PPIG 2022 - 33rd Annual Workshop
Coding or AI? Tools for Control, Surprise and Creativity
Alan F. Blackwell
Abstract: This essay presents an argument, accessible to non-specialists, for creative tools that are conceived as programming languages rather than as creative artificial intelligences (AI). The computational implications of creative experience are explained (again, for non-specialists) in terms of fundamentals of information theory. Using analogies to musical instruments, and drawing on recent advances in generative large language models, the paper explains the potential of aleatoric and stochastic elements in programming languages for live coding, and contrasts these with the opportunity for generative language models to be incorporated in programming tools.