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Mark Palmer's avatar

My favorite aha moment here, among many, is this one: “What I think is the most insightful and counterintuitive insight from this whole investigation is that I’m also not sure many humans meet this (creativity) requirement either...”

Love that!

My day job is working with Silicon Valley / MIT companies building tools for data science and AI. Yet my position is that we need fewer data scientists and more data humanists: https://techno-sapien.com/blog/humanists

In other words, AI only makes true creativity more valuable and necessary.

Great post.

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Totally agree on this. You may also then enjoy this essay on "What Data Science Forgot"

https://polymathicbeing.substack.com/p/what-data-science-forgot

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Michael P. Marpaung's avatar

No, I don't think AI can be creative. That's like asking if a car or a toaster can be creative. Even using your definition of creativity (which I reserve my judgement on), no AI image generator can be creative because by design they work within an established parameter. And I know what I'm talking about because I do make use AI generated images (just check out my NightCafe account, lol). People have a tendency to romanticize or demonize this thing while I personally found it frustrating to work with (ha!).

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

Good thoughts. You came to the same conclusion I did.

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Dan Lyndon's avatar

Poetry is my go-to example of why AI definitely lacks creativity. This sonnet, for example, is written in a mechanical way with a forced rhythm, and is full of trite phrases and cliches yet does not contain a single real insight. There is also no actual poesy, no way in which lines or words play off of one another to layer meaning. In fact, this is the only way an AI has ever written a poem.

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

I do agree with that. What's interesting is it was an idea spawned by a friend and I just asked it to write one. This is the first pass. Is it good? Not really. Can many humans do any better? Most have never even heard of a sonnet. 🤣

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Rebekah King's avatar

So we’ve created a model that can imitate humans who aren’t very good at something? We already know that not everyone is talented at writing poetry, AI just joins their ranks. That sonnet is absolutely awful and doesn’t even follow the rules of sonnets correctly, I’m astonished you’ve included it as evidence of what AI can achieve.

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

That was also well over two years ago. And I intentionally used the first version it created so I wouldn't be accused of cherry picking.

Also, the sonnet isn't to prove that it's a master. It's a literary foil on which to consider human creativity.

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Rebekah King's avatar

I take your point but I think it needs to produce at least a half-decent poem before it's worth the time. It rhymes 'grasp' with 'grasp' and 'know' with 'know'...

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Michael Woudenberg's avatar

I agree. AI isn't very good.

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