AI in Society: Priority of Creativity
The AI era is emerging, promoting productivity and optimization, but there is a catch:
“with great Power comes great Responsibility!”
The Peter Parker principle, by Stan Lee.
In this article, I’m going to discuss the future role of AI in society, and how we can utilise this technology to really live and prosper through creativity. First, however, I want to discuss the current issues we are facing, and how we need to view them. The end result is a dream of an automated, safe and equal world where creativity is in focus.
Implications, and how to deal with them.
AI is possibly one of the greatest achievements of mankind and promises wonders our ancestors couldn't even dream about. Although we are just in the early stages of the revolution, the effects are starting to show. The results have been life-changing for the best — AND the worst. We are currently seeing, on one side: early cancer detection and amazing Netflix recommendations. However, on the other side, we are also seeing: fake news by deep fakes, radicalisation through echo chambers, and government surveillance. Ultimately, putting democracy, stability and human life at risk like the world have never seen before. While the world has always had the ability to act in such a manner, AI can take it to the next level. In theory, artificial intelligence can’t do anything that humans with enough time can’t. They can, however, do it a lot faster than their human counterpart. The truth is, AI is just an extension of our own being, abilities, and beliefs’. AI can also be seen as a tool in which individuals, organisations and governments can amplify their ideologies, and facilitate enforcement.
One example that is brought up a lot in the discussion is racial discrimination in image classification systems. ( You can read more about such an application here: https://scrapbox.io/sfc-interactiondesign-21/%5Bsurvey%5D_Picture_tagging_on_facebook )
However, the actual technology is not to blame. An unfair or wrongly biased AI system only exists due to the presumptions of the engineer who feed the model. In short, A racist model is a product of the assembler’s uneducated ideas about the world. The issue, therefore, is not the technology itself but the human facilitator.
In addition to the necessary education about minority representation, the discussion must continue. The international community needs to come to a consensus on laws and regulations, which prevents evil entities from using AI for bad purposes. Issues such as privacy and falsification in the context of AI has to be further discussed in the international forum. Furthermore, there has to be a holistic approach, integrating solutions of humanities and sciences to de-weaponize the human behind the computer.
AI as a catalyst for progression and innovation.
Artificial Intelligence is not the silver bullet in human progress, but it is unquestionably the optimization tool we need. Essentially, it allows all repetitive tasks in daily life to be automatised and reduces human errors. Furthermore, with a fully integrated AI society, we can start focusing on things that matter. Aspects ranging from planetary, social and also individual topics. I believe the AI society will value and prioritize creativity and innovation more than ever before! Luckily, everyone in the AI society will have the mental capacity and facilities to be creative! In fact, AI technology has the potential to make everyone’s untapped creativity potential accessible.
Creativity through AI
Let’s look at AI through the lens of “three types of creativity” (Boden 1992), which is described through the following 3 dimensions:
- The combinational aspect of creativity; new combinations of familiar ideas.
- The exploratory aspect of creativity; generation of new ideas by exploration of a space of concepts.
- The transformational aspect; involves a transformation of search space so new kinds of ideas can be generated.
By cross-examining the abilities of AI with the dimensions, we can definitely say that AI can be creative and promote creativity.
For example, regarding the first dimension of Boden's descriptions, it is especially evident. AI finds patterns in the dataset(familiar ideas) and produces an output based on the provided data. Additionally, it is also creative in Boden’s second dimension as it has the incredible ability to search and implement throughout all parameters. (An example of this, is evolving neural networks, also called neuro-evolution. This is a sub-group within deep learning (unsupervised) where the algorithm is based on the premise of natural selection.) Regarding the last dimension in Boden's explanation, it is harder to justify the ability to be creative. In this case, AI promotes creativity as it enhances the human creator's talents and allows new mediums/or dimensions to express the talents.
I created my own NFT concept by using a software called runawayML. Where I trained an AI Model to produce emotional pictures. This is an example of a new medium facilitated by AI. You can read more about it here: NFT-a field in transit.
“The Library of Babel”, a book written by Jourge Luis Borges(1941), explains elegantly, through his hexagon library, the computational concept of creativity and the “law of truly large numbers”[1]. He drastically changed my entire perception of creativity and AI. ( You can read more here: probability-or-creativity;) As a result, I was left with the key message that “ we can be creative as long as we learn how to navigate the endless data”.
A great example of AI technology that can be used in the creative process is the web application, my team and I, created during the spring semester of Interaction Design 2021: https://perfect-pitch-id.glitch.me/. The application is a perfect pitch detector or a note classifier per se.
We created the application by utilizing the audio model training, https://teachablemachine.withgoogle.com/. The dataset was collected by recording several octaves of each note played on the keyboard and by whistling. The end product is a pretty accurate tool, which can be used to fine-tune your singing or train your perfect pitch. Furthermore, with future developments, this sort of tool can be used to tune your string instrument. This means that AI technology can support human creativity and promote music production and compositions, regardless of the rare ability to recognise and re-create a specific musical note.
The examples above are just two of many ways, AI can help everyone to feel creative and help them express this creativity.
In conclusion,
the AI environment is currently under a lot of turbulence. With time and discussion, however, AI can become a vital and fruitful addition to our societies. I look forward to living in an AI Society where creativity is valued above all else!
References:
[1] With a large enough sample, any outrageous thing is likely to happen (Diaconis and Mosteller 1989). Littlewood (1953) considered an event which occurs one in a million times to be ``surprising.’’ Taking this definition, close to 100,000 surprising events are ``expected’’ each year in the United States alone and, in the world at large, ``we can be absolutely sure that we will see incredibly remarkable events’’ (Diaconis and Mosteller 1989) https://archive.lib.msu.edu/crcmath/math/math/l/l126.htm
Arthur I. Miller, “3 Margaret Boden’s Three Types of Creativity,” in The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity , MIT Press, 2019, pp.25–28
