The societal and ethical relevance of computational creativity

TL;DR

This paper explores the philosophical importance of creativity in AI, highlighting its societal value, ethical implications, and the need for ethics to support creativity-enhancing AI systems despite current anti-creative tendencies.

Contribution

It offers a philosophical framework for understanding creativity's societal role and argues for more ethical support of creativity-enabling AI systems.

Findings

Creativity is vital for human well-being and societal progress.

Current mainstream AI tends to be anti-creative, raising moral concerns.

Supporting creativity in AI involves trade-offs with other ethical values.

Abstract

In this paper, we provide a philosophical account of the value of creative systems for individuals and society. We characterize creativity in very broad philosophical terms, encompassing natural, existential, and social creative processes, such as natural evolution and entrepreneurship, and explain why creativity understood in this way is instrumental for advancing human well-being in the long term. We then explain why current mainstream AI tends to be anti-creative, which means that there are moral costs of employing this type of AI in human endeavors, although computational systems that involve creativity are on the rise. In conclusion, there is an argument for ethics to be more hospitable to creativity-enabling AI, which can also be in a trade-off with other values promoted in AI ethics, such as its explainability and accuracy.