Can AI ever be Truly Creative?

Two sonnets to end the year

When I set off on this Substack journey, I mentioned music as something I’d be writing about, but so far not a squeak, not so much as a semi-quaver. My post this week only just ticks that box, following as it does, an article of almost the same name in a recent issue of Nature, should you want a longer and more serious analysis. The article begins with reference to a piano piece in the key of D minor called Pianita 17, which I have not been able to ‘track’ down, but which was generated by an AI model trained on thousands of hours of YouTube videos.

Larkin and Shakespeare, according to GhatGPT

The problem for AI is that when it comes to music, or literature, or art, or anything else, it is obliged to use material that is already out there. It’s difficult to define ‘creativity’, but if we require creativity to contain at least some element of originality, then perhaps AI can never be anything more than derivative. But let’s see what you think. You’ll find below two sonnets, one written by me and the other by AI. The subject of both sonnets is Nigel Farage, but one is written in the style of Shakespeare and the other Philip Larkin. Can you work out which is mine, and which is ChatGPT?

Sonnet 1 (with apologies to W. Shakespeare)

O grievous tongue, whose honeyed lies take wing,
And charm the crowd with promise thin as air;
Thy words, like painted gold on rusted ring,
Do mask self-love with false concern and care.
Thou strut’st the stage as champion of the plain,
Yet sow’st division where thou claim’st to heal;
In stirring fear, thou findest private gain,
And call’st it truth whilst bending what is real.
Thy voice grows loud where reason’s breath is weak,
Thy cause made bold by anger, not by light;
In pride thou stand’st, yet ne’er in conscience meek,
A shadow dressed as guardian of the right.
O England, mourn the noise that drowns thy song:
Such men endure not time, though they seem strong.

Sonnet 2 (with apologies to P. Larkin)

What parasitic worm is this that crawls
To woo the poor ignorant fools that throng?
And in supplication nod while he drawls
Unable to distinguish right from wrong.
Self-int’rest is your sole motivation
You have no thought for the working man
Yet seek election to lead this nation
With support from Putin whene’er you can.
Your lies they twist the truth and thus deform
The basis of reason and what is just,
Under a banner that pledges Reform
Yet could not sit further adrift from trust.
These sorry times that lend your voice a stage
We must hope one day for a better age.

And regardless of who wrote which, perhaps the more important question is whether you see any ‘creativity’ in either of these - which is not the same as asking which do you think is better, which doesn’t really matter. Like it or not, one of them truly is creative, and as for the other, well it comes back to how we define creativity.

Whatever your thoughts, thank you for sticking with me this year, a bonne fin d’année from Deepest Provence, and let’s reconvene in January.