Artificial Intelligence Will Steal Your Creative Job
And If It Doesn’t We’ll Have To Rethink Science
The creator of art doesn’t see creativity. The receiver does. The creator simply states what is obvious to them. What their brain connects and makes real. A creative person doesn’t say look at my creativity. They simply put down through some form of expression a set of neurological connections that are obvious to them. They are not, however — obvious to the world.
Creativity exists at the moment the viewers of a neurological connection say “I never thought about that.” If creativity is this unique connection of neurons — computers will not only be able to achieve it, they will surpass human potential. But — maybe creativity is something more?
More Data = More Creativity
Computers are at the early stages of learning. But from the beginning — what a computer has done 1000000000x better than a human is computing large sums of data. If creativity exists at the moment a brain connects two or more disparate ideas that are usually not connected — clearly the brain with the most ideas has the greatest potential for creativity. More information leads to more possible unique connections.
How Does A Computer Make Connections?
The neural network is our current system for allowing computers to learn and create synaptic connections. It is based off of our best interpretation of how the human brain works. Here’s a simple breakdown: The human brain is made up of neurons and synapses. The neurons are ideas. The synapses are the connections between each idea. The more ideas you get — the more synapses you can create. But, the human brain has a finite (though HUGE) amount of connections it can make. A computer does not. A computer with the appropriate amount of data (ideas) being pushed into its neural network and the appropriate amount of computer power, could make nearly infinite connections and store nearly infinite ideas.
For a more thorough analysis of neural networks, you can read my piece here .
Human Senses are Complex
The human senses are our methods of learning and making connections within the world. Computers cannot match our sense s— yet. The ideas or neurons stored in our brain are based off of engagements we have with the world using taste, touch, smell, sight, and hearing. The senses take data from the world and store it as neurons and our brain connects these neurons to others based on previously stored data. A bush is connected to a tree, because they look similar and smell similar too. They might even taste similar — though I’m not sure all of us have tried to eat a bush.
In order for a computer to begin to learn in the same way a human does and thus have the potential to make the same creative connections — these senses will need to be matched. Today computers can see and hear. They analyze text, pixels, and audio waveforms. But smell, taste, and touch are not completely possible. Because of this connecting the warmth of an embrace to the concept of love is something that a human has to do first. We can teach a computer that connection, but without a computer having the totality of human senses — inventing that synapse is impossible.
What If Creativity Is More Than Just Neurons and Senses?
Today, we see creativity as the unique creation of geniuses. We see geniuses as special individuals who are born with gifts. To put it in more neurological terms — geniuses are people who can make connections in their brain that others cannot. However, this is a new concept. In ancient times, we saw creativity as a sort of spirit. A being that would enter your body and possess it in order to create something magical.
Today, we have trouble accepting a spiritual answer to any problem, but the most interesting part of computer creativity to me is that it has the potential to prove the spiritual true. While I think it’s far more likely that we’ll have robotic comedians in the future — if we don’t, that says something incredible. It says that human creativity is something beyond math. Something spiritual. Something beyond this world. For me — this is far and away the most exciting possibility about the future of artificial intelligence. If we map a human brain perfectly, if a computer has access to all of the same senses that humanity does, and it simply doesn’t perform like a human — we’ll have to rethink a lot of science. And THAT is cool.
As always you can reach me at ryan@zeroslant.com
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Ryan Sheffer is the CEO of the artificial intelligence company Zero Slant. Zero Slant is automated video news built from social media. You can learn more at zeroslant.com.
