Instead of replicating the past, artificial intelligence should be used to create the art of the future

Last week, the world's leading experts in artificial intelligence converged on the Canadian city of Montreal for one of the biggest gatherings in their field. On Saturday, the 2018 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) hosted a workshop titled "AI for Social Good". The assembled crowd were not treated to the usual conference staples of robot demonstrations or video presentations showcasing new algorithms that promise to revolutionise healthcare systems. Instead, they were greeted with a solo performance by the superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma, followed by a session on artificial intelligence, ethics and the arts. The history of artificial intelligence is littered with algorithms that were supposed to mimic the most complex feats of human creativity, from problem-solving to writing poems, composing music and painting portraits.