Is Artificial Intelligence Capable of Creativity?
One of the things we hear the most when talking about technology is the infamous A.I.
(Artificial Intelligence) and its consequences to mankind. Definitely, there are reasons to be concerned but, A.I. alone is not the entire cake. Tech giants such as Google and Facebook, not only invest millions upon millions of dollars on A.I. but, also quantum computing. Can you imagine what A.I. can do when coupled with quantum computing? I truly believe the good outcomes can overshadow the bad ones at first and we may see the sun coming up and give us light and a warmfull feeling of peace before we slowly get to the dusk and into the darkness of night but, this is the topic of another article. What is creativity, really? Most people would define creativity as an imaginary idea, completely subjective in its nature and unique in its outcome. Fair enough, reality is that nobody knows for certain, even though Psychology may debate this statement. Take for instance AlphaGo, a software designed by Google to play the game of Go. Go has been around for hundreds of years and it’s considered the most difficult board game in existence, harder than chess. Comparatively, chess has millions of moves possibilities but Go, has more move possibilities than there are atoms in the universe, according to researchers. Considering the technology, we have at our disposal today, it’s impossible to make a program that would consider every single move possibility in this range size. The program made with A.I. and it’s move decisions are based upon statistics. First, Google engineers invite the European champion of Go, Fan Hui, who was defeated 3 times in a row; then, they’ve decided to take upon a more ambitious challenge by inviting Lee Sedol for a match in March of 2016. Lee Sedol is a young south Korean who has defended the world’s champion title of Go eighteen times and has made history among the professionals of the game. For everyone’ surprise, AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol with a score of 4 to 1 in a 5 games tournament before the eyes of the whole world watching the match. I would like to point out the second day of the tournament, when AlphaGo decided to take on the famous move “37”. This was a peculiar move, unprecedented to the game and commentators and professionals of the game were laughing, while Google engineers thought it was a bug in the system. This move was weak and there was no mention of anyone playing it for 300 years. Everyone thought the program had made a mistake and when the google engineers asked AlphaGo what was the probability of a human playing that move, it answered with an astounding revelation of 1 to 10,000. So, it was clear then that the A.I. knew about the low possibility of play by humans on that move, but based upon statistics, that decision would guarantee the win by a small margin of statistics and guess what? AlphaGo won the game and move “37” was responsible for that outcome on that day. Now, let’s say that, that move was made by a human-being. I am certain that the player who made the move would make history as one of the most innovative and creative player who has ever played the game of Go but, instead, it was a machine, not a human-being.
(Artificial Intelligence) and its consequences to mankind. Definitely, there are reasons to be concerned but, A.I. alone is not the entire cake. Tech giants such as Google and Facebook, not only invest millions upon millions of dollars on A.I. but, also quantum computing. Can you imagine what A.I. can do when coupled with quantum computing? I truly believe the good outcomes can overshadow the bad ones at first and we may see the sun coming up and give us light and a warmfull feeling of peace before we slowly get to the dusk and into the darkness of night but, this is the topic of another article. What is creativity, really? Most people would define creativity as an imaginary idea, completely subjective in its nature and unique in its outcome. Fair enough, reality is that nobody knows for certain, even though Psychology may debate this statement. Take for instance AlphaGo, a software designed by Google to play the game of Go. Go has been around for hundreds of years and it’s considered the most difficult board game in existence, harder than chess. Comparatively, chess has millions of moves possibilities but Go, has more move possibilities than there are atoms in the universe, according to researchers. Considering the technology, we have at our disposal today, it’s impossible to make a program that would consider every single move possibility in this range size. The program made with A.I. and it’s move decisions are based upon statistics. First, Google engineers invite the European champion of Go, Fan Hui, who was defeated 3 times in a row; then, they’ve decided to take upon a more ambitious challenge by inviting Lee Sedol for a match in March of 2016. Lee Sedol is a young south Korean who has defended the world’s champion title of Go eighteen times and has made history among the professionals of the game. For everyone’ surprise, AlphaGo defeated Lee Sedol with a score of 4 to 1 in a 5 games tournament before the eyes of the whole world watching the match. I would like to point out the second day of the tournament, when AlphaGo decided to take on the famous move “37”. This was a peculiar move, unprecedented to the game and commentators and professionals of the game were laughing, while Google engineers thought it was a bug in the system. This move was weak and there was no mention of anyone playing it for 300 years. Everyone thought the program had made a mistake and when the google engineers asked AlphaGo what was the probability of a human playing that move, it answered with an astounding revelation of 1 to 10,000. So, it was clear then that the A.I. knew about the low possibility of play by humans on that move, but based upon statistics, that decision would guarantee the win by a small margin of statistics and guess what? AlphaGo won the game and move “37” was responsible for that outcome on that day. Now, let’s say that, that move was made by a human-being. I am certain that the player who made the move would make history as one of the most innovative and creative player who has ever played the game of Go but, instead, it was a machine, not a human-being.
We have a tendency of promptly shout that a machine would not be able to write a symphony or a novel because to do this, it would need to have the skills that only a human being is capable of, i.e. being creative. Why not? If we apply the very same concept used in the match of AlphaGo, why couldn’t an A.I. based upon statistics, analyze the music notes most liked by humans within the past hundreds of years through huge databases of data, containing millions of samples of the best symphonies ever written and then, be able to write a new and beautiful piece of art?
Creativity and consciousness are intimately related and undoubtedly not understood by the most advanced science we have. So, why not consider that a machine could also be able to have consciousness, provided that we don’t really know what is the source of it within our own minds?
A.I. is everywhere nowadays and we may not even realize; we find it in finance in the form of bots analyzing the stock market, we find it driving our cars, “creating” scenarios and situations on computer games, in factory production lines, health care, education, transportation, you name it…
If we face reality in reality’s terms, A.I. has already infiltrated our lives and so far, it hasn’t been so bad. There are three possible outcomes for the future when considering A.I. and its advances:
- A.I. and Humankind will merge,
- A.I. will become a new sort of being among us,
- A.I. will definitely be used for good and bad.
By coupling A.I. with quantum computing we may see nano robots replacing traditional medicine and being inserted in our bodies to “search and destroy” infected and sick cells. We may also witness a larger gap between the rich and poor due to the elimination of trivial jobs and the raise of profits based upon savings to the companies with less employees and longer hours of activities done by machines. What we may need in the future is some sort of process to regulate A.I. and its applications in a way that is beneficial for everyone. Denmark has taken the first step in this direction by nominating the first ever “Ambassador for Technology and Digitization”, to ensure the world will be discussing the accounts of advanced technology and its implications worldwide.
In my opinion, no matter what the future brings, it’s important to learn and keep yourself up to date with, at least, the basics of A.I. and its fundamentals, not only to ensure you will have a significant spot in the market place in the future but also as means of self-protection, just in case.
Creativity and consciousness are intimately related and undoubtedly not understood by the most advanced science we have. So, why not consider that a machine could also be able to have consciousness, provided that we don’t really know what is the source of it within our own minds?
A.I. is everywhere nowadays and we may not even realize; we find it in finance in the form of bots analyzing the stock market, we find it driving our cars, “creating” scenarios and situations on computer games, in factory production lines, health care, education, transportation, you name it…
If we face reality in reality’s terms, A.I. has already infiltrated our lives and so far, it hasn’t been so bad. There are three possible outcomes for the future when considering A.I. and its advances:
- A.I. and Humankind will merge,
- A.I. will become a new sort of being among us,
- A.I. will definitely be used for good and bad.
By coupling A.I. with quantum computing we may see nano robots replacing traditional medicine and being inserted in our bodies to “search and destroy” infected and sick cells. We may also witness a larger gap between the rich and poor due to the elimination of trivial jobs and the raise of profits based upon savings to the companies with less employees and longer hours of activities done by machines. What we may need in the future is some sort of process to regulate A.I. and its applications in a way that is beneficial for everyone. Denmark has taken the first step in this direction by nominating the first ever “Ambassador for Technology and Digitization”, to ensure the world will be discussing the accounts of advanced technology and its implications worldwide.
In my opinion, no matter what the future brings, it’s important to learn and keep yourself up to date with, at least, the basics of A.I. and its fundamentals, not only to ensure you will have a significant spot in the market place in the future but also as means of self-protection, just in case.