The Creativity Code. Marcus du Sautoy

      

      

       Copyright

      4th Estate

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.4thEstate.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by 4th Estate in 2019

      Copyright © Marcus du Sautoy 2019

      Marcus du Sautoy asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      All reasonable efforts have been made by the author and the publisher to trace the copyright holders of the images and material quoted in this book. In the event that the author or publisher are contacted by any of the untraceable copyright holders after the publication of this book, the author and the publisher will endeavour to rectify the position accordingly.

      Diagrams redrawn by Martin Brown

      Cover image © Hands of God and Adam, detail from The Creation of Adam, from the Sistine Ceiling, 1511 (fresco) (pre restoration), Buonarroti, Michelangelo (1475-1564) / Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City / Bridgeman Images

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008288198

      Ebook Edition © March 2019 ISBN: 9780008288167

      Version: 2020-01-30

       Dedication

       To Shani, for all her love and support, creativity and intelligence

      CONTENTS

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

1 The Lovelace Test

2 Creating Creativity

3 Ready, Steady, Go

4 Algorithms, the Secret to Modern Life

       5 From Top Down to Bottom Up

       6 Algorithmic Evolution

       7 Painting by Numbers

       8 Learning from the Masters

       9 The Art of Mathematics

       10 The Mathematician’s Telescope

       11 Music: The Process of Sounding Mathematics

       12 The Songwriting Formula

       13 DeepMathematics

       14 Language Games

       15 Let AI Tell You a Story

       16 Why We Create: A Meeting of Minds

       Footnote

       Illustrations

       Further Reading

       Index

       Acknowledgements

       By the same author

       About the Publisher

       1

       THE LOVELACE TEST

       Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.

      Claude Debussy

      The machine was a thing of beauty. Towers of gears with numbers on their teeth pinned to rods driven by a handle that you turned. The seventeen-year-old Ada Byron was transfixed as she cranked the handle of Charles Babbage’s machine to watch it crunch numbers, calculate squares and cubes and even square roots. Byron had always had a fascination with machines, fanned by the tutors her mother had been happy to provide.

      Studying Babbage’s plans some years later for the Analytical Engine, it dawned on Ada, now married to the Earl of Lovelace, that this was more than just a number cruncher. She began to record what it might be capable of. ‘The Analytical Engine does not occupy common ground with mere “calculating machines.” It holds a position wholly its own, and the considerations it suggests are more interesting in their nature.’

      Ada Lovelace’s notes are now recognised as the first inroads into the creation of code. That kernel of an idea has blossomed into the artificial intelligence revolution that is sweeping the world today, fuelled by the work of pioneers like Alan Turing, Marvin Minsky and Donald Michie. Yet Lovelace was cautious as to how much any machine