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by wilimitis 1112 days ago
Nope - a.i. is essentially just rearranging pixels because you can formally delineate (via mathematical expressions) how to arrive from input set to output image. To compare this in any respectable degree to human creativity is not reasonable.
3 comments

Any output from a brain can also be represented mathematically-- it's a physical object, after all. Coming up with the parameters for those expressions is the much harder part, for both brain and AI.
Once again, that is an incredibly strong assertion and if you wish to be reasonable then the burden of proof is on you to prove those parameters before making such claims (e.g. that creativity = math).

The notion that creativity lies beyond what is systemetizable (or otoh, the value in creativity is to defy that which can be computed), seems more in line with my sense of it.

LLM and text-to-image models already show empirically that creativity is computable, of course, as the AI effect[1] says, if a machine did it, then it's just predicting the next word or rearranging pixels (which doesn't really make sense), if a human did it, then it's intelligence or creativity.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect

The reverse is also true which makes your entire point hypocritically paradoxical. If a human makes it we immediately assume it can be computed (creativity). That is the strong claim which I think requires the burden of proof.
What is the paradox of both humans and machines showing signs of creativity?
I'm pointing out that your "AI Effect" is one-sided in the wrong direction.

Surely you agree that we care more to prove the affirmative of whether a machine is conscious rather than prove that it isn't. If not, I don't think we can proceed.

The issue is that the AI Effect you linked is often actually used in the reverse, including by yourself, where the burden of proof should be to prove a machine is NOT conscious. However, like we've agreed, we care for proof in the affirmative.

Thus, the paradox lies in that the "AI Effect" concept is critical of those demanding the proof which is more valuable.

If the brain is a physical object that computes, and we have creativity, it stands to reason that creativity is computable. Why would you assume that creativity is not systematizable when we already have evidence on the physicality of the brain influencing behavior (ie cut out one part, personality changes, take drugs like LSD that change the chemical components of the brain, notice that creativity improves)?

Your assumption is IMO unfounded, it actually seems like you have the burden of proof given what I said above. Just because it seems more in line with your sense of it doesn't make it true, seems like you think creativity is some mystical nonphysical force (because if it were physical, it would be able to be modeled and computed, as the parent says).

Edit, I see, you're an artist so it's likely why you believe in creativity as a nonphysical force. I've noticed that many artists say this, with no evidence, while most engineers say the opposite, that it's systematized, likely that's why we're in our respective fields.

Once again since you missed the entire point: I don't believe creativity is non-physical, I believe it is non-systematizable, and my brother achieving a PhD in computational neuroscience from a top university actually initially shared this with me.
How are you defining systematizable? As in, creativity can be made via a systematic process? How do you think a brain works, physically speaking, otherwise? As others have mentioned, it is you who holds the burden of proof, not everyone else who already knows that the brain produces creativity.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt and re-read the thread.

Creativity: producing what is novel + valuable

Systematizable: can be enumerated via algorithmic operations

"As others have mentioned": that is not an argument

"not everyone else who already knows": also not an argument

Now, my point is that creativity as defined above requires a burden of proof to be defined as systemetizable. For instance, mathematical leaps are often achieved by a spark of "creativity" which breaks existing structures in a way which is difficult to grasp, and to call this systemetizable is a leap that requires a complex argument calling upon deep notions of computational theory and computational neuroscience (like producing a topological map of the creative structure of the brain and proving that it can be mimicked by a listable process).

Now, to apply this to art in a convincing way would surely be even harder. Do you at least understand my point? Or is "brain = physics = creative" satisfactory enough for you still? Thanks for reading in good faith this time. :)

I'd argue that the presence of anything in the brain which violates the laws of physics (necessary for the above claim to be false) is equivalent to Russells teapot, and absent extraordinary evidence it's a reasonable assumption to make that the brain adheres to known physics.
Adhering to physics does not necessarily imply that creativity is systematizable.
Yes, it does, because if the brain adheres to known physics it means the brain has the same limits on computability as any other universal turing machine, and while replicating the process can still be difficult, it can't be impossible.
First of all, we're discussing stock photography, not art. Second of all, Turing's arguments for why the Turing machine is a decent model of the brain seem pretty hard to bet against, and the Turing machine underlies all computation.
No - we're discussing whether someone producing stock photography can be trained in the same sense as a.i. However, I will give you that I'm potentially falsely assuming creativity is required to a comparable degree to art.

Also, gun-to-my-head I would not bet on creativity being systemetizable, so I completely disagree.

You know, I actually think you're right about the process, but totally wrong about the results. Yes, AI art is different in terms of creativity. It is only grounded in reality to a lesser extent than human creativity.

Where you're going wrong is what society will go for. Given the choice between reality and fantasy ... society will choose fantasy. AI will "win" fantasy, hands down.

AI will always lose because the result can only be a permutation of what already exists and the next artist will grow up and push the boundary - hence, AI will always lag behind the tip of the spear which is human creativity.

Not to mention, you are already wrong because art communities around human art are thriving now more than ever for the simple fact that the result of AI itself is non-communal (does not produce thriving community) and cannot compete at the bleeding edge of style.

Again, this is already happening regardless of your armchair hypothesis.

good point, as an artist the joy is in creating - the result is not that important, but that is my work, other artists results can be very dear to me.
How does human creativity work?
Slight jitter + strong and complex selection functions, like "is it useful?", "is it more useful than what came before?", "is it appreciated by the audience?", etc.

The creative generation part - adding some randomness to the process - is trivial with machines. Much easier than with humans adults, who often have to learn to allow more randomness and in their thinking/feeling, in order to make some creative work. But the selection functions are deeply social, which is something we're instinctively good at, and had little luck teaching the machines so far.

Well, with the possible exception of GPT-4, which may have learned just enough about what humans like, that it could do a passing job at discriminating art/innovation from noise. I say may - it feels possible, but we won't know until someone properly tests for it.

> Well, with the possible exception of GPT-4, which may have learned just enough about what humans like, that it could do a passing job at discriminating art/innovation from noise. I say may - it feels possible, but we won't know until someone properly tests for it.

I've tried giving GPT4 some axes to rank writing on, and feed it some paragraphs. It's not perfect at it, but it's a far better critic than writer.

E.g. a while back I had it write something "in the style of Douglas Adams" and then had it critique it in another chat, and it recognised the imitation and proceeded to quite harshly judge its own writing for being flat and lacking direction and purpose. It was quite entertaining (more so than its superficially amusing Douglas Adams imitation).

With something representable with math functions that nobody knows yet.
That is an incredibly strong assertion that evidence does not seem to support currently. So, you may take it on faith if you wish, however there is growing interest in the notion that creativity itself is that which is not systemetizable.
You gotta back up claims like that with a source. As far as I know, nobody can prove we are not in a simulation. Meaning everything is made out of math.
I think my point flew over your head. The burden of proof is on you to provide the source that human creativity can be computed mathematically.
Today's AI has taught us that everything people show us they think is unique, isn't really. Everything comes from somewhere, including the things that add up to what we call creativity.
I think my point flew over your head. The burden of proof is on you to provide the source that we can't simulate the whole universe, humans included. This is something that cannot be proved to be true, even if it was the truth, it is possible that you can only prove it to be false, and nobody managed to do it yet. That's why it's on you to prove it to be false. Especially since you claim that something cannot be computed with maths.
> The burden of proof is on you to provide the source that human creativity can be computed mathematically.

Note that the same can be said about the negation: show me a proof that it can't.

It's an assertion that rests only on the assumption that the brain adheres to known physics or if it relies on unknown physics that the computational effects of those differences can be simulated or the physical effect replicated.

It'd take a truly extraordinary find that'd upend both physics and areas of logic for that assertion to be false.

Let's try something else, because you seem to take it that "brain = physics" is a strong enough argument to believe that all of human creativity is inherently systematic.

The definition of creativity itself should include the ability to subvert a system through abstraction. AI is a system so it cannot subvert itself (or, it hasn't yet). As humans, we subvert systems in mathematics by creating higher dimensional abstraction and shattering previous understanding of the fields. Often, mathematicians achieve this with a "lightening bolt-like realization" that they do not attribute to systematic thinking.

Please reconsider whether systematizability should be so quickly assumed through napkin philosophy. If you want, prove with a topological map of the creative apparatus in the brain that it produces results in a systematic way. That would at least scratch the itch and get the conversation going somewhere interesting.

There's no "napkin philosophy" here.

What you call "systematizability" is irrelevant. Only whether or not a function can be computed matter, and if a function can be computed by a brain restricted to known physics, there is no reasonable theory under which it can compute anything which can't be computed by any universal turing machine. Given the absence of even any real hypothesis for any category of functions which can't, it'd be an absolutely extraordinary claim to suggest such a function exist.

Where you'd get a Nobel in physics if you could show unknown physics in the brain, you'd secure a Nobel in mathematics if you could come up with a class of functions the brain can compute which can't be computed by a computer, because it'd fundamentally break basic assumptions in any number of subfields of both maths and computer science.

What you describe as "subverting itself" does not require anything as drastic. It merely requires thought processes unobservable by the person in question, and processes to complex to casually understand and/or randomness. Given a large proportion of people don't even have an inner voice they can "listen to" in order to observe their thought processes other than via outputs, and we know e.g. from split-brain experiments that the conscious part of human reasoning often outright invents knowledge and observation of thought processes, we have no reliable way of analysing the extent to which thinking is "systematic", and plenty of evidence to suggest we can not trust any such notion.

Interesting. Evolution is a series of happy accidents. So is creativity.
That's a very fancy way with lots of fancy words to say "I have no idea how NN work, but if I sound smart maybe ppl will not figure out how stupid I sound". Well, you sound stupid and nothing what you said makes sense.

Delineate? Diffusion models can't be further away for delineating. They literally work by throwing random shit at the wall.

Input set? There is no input set once training is complete.

Human creativity? In stock photo industry? What next? "How I write while loop instead of for loop and I have achieved the nirvana?"

Incorrect - I'm clearly using delineate to mean providing the exact set of computational instructions which produce the output (image), which by the definition of "computable" must be true.

You seem emotional, "you sound stupid and nothing what you said makes sense", I wonder, why are you so triggered by a challenging idea?

The very point of computation is to evaluate clear, distinct, mathematical expressions (like reading a list of algorithmic steps to produce an NN).

Hmmm. Did I threaten your religious belief in the power of AI? :)