{"id":18911,"date":"2015-10-30T07:09:39","date_gmt":"2015-10-30T14:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/?p=18911"},"modified":"2015-10-30T07:09:39","modified_gmt":"2015-10-30T14:09:39","slug":"can-computers-be-as-creative-as-a-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/can-computers-be-as-creative-as-a-human","title":{"rendered":"Can Computers Be As Creative As A Human?"},"content":{"rendered":"

To many people, the introduction of the first Macintosh computer and its graphical user interface in 1984 is viewed as the dawn of creative computing. But if you ask Dr. Nick Montfort<\/a>, a poet, computer scientist, and assistant professor of Digital Media at MIT, he\u2019ll offer a different direction and definition for creative computing and its origins.<\/p>\n

Defining Creative<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cCreative Computing<\/em><\/a> was the name of a computer magazine that ran from 1974 through 1985. Even before micro-computing there was already this magazine extolling the capabilities of the computer to teach, to help people learn, help people explore and help them do different types of creative work, in literature, the arts, music and so on,\u201d Montfort said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a time when people had a lot of hope that computing would enable people personally as artists and creators to do work. It was actually a different time than we\u2019re in now. There are a few people working in those areas, but it\u2019s not as widespread as hoped in the late 70\u2019s or early 80s.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, Montfort notes that many people use the term \u201cartificial intelligence\u201d interchangeably with creative computing. While there are some parallels, Montfort said what is classically called AI isn\u2019t the same as computational creativity. The difference, he says, is in the results.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the ways in which AI is understood is the ability to achieve a particular known objective,\u201d Montfort said. \u201cIn computational creativity, you\u2019re trying to develop a system that will surprise you. If it does something you already knew about then, by definition, it\u2019s not creative.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given that, Montfort quickly pointed out that creative computing can still come from known objectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of good creative computer work comes from doing things we already know computers can do well,\u201d he said. \u201cAs a simple example, the difference between a computer as a producer of poetic language and person as a producer of poetic language is, the computer can just do it forever. The computer can just keep reproducing and, (with) that capability to bring it together with images to produce a visual display, now you\u2019re able to do something new. There\u2019s no technical accomplishment, but it\u2019s beautiful nonetheless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Models of Creativity<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a poet himself, another area of creative computing that Montfort keeps an eye on is the study of models of creativity used to imitate human creativity. While the goal may be to replicate human creativity, Montfort has a greater appreciation for the end results that don\u2019t necessarily appear human-like.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you\u2019re using a model of human creativity the way it\u2019s done in computational creativity, you don\u2019t have to try to make something human-like, (even though) some people will try to make human-like poetry,\u201d Montfort said. \u201cI\u2019d much rather have a system that is doing something radically different than human artistic practice and making these bizarre combinations than just seeing the results of imitative work.\u201d<\/p>\n

To further illustrate his point, Montfort cited a recent computer generated novel contest that yielded some extraordinary, and unusual, results. Those novels were nothing close to what a human might have written, he said, but depending on the eye of the beholder, it at least bodes well for the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the future of creative computing is individual engagement with creative types of programs,\u201d Montfort said. \u201cThat\u2019s not just using drawing programs or other facilities to do work or using prepackaged apps that might assist creatively in the process of composition or creation, but it\u2019s actually going and having people work to code themselves, which they can do with existing programs, modifying them, learning about code and developing their abilities in very informal ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

That future of creative computing lies not in industrial creativity or video games, but rather a sharing of information and revisioning of ideas in the multiple hands and minds of connected programmers, Montfort believes.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne doesn\u2019t have to get a computer science degree or even take a formal class. I think the perspective of free software and open source is very important to the future of creative programming,\u201d Montfort said. \u201c\u2026If people take an academic project and provide their work as free software, that\u2019s great for all sorts of reasons. It allows people to replicate your results, it allows people to build on your research, but also, people might take the work that you\u2019ve done and inflect it in different types of artistic and creative ways.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To many people, the introduction of the first Macintosh computer and its graphical user interface in 1984 is viewed as the dawn of creative computing. But if you ask Dr. Nick Montfort, a poet, computer scientist, and assistant professor of Digital Media at MIT, he\u2019ll offer a different direction and definition for creative computing and [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1509,42,16],"tags":[2261,2262,2260,2259,2263,2258],"class_list":["post-18911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-entertainment","category-media-arts","category-open-source","tag-computer-art","tag-computer-poetry","tag-creative-computers","tag-creative-computing","tag-digital-media","tag-nick-montfort"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}