the-arts-toward-computational-creativity/