Creative Machines: AI, Art & Us

While the economic potential of generative AI is becoming increasingly obvious, much has been made of the threats the technology poses to creative professionals. Commentators now often warn about the coming “replacement” or “eradication” of human creativity. But what if the reality is more promising than that? What if generative AI can be harnessed to improve and expand our creative capabilities?

In Creative Machines: AI, Art & Us, world- renowned artificial intelligence researcher and generative AI pioneer, Maya Ackerman, describes the thrilling journey of the rise of creative AI. You’ll explore the stories of the earliest pioneers, as well as the cutting-edge tools shaping music, art, and human imagination today.

Ackerman cuts through the mountains of hype and smoke around artificial intelligence, revealing the true capabilities, limitations, risks, and opportunities of generative AI. She champions its potential to supercharge human creativity without replacing it. In this book, the author draws on psychology, neuroscience, and her own cutting-edge research to reveal how generative AI exposes the brilliance and blind spots of human society. She explains our human ingenuity, our biases, our assumptions about intelligence and identity, and how artificial intelligence transforms these discussions.

Creative Machines outlines the hidden history and explosive growth of AI- generative creativity and explores the contributions of creative AI. It presents a visionary framework for using artificial intelligence as a tool to enhance―rather than replace―human creativity and offers a bold new perspective on AI ethics and why “fixing” AI is not enough.

Perfect for technology leaders, developers, ethicists, and creative professionals, Creative Machines provides eye-opening new insights, compelling stories, and a visionary perspective on AI’s impact on human society. It’s an essential read for anyone doing their best to navigate the quickly changing landscapes of generative AI, technology, the arts, and business.

Praise for Creative Machines

“Creative Machines challenges the illusion of either/or―inviting us to embrace the trans­formative power of and. It’s a visionary call to dissolve the artificial boundaries between art and technology, the physical and digital, prose and code. This isn’t about machines becoming human― it’s about humans fully realizing our potential.”
―HANNAH GELLER, Emmy-nominated Producer

“This book hits at exactly the right moment. In an industry flooded with fast tech, Creative Machines asks the deeper questions: about artistry, AI, and where we actually want this to go.”
―DANIEL ROWLAND, Oscar-winning, Grammy-nominated Audio Engineer and Producer

“Creative Machines opens up a critical and often overlooked part of the AI conversation: how these tools are actually used by real people in creative workflows.”
―MATEI ZAHARIA, CTO of Databricks and Professor at the University of California, Berkeley

A BOLD AND EYE-OPENING JOURNEY INTO AI’S POWER TO TRANSFORM HUMAN CREATIVITY

Creative Machines: AI, Art & Us, by renowned generative AI researcher and pioneer, Maya Ackerman, is an exciting and original new discussion of the rise of creative artificial intelligence. She takes you on a journey that begins with the earliest AI trailblazers and concludes with examinations of the contemporary, cutting-edge tools shaping music, art, and human imagination today.

Ackerman demolishes the hype and misinformation that surrounds generative AI to reveal the opportunities and dangers that the technology actually presents. She draws on psychology, neuroscience, and her own data-driven research to explain how generative artificial intelligence can enhance the brilliance and expose the blind spots in human creativity.

Creative Machines is an exciting and practical walk-through of the creative and imaginative dimensions of our humanity―our ingenuity, biases, intelligence, and identities―and how we can build on them using AI. It’s a must-read for developers, founders, ethicists, artists, business leaders, and anyone else interested in harnessing the latest developments in tech to discover new ways of doing business, creating art, and explaining the world around us.