AI: Act As If You Are Creative
By Shlomo Maital

It is now apparent that Artificial Intelligence will hugely impact everything, and already has. AI has been around since 1956! But the latest breakthroughs of generative pretrained transformer (GPT) AI, using natural language, have been rapid and massive. The breakthrough stems from the confluence of several powerful ideas, all at once — machine learning, deep learning, and neural networks.
Microsoft, Google, and others, are competing fiercely in the AI battleground. I have used ChatGPT (OpenAI, funded by Microsoft) a lot, and now, am trying BARD (Google). I did this in part because one of the forefathers of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, and a principal in BARD, has left Google, warning of the dangers of AI.
I’ve spent my career studying creativity and innovation. So naturally I’m keenly interested in whether AI can come up with creative ideas. And the answer, weirdly, seems to be yes. Here is what I found.
1. I taught Bard a creativity algorithm, developed and used by my friend and colleague Arie Ruttenberg, called Zoom in/Zoom out. [See our book Creacking the Creativity Code]. But Bard knows everything. “I think this is a great way to generate ideas”, Bard said, and proceeded to accurately explain Zoom in/Zoom out in just a few words. Amazing. BARD responds in just seconds.
2. I told Bard to use the algorithm to create a new food that 8 year olds love, that fills all their nutrition needs (vitamins, minerals), but is a food they will absolutely love. All I got was fruit and yogurt. Seriously? I severely reprimanded Bard.
3. Bard apologized. (Really!). “This is not creative”, I told it. “Can you please think of an innovative creative yogurt dish, one not yet existing, that 8 year olds will love?” Sure, Bard said. Here is an innovative and creative yogurt dish.
And here it is. You be the judge.
Yogurt Bark: Ingredients: 1 cup plain yogurt. ½ cup granola. ¼ cup chopped fruit (berries, peaches, mangoes). ¼ cup chocolate chips.
Line a baking pan with parchment paper. In a medium bowl, combine the yogurt, granola, fruit and chocolate chips. Spread the mixture evenly on the prepared baking sheet. Freeze for at least 2 hours, or overnight. Break the bark into pieces – and enjoy!
What do you think? Creative? Innovative? Know any 8 year olds? Want to try it?
Zoom in/Zoom out: (as per BARD itself). 1. Zoom in. Analyze the problem in detail. 2. Zoom out: look for solutions outside of your immediate area. 3. Zoom in: Start to evaluate possible solutions. Which are most feasible? Which are most likely to solve the problem? 4. Zoom out: Once you have evaluated possible solutions, start to implement them, try them out. You may need to modify, make some changes on the way. More tips: Be creative; Be persistent; be open minded.
What worries Hinton (as told to the New York Times):
His immediate concern is that the internet will be flooded with false photos, videos and text, and the average person will “not be able to know what is true anymore.”
He is also worried that A.I. technologies will in time upend the job market. Today, chatbots like ChatGPT tend to complement human workers, but they could replace paralegals, personal assistants, translators and others who handle rote tasks. “It takes away the drudge work,” he said. “It might take away more than that.”
Down the road, he is worried that future versions of the technology pose a threat to humanity because they often learn unexpected behavior from the vast amounts of data they analyze. This becomes an issue, he said, as individuals and companies allow A.I. systems not only to generate their own computer code but actually run that code on their own. And he fears a day when truly autonomous weapons — those killer robots — become reality.
“The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he said. “But most people thought it was way off. And I thought it was way off. I thought it was 30 to 50 years or even longer away. Obviously, I no longer think that.”