In the 1960’s a computer had successfully created stanzas of a haiku that were judged by participants as making some kind of sense. That’s the earliest example I know of anything minimally passing as creativity.

One of the earliest discoveries in science by a computer came from a niche of organic chemistry. The computer (DENDRAL) used conceptual space-mapping. Basically, the computer software searched a pre-defined space by using constraints then used the brute force of a computer to run combinations. It suggested new hypotheses by identifying patterns that would have impossible by humans to calculate.

Another computer program showed that a computer could be “spontaneously creative” by improvising jazz music. Just like DENDRAL, the computer program needed a very specific set of rules for the conceptual-space and acceptable ways to travel through jazz music (general rules of which notes or set of notes go well together). The program was not only good at keeping up with jazz improvisation, but it also came up with new combinations that human jazz improvisers had missed.

Creativity in computers tends to be extremely limited. Computers usually need a lot of help structuring problems. Asking a computer to “just go” doesn’t work. The conceptual-space and the rules to follow have to be very well defined.