Creativity and Consciousness - Digging Deeper
Thoughts on Brett Hall's recent musing on connection between the two
In Brett Hall’s recent article, “New musings on the link (necessary connection?) between creativity and consciousness” he presents some compelling insights that sparked further reflection.
As I read and reread the blog I became convinced this link must be explored further. This led me to question the mechanics of the creative process and what must take place during this process.
If we look closely at a creative act as it is happening - like Bob Ross in the process of painting on a canvas, or Beethoven composing a masterpiece - they are guessing what to do next at any given moment. This highlights the involvement of unconscious thoughts in the creative process. To further illustrate this point, let us consider the scenario of being in their shoes at that moment in their creative journey. Would we, as novices, be able to predict their next move that eventually produces the final outcome? Most likely not. This is due to two key factors at play: the individual's innate inclination or passion for the task at hand and their accumulated experience and expertise in that field. These, in combination, allow them to guess the next steps efficiently with less fatigue. Therefore what bubbles up in their consciousness is different than other novices and leads to a difference in the outcome.
There is another interesting dynamic that emerges when comparing the thought processes of novices vs. experts. As a novice, when learning something new, each step is taken with a high degree of consciousness and intentionality. The process becomes a deliberate loop of guessing what to do next, trying it out, observing the result, and adjusting the next guess accordingly. It is through this creative process of trial and error that the novice improves. As an individual becomes more experienced, these conscious actions become automatized and shift into the realm of unconscious thought. As Brett Hall points out, this action becomes an "algorithm." One question that arises is whether the mode of operation, the process of guessing and testing, changes during this transition. While I am uncertain of the answer, it is possible that the mode of operation remains the same but occurs unconsciously, once the individual has accumulated enough experience. The movement of learning from conscious to unconscious leads to more room for new things to be brought into conscious awareness.
There are degrees of difficulties when it comes to creativity and learning new tasks. Riding a bicycle, and brushing your teeth for example are low-difficulty tasks that most humans get good at if they go through the learning curve first. The conscious-to-unconscious transition happens more efficiently and readily. On the other end of the spectrum - like painting, composing music, or being good at sports - the transition doesn’t really happen as swiftly, and may never happen completely. These tasks are hard for humans to master.
A “dumb” unconscious computer only runs the algorithm it is provided with. There are no conjecturing and error-correcting loops. There are no tackling new situations that are out of range from the data that is used to train the model. I agree with Brett that we can not build an AGI that needs to be creative but at the same time is unconscious. If the process of learning new tasks with loops of trial-error is how one solves problems, one needs to be consciously aware of the problems first, then the creativity kicks in, and one learns the task fully as in the case of simple tasks or partially in case of more advanced tasks as described above. Thereafter the learned module gets swept into the unconscious territory. In order for AGI to be truly general, it needs to have this crucial ability to guess, test the guess by observations, repeat, and move the module somewhere else to be accessed later or to be run in parallel while paying attention to the current challenge at hand.