The creativity code: (art and innovation in the age of AI)

“A brilliant travel guide to the coming world of AI.” —Jeanette Winterson What does it mean to be creative? Can creativity be trained? Is it uniquely human, or could AI be considered creative? Mathematical genius and exuberant polymath Marcus du Sautoy plunges us into the world of artificial intelligence and algorithmic learning in this essential guide to the future of creativity. He considers the role of pattern and imitation in the creative process and sets out to investigate the programs and programmers—from Deep Mind and the Flow Machine to Botnik and WHIM—who are seeking to rival or surpass human innovation in gaming, music, art, and language. A thrilling tour of the landscape of invention, The Creativity Code explores the new face of creativity and the mysteries of the human code. “As machines outsmart us in ever more domains, we can at least comfort ourselves that one area will remain sacrosanct and uncomputable: human creativity. Or can we?...In his fascinating exploration of the nature of creativity, Marcus du Sautoy questions many of those assumptions.” —Financial Times “Fascinating...If all the experiences, hopes, dreams, visions, lusts, loves, and hatreds that shape the human imagination amount to nothing more than a ‘code,’ then sooner or later a machine will crack it. Indeed, du Sautoy assembles an eclectic array of evidence to show how that’s happening even now.” —The Times Résumé éditeur : "Can a well-programmed machine do anything a human can--only better? Complex algorithms are choosing our music, picking our partners, and driving our investments. They can navigate more data than a doctor or lawyer and act with greater precision. For many years we've taken solace in the notion that they can't create. But now that algorithms can learn and adapt, does the future of creativity belong to machines, too? It is hard to imagine a better guide to the bewildering world of artificial intelligence than Marcus du Sautoy, a celebrated Oxford mathematician whose work on symmetry in the ninth dimension has taken him to the vertiginous edge of mathematical understanding. In The Creativity Code he considers what machine learning means for the future of creativity. The Pollockizer can produce drip paintings in the style of Jackson Pollock, Botnik spins off fanciful (if improbable) scenes inspired by J.K. Rowling, and the music-composing algorithm Emmy managed to fool a panel of Bach experts. But do these programs just mimic, or do they have what it takes to create? Du Sautoy argues that to answer this question, we need to understand how the algorithms that drive them work--and this brings him back to his own subject of mathematics, with its puzzles, constraints, and enticing possibilities. While most recent books on AI focus on the future of work, The Creativity Code moves us to the forefront of creative new technologies and offers a more positive and unexpected vision of our future cohabitation with machines. It challenges us to reconsider what it means to be human--and to crack the creativity code." Will a computer ever compose a symphony, write a prize-winning novel, or paint a masterpiece And if so, would we be able to tell the differenceAs humans, we have an extraordinary ability to create works of art that elevate, expand and transform what it means to be alive.Yet in many other areas, new developments in AI are shaking up the status quo, as we find out how many of the tasks humans engage in can be done equally well, if not better, by machines. But can machines be creative Will they soon be able to learn from the art that moves us, and understand what distinguishes it from the mundaneIn The Creativity Code, Marcus du Sautoy examines the nature of creativity, as well as providing an essential guide into how algorithms work, and the mathematical rules underpinning them. He asks how much of our emotional response to art is a product of our brains reacting to pattern and structure, and exactly what it is to be creative in mathematics, art, language and music.Marcus finds out how long it might be before machines come up with something creative, and whether they might jolt us into being more imaginative in turn. The result is a fascinating and very different exploration into both AI and the essence of what it means to be human Contents 1. The Lovelace Test 2. Three Types of Creativity 3. Ready Steady Go 4. Algorithms, the Secret to Modern Life 5. From Top-Down to Bottom-Up 6. Algorithmic Evolution 7. Painting by Numbers 8. Learning from the Masters 9. The Art of Mathematics 10. The Mathematician’s Telescope 11. Music: The Process of Sounding Mathematics 12. The Song-Writing Formula 13. DeepMathematics 14. Language Games 15. Let AI Tell You a Story 16. Why We Create: A Meeting of Minds Selected Bibliography Acknowledgments Index Most books on AI focus on the future of work. But now that algorithms can learn and adapt, does the future of creativity also belong to well-programmed machines? To answer this question, Marcus du Sautoy takes us to the forefront of creative new technologies and offers a more positive and unexpected vision of our future cohabitation with machines.-- Provided by publisher