SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) Professor of Technology Management, Dr. Robert Edgell, recently published a paper titled, “A monstrous matter: The three faces of artificial creativity” in the Journal of Creativity, which analyzes the potential affordances, constraints and pitfalls brought about by the deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) models.

Researchers, practitioners and educators have explored this topic through a focus on artificial creativity (AC). According to Edgell, the creativity community sees AC as a sociotechnical network that has become a “deeply consternating and contested monster.”

Edgell’s critical self-reflection paper seeks to understand the community's concerns and, thereby, to discern theoretical insights that conceptually contribute towards a theory of AC. Drawing on autoethnography, he identified three distinct perceived matters of concern represented by anthropomorphic personalities or faces of AC: Trickster, Surveyor, and Harbinger. Edgell notes that his findings reveal that the Trickster is the most monstrous and disconcerting face of AC, while Surveyor provides surveillance, measurement, and calculation, and the Harbinger announces competing future visions, one of utopian hope and the other of dystopian despair. He concludes by discussing the implications of three underlying theoretical variables: trust, creative value, and creative personal identity.

To read his latest research, click here.