[Groxx]

I'd argue that if (assuming it's true that) creativity stems from libido and biological evolution, it's been because there are evolutionary gains for creative individuals. The first person to throw a rock at a tree to knock down fruit got more food, for instance. The most complicated clothing (/nest/dance) gets the most mates.

All of which means it's purely a motivating force, not a requirement. We've been motivated to be creative, so we are. Programs can be similarly guided towards ends we desire; perhaps the most direct analogy is genetic programming, where you determine which "breed" by their "fitness" value.

[mojuba]

What I actually meant was what we create rather than why.

[Groxx]

Exactly my point: what we create is incredibly tightly tied to why we create, especially if you're looking at it from an evolutionary standpoint. I wouldn't call it an isomorphic relationship, but darn close.

You also have to consider that our creativity has been created by the equivalent of billions of the individuals with more computational power than the most powerful computer in the world right now, running for thousands of years of recorded history. Absolutely nothing we have done with computers approaches this, especially when you consider just how unexplored computer A.I. really is. If we call it ten orders of magnitude more "power", we're making a phenomenally conservative estimate. What could you do with a computer over a billion times more powerful than everything that Google owns?

I'd say our less-than-10-billionth computational efforts have in fact created a couple creative things. Which puts them about on par.