AI Mimics Human Creativity, But Also Boosts It

For years — make that decades — the focus of artificial intelligence has been on how machines could mimic human creativity. Witness a paper on the topic from 1993, which predicts AI doing just that. Steve Lohr of The New York Times just published a piece on whether AI is ready to invent new things, with all the legal implications thereof.

What needs to be asked, however, is along with mimicking human creativity, how can AI catalyze greater creativity among its human users. There appears to be great promise that AI can dramatically boost that. We’re already seeing the technology open doors to greater innovation and creativity in areas from artwork to autonomous space exploration.

There is a bright creative future for humans relieved from the drudgery of day-to-day repetitive tasks, according to a recent analysis by Nicola Morini Bianzino, global chief client technology officer at EY, who is optimistic that we stand at the crest of an era of expanded creativity.

First, technologies such as AI “free up time for humans to focus on innovation,” he states. In addition, AI offers “opportunities to creatively combine technologies to create new ways of working.” AI also plays an emerging role in “actively augmenting human decision-making, by adding a layer of machine-driven data analysis to guide our creative choices.”

Bianzino outlines three ways AI will inject greater creativity into workplaces, businesses and other human endeavors:

• Freeing up humans’ time — and mindspace. “Use technology to do the mundane, freeing up humans to focus on the higher-level creative thinking and strategic decision-making that add true long-term value,” he urges. In the process, AI and other technologies will spur “an explosion of innovation as smart technologies mature and ever more businesses use them in combination with existing and emerging technologies to create radical new approaches to doing business and meet the ever-changing needs of their customers.”
• Enabling more effective choices. It’s important to keep things in perspective, Bianzino urges. AI is not software that emulates human-like cognition, but “really just math at an enormous scale, and can be applied to an almost infinite number of use cases across every sector.” In contrast, he adds, “the human mind is not naturally equipped to spot correlations across thousands of data points. Rather than just being a faster way to analyze information, AI can become a stimulus for more creative thinking about how to use data by suggesting solutions humans may never even have considered.”
• Creating fresh growth. “As customer expectations continue to shift, businesses will have to be ever more creative in meeting them,” Bianzino states. “AI can help enable a more effective creative response.”

As with all technologies that have come before it, AI is but a tool. The challenge is “to be creative in reimagining how to use it to generate fresh opportunities, value and growth,” says Bianzino. “The real skill isn’t in developing technological solutions, it’s in identifying what people want — and then finding the best ways to deliver.” That’s a job for creative humans, and humans only.