Richard Dawkins’s successor as Oxford’s Professor of the Public Understanding of Science, Marcus du Sautoy, wrote a book recently, The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI, in which he claimed that AI can in principle demonstrate creativity. Software engineer Brendan Dixon takes issue with that. Three of du Sautoys’ four traits are not essential for creativity. And the fourth?
Du Sautoy’s fourth trait—“originality of a truly independent nature”—is a useful part of the definition of creativity. It is, however, the one trait that he admits is missing from AI’s “creative” attempts:
“But something fundamental is still missing: intentionality. What is driving the AI to blurt out a creative product? A human. Marcus du Santoy, “True AI creativity is coming and will reveal the minds of machines” at New Scientist”
He recognizes that present AI displays the creativity of its creators and not that of a machine-based intelligence. Brendan Dixon, “Why AI fails to actually create things” at Mind Matters News
One wonders why du Sautoy is making life hard for himself by insisting on claiming that AI can do things it cannot do, things that would violate the No Free Lunch principle. Dawkins confined himself to bashing religion, which is essentially an activity irrelevant to math, science, or computer programming. Less trouble to get into that way.
See also: When AlphaGo made a winning move, it exhibited no more creative insight than when it played pedestrian moves. Our surprise at AlphaGo’s move says more about our inability to predict what a program will do than about any creative effort of the program. We’ve known for decades that we cannot predict the results of any moderately complex computer program.