Creativity at the Metalevel

Creativity is sometimes taken to be an inexplicable aspect of human activity. By summarizing a considerable body of literature on creativity, I hope to show how to turn some of the best ideas about creativity into programs that are demonstrably more creative than any we have seen to date. I believe the key to building more creative programs is to give them the ability to reflect on and modify their own frameworks and criteria. That is, I believe that the key to creativity is at the metalevel. In the AAAI-1998 Presidential Address, for example, David Waltz said that creativity is a key topic for AI research because it is an essential element of human intelligence (Waltz 1999).