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The general public
When describing what they do, to a layman, most researchers into Computational
Creativity will probably have experienced reactions such as: “A computer that is cre-
ative might be dangerous—it might kill us”; “Creativity is a celebration of humanity,
and the very idea of Computational Creativity cheapens that”; “I read a poem or listen
to music to communicate with another human being. I don't want to communicate
with a computer, I want a live human connection”, and so on. It is important to deter-
mine where these ideas come from, whether they are grounded in anything, whether
we should try to counter them, and if so, how? While such emotional responses are
not necessarily negative, it might be the case that they hinder reasoned debate. Pub-
lic perception of Computational Creativity derives from multiple sources, including
journalistic coverage (or lack of it), science fiction narratives, opportunities to con-
sume computationally created artefacts and so on. We look further at observer issues
in the general public in Sect. 1.4 .
Fellow creatives
Creative people sometimes voice the worry that “Computers are going to put us out of
a job”. This group is similar to the general public in terms of influences and attitudes.
It seems that artists might be being encouraged to worry about software replacing
them, because such sensationalist stories sell newspapers. We study a particular
community of creative people, namely videogame designers in Sect. 1.6 .
1.3.3 Relationships Between the Different Stakeholder Groups
There have been several interactions between the Computational Creativity commu-
nity andmembers of the public and fellow creatives. For instance, Colton and Ventura
hosted a festival of Computational Creativity in 2013, You Can't Know my Mind [ 19 ],
and other events have followed on from this. Historical relationships between scien-
tists and the public can also elucidate current interactions. In other fields, there have
been some explicit campaigns to manufacture doubt, by parties who are threatened
by specific scientific advances. For instance, the tobacco industry tried to discredit
and discourage the notion that smoking is bad for our health; likewise the fossil fuel
industry did the same in the case of global warming. Here we see that a few powerful
actors can sometimes bring an entire body of established scientific knowledge into
question.
Ravetz argues that scientific ignorance may in some ways be as prone to social
construction as scientific knowledge [ 20 , 21 ], cited in [ 22 , p.37]. Stocking and Hol-
stein [ 22 ] explore different perceptions that journalists have of their roles, concluding
tentatively that journalists construct scientific ignorance consistent with their own
interests. Even without such dark agendas, there are other examples from the his-
tory of science in which public perceptions conflict with scientific thinking and
have been managed, or controlled, in order to bring them into line with current
scientific results. Famous examples in which scientific advances have challenged
our image of ourselves and our universe include Copernicus's heliocentric model,
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