Convergence ...

Convergence

This small image, generated by yours truly on, sadly, no longer existing 3D fractal software, is not AI enhanced nor should it be as there's a time and place appropriate for the melding of AI to art, something I've done for over 50 years in various genres from music composition and writing to the visual including painting, graphics, photography and video with some degree of competency. With this in mind, the long Wired Kevin Kelly piece titled Picture Limitless Creativity at Your Fingertips gives one pause as there is inevitable cost in doing anything thanks to the two laws of thermodynamics.

The word assume yet again.

Scholars of creativity refer to something called Uppercase Creativity. Uppercase Creativity is the stunning, field-changing, world-altering rearrangement that a major breakthrough brings. Think special relativity, the discovery of DNA, or Picasso’s Guernica. Uppercase Creativity goes beyond the merely new. It is special, and it is rare. It touches us humans in a profound way, far beyond what an alien AI can fathom.

To connect with a human deeply will always require a Creative human in the loop. This high creativity, however, should not be confused with the creativity that most human artists, designers, and inventors produce day to day. Mundane, ordinary, lowercase creativity is what we get with a great new logo design or a cool book cover, a nifty digital wearable or the latest must-have fashion, or the set design for our favorite sci-fi serial. Most human art, past and present, is lowercase. And lowercase creativity is exactly what the AI generators deliver.

But this is huge. For the first time in history, humans can conjure up everyday acts of creativity on demand, in real time, at scale, for cheap. Synthetic creativity is a commodity now. Ancient philosophers will turn in their graves, but it turns out that to make creativity—to generate something new—all you need is the right code. We can insert it into tiny devices that are presently inert, or we can apply creativity to large statistical models, or embed creativity in drug discovery routines. What else can we use synthetic creativity for? We may feel a little bit like medieval peasants who are being asked, “What would you do if you had the power of 250 horses at your fingertips?” We dunno. It’s an extraordinary gift. What we do know is we now have easy engines of creativity, which we can aim into stale corners that have never seen novelty, innovation, or the wow of creative change. Against the background of everything that breaks down, this superpower can help us extend the wow indefinitely. Used properly, we can make a small dent in the universe.

Kelly is right about the emergent power of AI but Scholars of creativity??? 

What the hell is that? 

Creativity 101:

1. The Act of Creation - Arthur Koestler: The creative act is the joining together of two or more seemingly dissimilar ideas that generate a heretofore unexpected result. i.e. Chemistry - H20 consists of 2 Hydrogen + 1 Oxygen atoms, both explosive yet, when combined, becomes water. 
2. The joke: Henny Youngman - Take my wife, Please. :)
3. Creativity starts with the asking of a question: Why is this the way it is?
4. Question everything - Einstein
5. The ability to see relationships is key because everything is connected as reality is a Quantum space and entanglement stitches it together.
6. Play is indispensable. What if ... is the real deal here. A sense of wonderment is essential.
7. Creativity takes courage as new ideas disrupt the "natural" order of things.
8. Creativity is problem-solving. It matters not the discipline used save that said discipline shapes how the creative act is produced.
9. The act itself is ineffable and cannot be explained. Like quantum, creativity just happens. It cannot be forced, only acted upon when the idea shows up. The finished act is anything but as it can be explained after the fact without issue.
10. Practice makes better. Beginners mind and intuition are key.
11. The size of the problem solved dictates the significance of the creative act. i.e. Mixing anchovies with pineapples on a pizza is a creative act. The size or importance of the problem solved, not so much while Einstein's Theory of relativity proving that Newton was wrong at universal scale, is.
12. Creativity, like tech and existence, has no morality. It simply is.
13. Stay hungry, stay foolish - Stewart Brand/Whole Earth Catalog. :)

AI is but a tool, the issue now becomes, does the tool become the master? A good question to ask is it not?

Dividing line ...