#52 - Ask Us Anything I: Computation and Creativity

Jul 10, 2023

The conversation takes a deep dive into the complexities of creativity and its definition, especially within AI. They discuss philosophical perspectives on human understanding and computational universality, touching on intriguing parallels with Turing machines. Financial considerations of podcasting lead to a reflection on integrity and monetization. Unique insights into how self-doubt and unconscious thought play crucial roles in creativity are examined, alongside the challenges of evaluating AI-generated creativity and the nuances that differentiate it from human creativity.

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ADVICE

Detailed Show Notes

Include detailed show notes with numbered questions for easy referencing.
This allows listeners to pause and review complex questions while listening.

INSIGHT

Unexplainable Phenomena

Claiming humans cannot explain everything implies unexplained phenomena exist.
This requires strong justification, not just dismissing Deutsch's universality.

INSIGHT

Universality and Computation

Deutsch's universality rests on computational limits, not supernatural appeals.
Turing machines, like humans, can theoretically run any program, thus understand anything.

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We debated calling this episode "An ode to Michael," because we set out to do an AMA but only get through his first two questions. But never fear, there are only 20 questions, so at this rate we should be done the AMA by the end of 2024. Who said we weren't fans of longtermism?

Questions:

Hey do you guys have a Patreon page or anyway to support you?
(Michael) Not clear that humans are universal explainers. Standard argument for this is "to assume o.w. is to appeal to the supernatural," but this argument is weak b/c it does not explain why humans could in principle explain everything. But all Deutch's ideas rests on this axiom. It's almost tautological - there could be things humans cannot explain, but we wouldn't even know about these things b/c we wouldn't be able to explain them. I think this argument that humans are universal explainers and thus can achieve indefinite progress needs more rigor.It might be a step jump from animals to humans, but why could there not be more step jumps in intelligence beyond human intelligence that we do not even know about? I'd love to get your thoughts on this.
(Michael) Another pt I'd love to get your perspectives on is the idea of the "creative program." Standard discussion is "humans are special because we are creative, and we don't know what the creative program is." But we need to make progress on creativity at some point and it kind of feels like we are using the word "creativity" as a vague suitcase word to encapsulate "everything we don't yet know about intelligence." Simply saying "humans are creative" without properly defining what it means to be creative in a way that we can evaluate in machines is not helping us make progress on developing creative AI. It's unsatisfying to hear critiques of AI that say "this AI model is not 'truly intelligent' because it is not creative" without also proposing a way to evaluate its creativity. In this sense, critiques of AI that say AI is "not creative" are bad explanations because these critiques are easy to vary. Without a proposing a proper test for creativity that can actually evaluated, it is not possible for us to conduct a test to refute the critique. I'd love to get your thoughts on how we can construct evaluations for creativity in a way that enables us to make scientific progress on understanding the creative algorithm!

References:

Episode 9: Introduction to Computational Theory, Theory of Anything podcast
David Deutsch on Coleman Hughes' podcast: Multiverse of Madness
John Cleese's excellent new book Creativity

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