In my Creativity class this past semester, I asked the class the following question:
“When discussing how computer science and interest in artificial intelligence contributed to the cognitive approach of creativity, we talked about the Turning test. What is the Turning test and how is the concept of the Turing test relevant to the study of creativity? (Hint: Eliza, GPS, and AARON)”
The students had a problem with this question. Even after multiple explanations and further hints, they still had a problem. Finally, I relented and gave them the answer to the question (and did not include this question on the final exam).
What follows is my answer with some modifications to serve the purpose of this post and make it more accessible to a broader audience.
“When Computer Science first became a discipline, computer scientists were examining problem solving and, in the process, started considering what it means to be intelligent.
Why?
One of the reasons was because computer computation involves a physical symbol system just as human computation/thinking involves a physical symbol system. If the output of a human symbol system can be said to be “intelligent” then it logically followed that the output of a computer symbol system also has the potential to be intelligent.
This logical inference was further supported when the computer scientists successfully created computer programs that could play chess and chess is something that intelligent people play. In fact, the subdiscipline of artificial intelligence is all about making computers or machines intelligent or at least behave intelligently.
But what is “intelligence”?
Alan Turing suggested what is now known as the Turing Test as an operational definition of intelligence. In its essence, the proposal is that if a human interacts with a computer and thinks they are interacting with a human, then the computer could be said to be behaving intelligently. The means by which the computer does so is irrelevant by this definition. After all, we aren’t entirely sure how HUMANS manage to behave intelligently.
I believe that the question of whether or not computers can behave intelligently is, at heart, the same question as whether or not computers can behave creatively.
Let us say that a computer creates something novel such as an original painting (which AARON can do) or proves a mathematical theorem (which GPS could do). A human (who doesn’t know that a computer created this new thing) views the product and is asked if the product is creative. If they say that it is creative, even if they say it is only a little creative, can’t the computer be said to have passed the creativity version of the Turing test? Does it matter HOW the computer creates something new? After all, we don’t know how we do it.”
As I said earlier, the students had problems with this question even though we had discussed this issue in depth at several points during the semester.
I believe that one of the reasons they had problems with this question and my answer to the question is that ALL the students in the class vigorously denied the potential for creativity in the computer program.
When it was pointed out to them that they thought the output of the program (in their case, a painting created by AARON) was creative when they thought it was a human that created the painting, their response was that the computer wasn’t creative. Rather, it was the person who had written the program that resulted in the painting who was creative.
I pointed out that the programmer in question did not actually tell the computer what to create. He only supplied the computer with background knowledge about form, design, composition, etc. and the computer used that information to create a novel product. I then argued that this is exactly how humans develop novel products.
In response, the students fell back on the argument that when humans create, they do so intentionally and consciously. The computer did not know what it was doing, THEREFORE, it was not being creative.
I think it is a beautiful thing that the students in the classroom fall back on the equivalent of Searle’s Chinese Room argument to refute the hypothesis that computers can be creative. That they do this with no prior knowledge of the Chinese Room argument or a full understanding of the premises underlying the Turing Test is also pretty special. According to Searle’s Chinese Room argument, it suggests they have not provided an intelligent response to the claim that computers can create.