The Grounding Problem and Co-Creative AI
Source: AI Mind Labs / Medium
Author: Mary Lou Maher
Original source: https://medium.com/ai-mind-labs/the-grounding-problem-and-co-creative-ai-1b3348a0150e
Private backup: the full article text is archived in the private repository at archives/articles/medium-com-the-grounding-problem-and-co-creative-ai-1b3348a0150e.source.md. It is not published on the public Quartz site.
Summary
The article uses the grounding problem to explain how generative AI can produce outputs perceived as meaningful or creative despite operating over symbols or vectors. It distinguishes symbol grounding and vector grounding, then argues that referential grounding can connect symbolic cognitive models and vector-based generative models through shared concepts in the world. The author proposes that co-creative AI can be strengthened by integrating cognitive models of creativity, expectation, surprise, novelty, and human values with deep learning models. The larger claim is that grounding can support alignment, instructability, and more meaningful human-AI co-creation.
Big ideas
- Students need to bring the purpose; AI should not supply it for them
- AI is changing what knowledge work asks people to do
Claims
- Co-creative AI needs shared concepts about the world
- AI can reshape a student’s purpose, but it should not replace it
Key evidence and examples
- The article defines grounding types including sensorimotor, communicative, epistemic, relational, and referential grounding.
- Symbolic representations and vector representations are both described as mapping to concepts in the world.
- Computational creativity models include expectation, surprise, similarity, novelty, semantic distance, and syntactic distance.
- Co-creative design systems are described where a human sketches and AI provides inspirational sketches through cognitive-model/generative-model interaction.
Education relevance
Indirect but useful for advanced AI literacy, computational creativity, design learning, co-creative tools, and discussions of alignment and meaning-making.