The attribution of creativity and agency to artificial intelligence

• Main Author: Siah, Dorothy Tian Xin
• Other Authors: Teru Miyake
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/174500
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Given the entrance of AI into spaces that have traditionally been creative, the philosophical discourse about creativity has been renewed with more debates that question our intuitions surrounding creativity. Taking on Boden’s functionalist theory of creativity, I examine how we might attribute creativity to existing AI systems. In my evaluation of Boden’s theory, I suggest an addition of the agency requirement in the judgement of creativity to provide a bridge between Boden’s output-centred theory and her critics’ process-centred theory of creativity. To refine my revised account of creativity, I will further look at what it means for an AI to have agency. This would track my analysis of both intentional states and autonomy as indicators of agency, before I decide on autonomy as the most appropriate for a non-anthropocentric theory of creativity. Following that, my paper proceeds to address potential objections to AI autonomy. Some questions I address include: Can AI be autonomous if it relies on its human creators to access the world? Can AI be autonomous if its system fundamentally relies on the objectives and value judgements set by its human creators? Ultimately, I will arrive at the conclusion that AI is capable of autonomy and creativity.