Overview

This project addresses the following research question: “What are the present and future capabilities of Creative Artificial Intelligence, and to what degree can this intelligence be harnessed complementarily to aid human creativity and tasks?” We address this question through a novel methodological approach, combining social science methods and machine learning techniques.

Creativity is the ability to generate ideas or artefacts that are both novel and valuable; machine creative outputs have historically been neither. However, with recent developments in machine learning, we have witnessed examples of what might be called Creative Algorithmic Intelligence (CAI) emerge in the domain of cultural production – from AI-generated news articles in traditional media outlets to literary and musical works. Given how recent these developments are, the following have not yet been well-established: the scope of CAI, the significance of these developments to understanding human creativity, and the ways in which CAI may assist humans in creative endeavours.

Synergistic human/CAI collaboration is of particular relevance. First, as more tasks become automated, we need to find ways to enhance and develop activities in which human aptitudes are superior to that of machines, and activities from which humans might derive the most meaning. This includes creative tasks, with evidence suggesting direct links between creative and cultural engagement and human well-being.

The above leads us to hypothesise that:

1. In enabling new forms of augmented creativity, CAI may promote democratised engagement and thus contribute to human flourishing
2. CAI may help unlock human creative potential, enabling forms of creativity unachievable by humans alone.