Artificial creativity augmentation

Abstract

Creativity has been associated with multifarious descriptions whereby one exemplary common definition depicts creativity as the generation of ideas that are perceived as both novel and useful within a certain social context. In the face of adversarial conditions taking the form of global societal challenges from climate change over AI risks to technological unemployment, this paper motivates future research on artificial creativity augmentation (ACA) to indirectly support the generation of requisite defense strategies and solutions. This novel term is of ambiguous nature since it subsumes two research directions: (1) artificially augmenting human creativity, but also (2) augmenting artificial creativity. In this paper, we examine and extend recent creativity research findings from psychology and cognitive neuroscience to identify potential indications on how to work towards (1). Moreover, we briefly analyze how research on (1) could possibly inform progress towards (2). Overall, while human enhancement but also the implementation of powerful AI are often perceived as ethically controversial, future ACA research could even appear socially desirable.