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If a machine can invent interesting mathematical conjectures and concepts, is it
creative? See Colton et al. ( 2000 ).
If a troupe of monkeys acting randomly eventually type out the entire collection
of the British Library (Borel 1913 , Eddington 1927 ) or a specific text such as
Hamlet, even before Shakespeare is born, or in a universe where he is never born,
do the monkeys deserve the title of author? Are they the creators of this work?
See Gracia ( 1996 ). 1
Is art produced by a computer really art?
If these pictures were done by use of a computer, how could they possibly be art?
. . . Where was the inspiration, the intuition, the creative act?
This comment, paraphrased from Nake ( 2002 ), echoes Ada Lovelace's famous
objection to the possibility of a machine originating anything. In this latter case,
whilst we may feel confident and with little contention, that a human may make
a creative program, doubt is expressed about whether or not the program itself
could do anything creative.
As highlighted by this last quote in particular, “discomfort” with assessment of
these questions lies in our conceptual union of creativity, mind and intention. This
union is common in psychological studies of creativity. For instance, Csikszentmi-
halyi ( 1999 ) indicates that human creativity requires five distinct mental phases:
preparation (studying a field and identifying problems), incubation (not thinking
about the problems), insight (eureka!), evaluation (deciding if an idea is worth pur-
suing) and finally, elaboration (exploring the range of outcomes that an idea sug-
gests). Although this sequence may be common for humans, it is implausible that
even one of these phases is a pre-condition for creativity in general (Dorin and Korb
2009 ). In fact, as we explain shortly, creativity is best defined without reference to
the process of its production, but only with reference to the probability that a system
can generate a series of outcomes given its operational context. Consequently, as we
shall argue, many non-human processes, for instance those of physical, chemical or
general biological origin, can be legitimately and meaningfully considered creative.
Other well cited definitions of creativity allow for this desirable freedom from
specifically human mental phases. Some authors recognised this to be essential if
we are to entertain the possibility of creative computers and AI. Yet many of these
authors require nevertheless that for an artefact to be deemed creative it must also be
deemed “useful” or “appropriate” for some application by, one assumes, a human
observer or domain gatekeeper (Csikszentmihalyi 1999 ). Perhaps the most cited
definition of this type is that of Boden ( 2004 ):
Creativity is the ability to come up with ideas or artefacts that are (a) new, (b) surprising
and (c) valuable.
1 In dealing with the philosophy of semantics, Hilary Putnam argued that semantics are not entirely
internal (in the head) but had external content via a causal theory of reference (“semantic exter-
nalism”), leading to a negative response to such questions (Putnam 1979 ). This has been applied,
for example by Stevan Harnard, to argue that random collections of inscriptions which happen to
be identical to other inscriptions that have meaning in the normal (causal) way do not share that
meaning; they have no meaning (Harnad 1990 ).
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