Hacker News Reader

Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

I always wondered if we massively overestimate human creativity. Maybe it is ingrained in our culture and our very being. I’ve never heard counter arguments that humans are not that creative.

Creativity demonstrated by Alpha zero chess engine blows Magnus Carlsen’s mind (from his recent interview with Lex Fridman), I wonder if at some point in the future, we’ll finally throw in the towel and get out of the denial phase.

View on HN

"AlphaZero would sacrifice a knight or sometimes two pawns, three pawns, you can see that it's looking for some sort of positional domination, but it's hard to understand. It was really fascinating to see. "

No, apparently we just massively underestimate how important studying the humanities is. This is illustration, not art. I'm flabbergasted how many people are so quick to confuse or conflate the two.

For the record, my significant other is an artist and my entire life has been surrounded by creative people. I’m questioning human creativity, say, 50 years from now, and how much machine creativity we currently underestimate. Sure these artworks lack imagination and fidelity today. Appreciating art and humanities has nothing to do with projecting AI capabilities in the future, I’m flabbergasted how many people are so quick to confuse or conflate the two. Maybe we should require people to study logic/reasoning and how important it is.

50 years from now, I have little doubt that will be the case, barring serious civilizational decline. But that isn't the sentiment on this page.

Ditto for me regarding being surrounded by creative people. This isn't going to lose them any business any time soon, not even the younger ones five years from now.

Would you mind offering definitions?

Alpha zero was trained by playing against itself, with a clear win condition. You'd need to quantify what it means for one image to be "more creative" than another to get a similar result.

Without trained models from human creativity, what can AI do ? These AI emerged because of human creativity. Picasso created it’s new art form from its own creativity. He created something no one ever though of before. Now AI are fueled with Picasso’s drawing and can produce art that looks like his maybe. But what about creating something entirely new that has never been fueled into the engine. Could the AI invent something I’m about to dream tomorrow and this be the exact same copy ?

I think it's undeniable that AI can create novel things, the question is if AI can create novel things that are also interesting. A randomized 600x600 png is novel, but it isn't at all interesting, much of what goes into making a piece of art interesting is not a quantifiable or well-defined goal. That's not to say that AI is better than humans, just the opposite, art is a deeply human object, and I do not know if we would appreciate art made and developed by AI in the same way we do absorbing and creating art in response to each other.

I see your point. We agree that on a 600x600png there is a finite number of possibilities given a set number of colors. It could be possible to « brute force » all the images possible which would be the equivalent of trying all the combinations of letters to write a book. So creating things is not really a problem. Creating relevant things from a purpose is.

The fact is, we know no other intelligence except ours. We are the only known being that appreciate art or books, from our subjective conscience. Can AI create its own art, understood and appreciated by itself ? Has intelligence a meaning without « humans » ? It’s part of the same thing. So the AI is modeled after ours. So it’s not its own thing and cannot understand what it creates and if what is created is relevant. AI is just an amazingly powerful tool.

I believe the creativity is primarily the process, something we enjoy doing, not the method to _produce_ or _generate_ something. Sort of like dogs like playing fetch. Some creative processes do not create permanent artifacts at all, like all performing arts.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com