A Critique of Creative Computation

Abstract

Computational Creativity (CC) is a sub-discipline of computer science and AI dedicated to the study of creativity in artificial systems. It claims that creative computational systems can be thought of as more than mere tools, should be considered co-creative agents, and in the strongest case can be considered creative “in their own right” (Veale \emph{et al.} 2019). This paper offers a critique of CC in four interrelated parts. Firstly, CC’s notion of creativity is vague and in need of greater explication. The paper does not offer such an explication of creativity for CC, but rather highlights the problems that arise from a lack of it. The most significant of these is that understandings of ‘creativity’ as it pertains to CC range from normative conceptions which seem to undermine CC’s core commitment to autonomously creative systems, to metaphysical claims which implicitly or explicitly consider creativity to be an inherent part of nature. Secondly, the paper argues that creativity only seems coherent as a value judgment that an agent can make either of itself, or of a member of its own species. The paper offers a brief account of the notion of species-being as developed by both Hegel and Marx to illustrate how creativity as a normative conception reflects concerns that are intimately connected to species-being objectives. Thirdly, the paper considers the possibility of AGI as a critique of this dependency upon species-being as the grounding for normativity, but argues that we may only arrive at a post species-being grounding via an adequate understanding of species-being. Finally, the paper considers some contemporary social and political concerns that arise from CC’s treatment of creativity as a free-standing concept, and argues that we would do better to consider computational systems as tools, rather than as creative in their own right.