Marta Halina (Cambridge): “Creative problem solving in AI”

Abstract: In March 2016, DeepMind’s computer program AlphaGo surprised the world by defeating the world-champion Go player, Lee Sedol. AlphaGo has a novel, surprising and valuable style of play, and has been recognized as “creative” by the AI and Go communities. This paper examines whether AlphaGo engages in creative problem solving according to the standards of comparative psychology. I conclude that although AlphaGo lacks one important aspect of creative problem solving found in animals (domain generality) it exhibits a different capacity for creativity: namely, the ability to transform a conceptual space through something akin to instrumental conditioning. This analysis has consequences for how we think about creativity in humans and AI.

Marta Halina is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Selwyn College.