> For the longest time it was assumed that creativity was an almost magically human trait. The fact that somebody can, with a straight face, say "I don't get why it is impressive, I could draw these images too" is actually indicative of the wild change that has occurred over these last couple years.
It's not creativity though. It's a program that arranges pixels in a way that is statistically similar to some training data set. It doesn't "draw" anything, it doesn't "figure out" anything. There is no thought or idea behind it.
The output is mildly interesting but there is no creative act at work, and there's certainly no revolution in the artistic world.
> For the longest time it was assumed that creativity was an almost magically human trait.
Maybe by some people. This is a human-centric perspective, a form of speciesm if I can call it that. Various primates have shown creativity, and various animals have shown the ability to solve problems creatively. Heck, even my cat figured out how to open doors by pulling down on the handle. Humans are likely not more creative than other animals with similar brain size, it's just that there's other factors at play that make it seem like that (such as opposable thumbs and the passing down of knowledge between generations using speech).
> It's not creativity though. It's a program that arranges pixels in a way that is statistically similar to some training data set. It doesn't "draw" anything
that's the exact argument made against chess engines - are they "really" playing chess?
What's to say that the brain works different than people imagine creativity to be? That we think we are creative might be an illusion, because the brain is tricking you into thinking that you creatively came up with an original idea, when the reality is that the idea came from a long list of training data that one might've been exposed to all his life.
And who's to say that brute force, and statistical methods of producing content is not creative?
So is your perspective :) You essentially take a process we don't understand and can't quantify and say "because I can understand this, this can't be it". You don't know, claiming otherwise is disingenuous.
:) Yes, I haven't defined "creativity" and I haven't quantified anything. My assertion was empirical, based on the observation that what society usually considers creative comes into being due to a logical train of thought, such as "if X, then what if Y", or an impulse to do something that hasn't been done before. Imitation on its own would not be considered particularly creative.
Yes, you are right, I could be wrong, perhaps this form of statistical imitation is at the core of greater creativity, and not another hype wave in software development. Time will tell.
> It's not creativity though. It's a program that arranges pixels in a way that is statistically similar to some training data set. It doesn't "draw" anything, it doesn't "figure out" anything. There is no thought or idea behind it.
I think this is the crux of my thought on the subject. Thank you.
I absolutely see the kinds of uses it can have (guiding the repair of artwork that was damaged, seeing patterns in huge datasets, etc.), but I think the way it's marketed is that it's somehow coming up with new art, but it's really just "recreating" (on a very micro level) everything in the training set.
You could absolutely argue that creatives are just regurgitating things they've seen before, but I think the big separation between ML and human creativity is that it crosses "genres", if you will. For example, I could be influenced by my experience in a car crash in such a way that it causes me to create X (art, software, music, etc.) in such an abstract way, I'm not sure whether it's even possible to recreate artificially.
It was a long time ago. It wasn't a knob, it was a handle. He would jump on it, his weight would pull down the handle, and then he would use his right leg to push against the frame and open the door. Not very graceful but it got the job done. He was a very smart cat.
It's not creativity though. It's a program that arranges pixels in a way that is statistically similar to some training data set. It doesn't "draw" anything, it doesn't "figure out" anything. There is no thought or idea behind it.
The output is mildly interesting but there is no creative act at work, and there's certainly no revolution in the artistic world.
> For the longest time it was assumed that creativity was an almost magically human trait.
Maybe by some people. This is a human-centric perspective, a form of speciesm if I can call it that. Various primates have shown creativity, and various animals have shown the ability to solve problems creatively. Heck, even my cat figured out how to open doors by pulling down on the handle. Humans are likely not more creative than other animals with similar brain size, it's just that there's other factors at play that make it seem like that (such as opposable thumbs and the passing down of knowledge between generations using speech).