The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity
Arthur I. Miller
MIT Press (October 2019)

However advanced AI may become, it will still need human intuition, judgment…and supervision

Arthur I. Miller offers a rigorous and eloquent exploration of the potential benefits of a relationship between collaborators: humans and machines. That is, geniuses and the most advanced computers who contribute natural intelligence (NI) and artificial intelligence (AI).

“This book strives to look into [questions about the humans’ potential collaborations with  AI]. It is about creativity in the age of machines — our creativity and their creativity — [which I define as] the production of new knowledge from  already existing knowledge and is accomplished by problem solving.” In fact, Miller suggests there are two marks of genius that cannot be taught: The ability to discover the key problem, and, the ability to spot connections.

“As Einstein observed, creativity is all about problem solving, and the first step is to find the problem. Let’s look at the seven hallmarks of the big-C Creativity And the two marks of genius in more detail and see how they emerge from the lives of great thinkers.” Note: Miller studied several hundred and shares what he learned from  them. These Are the seven hallmarks:

1. The Need for Introspection
2. Know Your Strengths [and Weaknesses]
3. Focus, Persevere, and Don’t Be Afraid to Make Mistakes
4. Collaborate and Compete
5. Beg, Borrow, and Steal Great Ideas
6. Thrive on Ambiguity
7. The Need for Experience and Suffering

The two marks of genius were previously noted. Miller also explores what he views as four stages of big-C Creativity: Conscious Thought, Unconscious Thought, Illumination, and Verification.

These are among the dozens passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the thrust and flavor of Miller’s coverage in Capters1-21.

First, be sure to read the “Introduction” It sets tghe table brilliantly for the buffet of insights to be served. (Pages xxi-xxviii) Then

o Einstein, Bach, Picasso: What Makes These People Special (7-8)
o Seven Hallmarks of Creativity and Two Marks of Genius (9-23)
o The Four Signs of Creativity (30-31)
o The First Inklings of Computer Creativity (40-44)
o Ian Goodfellow’s Generative Adversarial Networks: AI Learns to Imagine (87-90)

o Jake Ewes’s Dreams of Vacant Space (96-98)
o Anna Rider’s Fall of the House of Usher (104-105)
o Jun-Yan Zhu’s CycleGAN Turns Horses into Zebras (107-110)
o David Cope Makes Music That Is “More Bach than Bach” (163-167)
o The Pinocchio Effect (191-192)

o Can Computers Be Creative? (261)
o Rosalind Picard on Developing Computers That Feel (281-288)
o Reducing Consciousness to the Sum of Its Parts (291-293)
o Can We Apply the Hallmarks of Creativity to Computers? (307-309)
o Where We Are Going, and, Into the Future (312-313)

Toward the end of his brilliant book, Arthur Miller observes, “As we have seen, computers can exhibit the seven hallmarks of high creativity and the two marks of genius. This offers a way in which we can establish a computer’s creativity. High creativity requires consciousness, awareness of the world around us.”

It remains to be seen if and to what extent — as well as when — humans will be able to create machines that can imagine and then create more advanced machines that render those machines obsolete as well as — perhaps — the humans who originally created them.

Here is an intriguing question: “Which will prevail? The artist in the machine or the machine in the artist?”