Introduction

Abstract

Computational creativity, a relatively new sub-field of artificial intelligence (AI), focuses on making machines perform tasks or produce objects that would be deemed creative by human standards. Also relevant are the methods through which this can be achieved. The field is particularly relevent today when AI has already achieved numerous milestones in tasks that were once considered doable by only humans. The most prominent example may be the defeat in 1997 of world chess champion at the time, Garry Kasparov by IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer in a 6-game match held under tournament conditions. The roots of computational creativity, however, stem not only from AI but also psychology and philosophy. Some philosophers, for example, have had issues with the very idea that computers could in any way be as creative as a human, if at all; much less that they could possibly exceed the creative capacity of a human being. Regardless, the experimental evidence emerging from computational creativity strongly suggest otherwise. In this chapter, we briefly introduce the field to readers and outline the material in the chapters that follow.