Question Asking, Artificial Intelligence, And Human Creativity
Thomas W. Lauer, Eileen Peacock, Arthur C. Graesser · Psychology Press eBooks · 2013
The central claim of this chapter is that the key to creativity lies in the ability to ask oneself useful questions. To support and elaborate this claim I discuss two computer programs that 1 have developed, which take two rather different approaches to studying the role of question asking in the creative process. The first program is an artificial intelligence (AI) system called ABE (Adaptation-Based Explainer). ABE attempts to develop creative hypotheses by adapting stored explanations to new situations. ABE&s;s ability to tweak its stored explanations is based on a set of hypothesis-adaρtation questions that the program knows how to ask itself. The second program, called Sounding Board, is a piece of educational software that attempts to teach users how to develop creative solutions to problems by teaching them to ask themselves useful questions. Sounding Board is not itself creative, but the combination of Sounding Board and a user can be more creative than the user alone. Sounding Board can help a user put the facts and rules he knows to creative use.