Computers can now make up written art such as novels and poetry. For example, a computer can use a “generative” algorithm to make up a short story. I in fact used GPT-3 to help me create this very text, which contains around half of the words contributed by the algorithm and half by me.

The “brains” of creative writing tools simply apply a set of rules to make up a story. Similarly, your computer can invent music. Somehow, the computer isn’t really doing anything different from what a human artist does: they’re both “creating” from an apparently blank state that is actually shaped by their a priori knowledge -call them memories or datasets of existing…