The Creativity Code, Marcus du Sautoy
The Creativity Code, Marcus du Sautoy
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The Creativity Code
Art and Innovation in the Age of AI

Author: Marcus du Sautoy

Narrator: Rich Keeble

Unabridged: 9 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/15/2019


Synopsis

The award-winning author of The Music of the Primes explores the future of creativity and how machine learning will disrupt, enrich, and transform our understanding of what it means to be human.Can a well-programmed machine do anything a human can―only better? Complex algorithms are buying our groceries, picking our partners, and driving our investments. They can navigate more data than a doctor or lawyer and act with greater precision. For many years we’ve taken solace in the notion that they can’t create. But now that algorithms can learn and adapt, does the future of creativity belong to machines too?It is hard to imagine a better guide to the bewildering world of artificial intelligence than Marcus du Sautoy, a celebrated Oxford mathematician whose work on symmetry in the ninth dimension has taken him to the vertiginous edge of mathematical understanding. In The Creativity Code he considers what machine learning means for the future of creativity. Programs like Deep Dream produce drip paintings that could fool students of Jackson Pollock; Deep Jazz composes music in the style of Duke Ellington. But do these programs just mimic, or do they have what it takes to create? Du Sautoy argues that to answer this question, we need to understand how the algorithms that drive them work―and this brings him back to his own subject of mathematics, with its puzzles, constraints, and enticing possibilities.Where most recent books on AI focus on the future of work, The Creativity Code moves us to the forefront of creative new technologies and offers a more positive and unexpected vision of our future cohabitation with machines.

About Marcus du Sautoy

Marcus du Sautoy is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford and the bestselling author of The Music of the Primes, Symmetry, and The Great Unknown. A trumpeter and member of an experimental theater group, he has written and presented over a dozen documentaries, including The Code and The Secret Rules of Modern Living: Algorithms. He also created the codes for Lauren Child’s Ruby Redfort mysteries. He has received the Berwick Prize, the Zeeman Medal, and the Royal Society’s Michael Faraday Prize, among other honors.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Manny

Before I start in on the criticism (there will be criticism), let me say at once that if you're a geek like me you'll find this damn book unputdownable. It is stuffed full of excellent anecdotes about AI, computer science, mathematics and allied subjects, and if you're the sort of person who wants t......more

Goodreads review by Brian

At first glance this might just be another 'What AI is good at and not so good at' title. And in a way, it is. But, wow, what a brilliant book! Marcus du Sautoy takes us on a tour of what artificial intelligence has achieved (and possibly can in the future achieve) in a range of fields from his own......more

Goodreads review by James

The book claims to explore how Artificial Intelligence (AI) will or will not replace human creativity, in poetry, music, and mathematics. It begins with AlphaGo, an AI program that taught itself to play Go and become the strongest player in the world in very short order. I was disappointed. The book......more

Goodreads review by Sara

For someone who loves science but whose math skills = suspected dyscalculia, this book is a joy. Du Sautoy explains the math in such a way that I was able to try out the problems before engaging in the concepts, and believe me, that’s a feat right there. I could have done with fewer words on Google’......more


Quotes

“Fact-packed and funny, questioning what we mean by creative and unsettling the script about what it means to be human, The Creativity Code is a brilliant travel guide to the coming world of AI.” Jeanette Winterson, author of The Gap of Time

“Marcus du Sautoy is, in this remarkable consideration of the limitations and possibilities of AI, the light-bearer, illuminating not only the work of coders and creators but the mathematics of chaos that underpin art.” Hans Ulrich Obrist, director of the Serpentine Gallery and author of The Interview Project

“This compelling and thought-provoking book by mathematician and musician Marcus du Sautoy…[reveals] what it actually means to be creative.” Jim Al-Khalili, professor of theoretical physics and presenter of The Secret Life of Chaos