Future of Life Institute Podcast Can Machines Be Truly Creative? (with Maya Ackerman)
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Oct 24, 2025 Maya Ackerman, an AI researcher and co-founder of WaveAI, dives into the fascinating intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence. She discusses how creativity can be defined as novel and valuable output, highlighting evolution as a creative process. Maya reveals that machine creativity differs from human creativity in speed and emotional context. The conversation touches on the role of AI in enhancing human capabilities rather than replacing them, and reframes hallucination as a vital part of imagination. Explore how AI can elevate our creativity in collaborative ways!
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Creativity Defined By Output
- Creativity equals novelty plus value, independent of the creator's nature or process.
- If a system reliably produces novel, valuable outputs, we should call it creative.
Processes Can Be Creative Without Minds
- A creative process need not be intentional or minded to be creative.
- Evolution is a prime example of a non-minded process that yields profoundly creative outcomes.
Alignment Tames Creativity
- Alignment efforts aim to convert generative models into obedient oracles, which reduces their wild creativity.
- These models will still hallucinate because hallucination is inherent to their predictive architecture.
