I have been reading “Creativity, Cognition, and Knowledge.” It is a cognitive science account of the relationship between (of course) creativity, cognition, and knowledge. Edited by Dartnall, the book contains a series of essays exploring the way knowledge and the representation of that knowledge can give rise to creative output.
In Dartnall’s introduction, he made a comment concerning “Emmy,” a program written by David Cope. Emmy takes as input several musical compositions from a single composer and, using a series of simple rules and transformations, creates novel musical pieces in the style of that composer. Reports from those who have heard these novel creations say the pieces created by Emmy are difficult to distinguish from those of the composer on which the pieces were based. In addition, they have been described as “soulful” and “delicately finessed and preternaturally beautiful.”
Dartnall questions whether Emmy, or any other computer program for that matter, can be considered to be “creative”.
When I hear things like this I always wonder why this is an issue.
If a person can not distinguish the creative output of a computer program from the creative output of a person, and if the output would be deemed “creative” if created by a person, then why is the same output created by a computer deemed “not creative”?
Why does the source of the idea matter?
I shouldn’t actually phrase this question as if it was an novel question because it isn’t. The first time we started asking ourselves questions of this sort was when we started exploring whether it was possible for a computer to be “intelligent”.
Turing proposed what is now called the “Turing Test” of intelligence. In short, Turing’s test of intelligence states that if a human in conversation with a computer actually thought they were conversing with another human, the computer could be said to pass the Turing test for intelligence. “If it acts intelligently, then it is intelligent.”
I think the same could be argued for creativity. If a computer creates music (or a poem or a painting…) that is judged to be creative by a person unaware of the source of the creation, then it IS creative.
The most common counter to the argument that I just made for the potential for creativity in computers is that a computer is not creative INTENTIONALLY. This idea of intentionality is also used as an counterargument to the proposal that computers passing a Turing Test exhibit intelligence.
This argument points out that humans are intentionally creative. They create new pieces with full knowledge of what it is they are trying to do. In contrast, a computer program is taking input and, using the rules supplied by it’s creator, is producing novel output. It knows not what it does…therefore, it is not creative.
This suggests that creative output without the intention of being creative is NOT creative.
At best, the programmer is the one being creative because the programmer wrote the program that created the novel products.
I think that the fact that David Cope was able to write a program that was successful at generating creative output could be used as an argument in FAVOR of the creativity of the output.
Specifically, in creating EMMY, David cope applied his understanding of the cognitive processes involved in creating music within a particular style.
He specified the input that was needed into the system, the representation of the input, the analysis of that input and subsequent use of the analysis and input representation to create new compositions.
The fact that EMMY successfully creates novel compositions in the style of the input it receives suggests that Cope understands the processes underlying composition to the extent that he is able to model the creative process.
Researchers understand the processes involved in bipedal walking enough to create bipedal robots that can walk. Do we deny that these robots are walking just because someone programmed them to walk? Do we deny that these robots are walking because they didn’t INTEND to walk? No. We would agree that the robot is actually walking. Why can’t the same be said for a computer that has been programmed to exhibit creativity?
Perhaps the reason people are willing to say robots are capable of being programmed to walk but are unwilling to say that robots are capable of being programmed to create is because our ability to create is considered to be one of the characteristics that distinguishes man from beast.But that is the topic of a different discussion.
More information on creative music programs:
A Wired article exploring the research of Gerhard Widmer who is expanding on the work of David Cope