Why Computer AI Will Never Do What We Imagine It Can

A new method for training creativity: narrative as an alternative to divergent thinking

“…Fire, in other words, becomes a symbol (fire) that signals the necessary existence of smoke, rather than a material action that produces smoke. As a result, the physical processes involved in action are lost, deleting the causal mechanisms that makes narrative into narrative. The same contradiction recurs when computation attempts to generate narrative: it is forced to render causation as correlation, thereby making action symbolic, distorting physics into semiotics, and replicating the magical thinking of late medieval science 131,132 …”

“…The same contradiction recurs when computation attempts to generate narrative: it is forced to render causation as correlation, thereby making action symbolic, distorting physics into semiotics, and replicating the magical thinking of late medieval science 131,132 …”

“…Creativity has been linked to emotion and self‐efficacy, yet emotion and self‐efficacy are linked in the mind not with logic but with narrative 27,39,82,83,92,210–214 Because divergent thinking is a computational process, it can be (and has been) automated via AI; yet, even though AI can execute divergent thinking at vastly greater scale and efficiency than humans, it has not shown improved aptitude at most creative tasks 132,161 Original action is a major component of new business plans, technological innovations, military strategies, marketing campaigns, political platforms, commercial art (e.g., novels and films), personal biographies, and daily behaviors, yet narrative has been restricted in current creativity research to the selective, postgenerative phase of innovation 29,53,215–217 …”

“…Because divergent thinking is a computational process, it can be (and has been) automated via AI; yet, even though AI can execute divergent thinking at vastly greater scale and efficiency than humans, it has not shown improved aptitude at most creative tasks 132,161 …”

“…The same contradiction recurs when computation attempts to generate narrative: it is forced to render causation as correlation, thereby making action symbolic, distorting physics into semiotics, and replicating the magical thinking of late medieval science. 131,132 In our day and age, when computation is the most well-articulated and pervasive analogy for reductionist models of human cognition, the claim that narrative is a mental act that cannot be computed may seem a prelude to invoking emergent properties, consciousness, or even the ineffable. But many mechanical problem-solving processes (e.g., sawing, hammering, wrenching, and screwing) are noncomputational, and the same goes for narrative cognition's process of thinking from causes to effects.…”