Creativity Gardner and Csikszentmihalyi's Perspectives Essay

Other neuroscientists instead stress processes: like macros for the brain.

Neuroscience, in elucidating specific brain structures for different thought processes and types of intelligence, can help scientists develop more sophisticated systems of artificial intelligence. Similarly, neuroscientists can possibly promote the development of pharmaceutical or natural interventions that aid cognitive processes like mathematical or musical ability. If neuroscientists can discover ways to increase conscious awareness of the structures of the brain involved in particular intelligences it may be possible to increase human intelligence on an individual if not a collective or evolutionary basis. Moreover, neuroscientists can use information about specific brain structures and possibly also hormones and brain chemicals to help people increase mathematical ability or overcome learning disabilities.

7. Programs designed to "think" in a specific way such as to play chess or poker cannot rightly be called creative. They exhibit human-like creativity but only directed at specific tasks. Beyond what they are programmed to do, applications like Deep Blue, Fritz, and Rybka could not actually create anything. The parameters of their reasoning is limited and restricted.

A more truly creative or intelligent computer program would be one that could create works of art or music. If software developers create a software application that can make decisions based on a large number of programmable variables like the chess and poker programs do, then the program only works with those variables. A really creative program would anticipate variables, far more than a programmer could think of when designing the software. Also, creativity often means making up completely new variables and chess software cannot do that because the game has rules. True creativity functions without boundaries, even in mathematics. Important mathematics breakthroughs allow for uncertainty and perspectives never before imagined.

Therefore, software that seems intelligent remains only as brilliant as its programmers. What chess and poker software does when interacting with humans is expose the person's own cognitive blocks in the game. A computer is programmed with all of the possible variables that might arise in a game of chess or poker. Because of that thorough level of programming, the program will be ahead of most human beings. Famous chess masters have proven that even computer chess models can be beaten by a human mind.

8. Artificial intelligence can offer useful models of creativity and can also describe many of the cognitive processes involved in bringing novel ideas to fruition but from a limited set of variables. It is possible that artificial intelligence can explain Csikszentmihalyi's idea of flow or the sudden flashes of inspiration that people receive in altered states of consciousness. The artificially intelligent machine might experience similar moments of creativity. Its programming allows for brain imaging and scientists can program the machine to operate like the brain, because neuroscientists know enough about the brain's cognitive processes to create exact models in a closed system like a computer.Beyond closed systems though, scientists may never be able to create artificial intelligence other than by cloning human beings. Human beings are open systems difficult if not impossible to create using the materials and parameters of closed systems. Creativity is likely to remain mysterious from a scientific standpoint, even if the process can be apprehended via direct personal experience.

Another possible reason why artificial intelligence can never fully mimic human intelligence is the variable of emotion. Strong emotions and passion fuel creativity in ways cold calculation cannot. Emotions can be mapped as being linked to neural networks and brain structures, but how those structures interact with cognitive ones remains to be discovered. If neuroscientists can map emotional processing in the brain, linking emotionality with cognitions, then it may be possible to build a machine that is artificially intelligent.

The human body might also play a role in intelligence and creativity, allowing for storing memory and emotions in cells outside of the nervous system. If memories and feelings are stored in body fat, muscle tissue, or bones, then the body itself would be necessary to create a truly intelligent machine. The field of artificial intelligence will continue to develop promising applications that aid in some fields of science, math, and design but creating a fully intelligent, fully creative machine might require many more advancements in neuroscience.

References

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