How AI may help you achieve genius-level creativity
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It’s poised to revolutionize creative problem-solving
One of the most exciting frontiers in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) is figuring out how to apply it to creative thinking and problem solving.
Can it generate novel and useful ideas that can help us accelerate innovation in our work and personal lives?
The jury is still out. But one of the most promising approaches, promoted by creativity speaker and expert James Taylor, combines the best of human and AI intelligence to create breakthroughs that can potentially change the world.
Taylor has dubbed this hybrid model “centaur” creativity — a nod to the mythical half man-half beast — or simply, Supercreativity.
He highlights recent examples where AI has been used to imitate various painting styles. Manufacturers are using it to invent and optimize efficient new component designs. And it’s making a big impact on marketing, where it is adept at finding patterns and inferences in audience data, enabling brands to optimize their campaigns faster.
My main interest in the intersection of AI and creativity is in the area of creative problem-solving — supercharging our ability to think divergently and imagine new possibilities. In that realm, several simple but profound models of human/AI interaction are starting to emerge.
3 intriguing examples of human/AI creativity
OpenGenius calls its AI engine GenerateIdeas.ai, and it’s only available in the Pro version of the Ayoa mind mapping tool. To use it, you first select a topic in your diagram. You then tell it how many related ideas or questions you want it to add as subtopics. It searches a database of millions of associations — which OpenGenius says is equivalent to one-fourth of the Web — and inserts a set of ideas into your mind map. Instant serendipity!
ContextMinds is a concept mapping tool with something more: An AI engine that superpowers serendipity. As you add words and concepts to a ContextMinds…
