SCS Colloquium Presentation Announcement by Dr. Maya Ackerman: ”Generative AI and human creativity: What now?”

 

 

Date: Friday March 3, 2023
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm 
Location: Erie Hall, Room 3123
Reminders: 1. Two-part attendance mandatory (sign-in sheet, QR Code) 
2. Arrive 5-10 minutes prior to event starting - LATECOMERS WILL NOT BE ADMITTED. Note that due to demand, if the room has reached capacity, even if you are "early" admission is not guaranteed.
3. Please be respectful of the presenter by NOT knocking on the door for admittance once the door has been closed whether the presentation has begun or not (If the room is at capacity, overflow is not permitted (ie. sitting on floors) as this is a violation of the Fire Safety code).
4. Be respectful of the decision of the advisor/host of the event if you are not given admittance. The School of Computer Science has numerous events occurring in the near future.

While creative machines have existed since the 1950s, their debut into public awareness arose only at the end of 2022, largely due to the advent and popularization of large language models for the creation of text and art. This talk will walk through a brief history of creative machines from their origins in the field of Computational Creativity to their popularization under the recently coined term, Generative AI. Several systems for the creation of art and music will be showcased in an interactive demo. Challenging questions around the future of human creativity in the age of creative machines will be addressed, offering a roadmap for utilizing generative AI to elevate, rather than diminish, human creativity. 

 

Keywords: Generative AI, computational creativity, music, art

Maya Ackerman is a researcher in Generative AI and Computational Creativity, studying human-machine creativity in the context of text, music and art since 2014. Dr. Ackerman was an early advocate for human-centered generative AI, bringing awareness to the power of AI to profoundly elevate human creativity.  She is CEO/Co-founder of musical AI startup, WaveAI, and Assistant Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department at Santa Clara University.  Named “Woman of Influence” by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, interviews with Dr. Ackerman appear on NBC News, New Scientist, NPR, Grammy.com, SiriusXM and international television stations across the globe. Ackerman is a member of the Steering Committee of the Association on Computational Creativity and has been on the program and reviewing committees of twenty different AI journals and conferences. A sought-after speaker, she appeared on many top stages, including the United Nations, IBM Research, Microsoft and Stanford University. She earned her PhD from the University of Waterloo, held postdoctoral fellowships at Caltech and UC San Diego.