Do androids dream of gorillas that play the drums?

This weekend the artificial intelligence group Deepmind solved a 50-year-old problem involving 3D protein folding.

Which got me re-visiting thoughts about the possibility of a future where AI creative is the norm.

In recent years we’ve seen AI creative directors road tested. 

The resulting campaigns haven’t massively troubled their flesh and blood counterparts.

More of a novelty than a threat.

On top of that we know that AI programs exhibit racial and gender biases.

For example, female names would be associated with more with family words than career words, and Black names would be seen negatively in comparison to white names.

On these biases, Joanna Bryson, a computer scientist at the University of Bath has said: ‘A lot of people are saying this is showing that AI is prejudiced. No. This is showing we’re prejudiced and that AI is learning it.’

Basically if machines are interpreting data that encodes our deep-rooted issues, they’ll end up amplifying them.

You could say this reveals we have more pressing issues to sort out before we worry about the machines rising up.

But the thing about people is – as flawed as we are, we dream of being better. 

And these dreams exist in the space between the ones and zeros.

These dreams drive creative people to head down rabbit holes in search of ideas that create emotion, entertain or inspire action and change. 

AI can’t replicate the divergent thinking required to dream up a drum-playing gorilla as a means to emotionally reconnect the chocolate-buying public to a brand.

Only people can do that.

For now…

The day that AI figures out the beauty and chaos of the human soul, I think we’ll have bigger things to worry about than robots that can make ads…

Last one to the nuclear bunker is a rotten egg.