Farewell Talk: Concept Blending: A Cognitively Inspired Method for Artificial Creativity

This is Manfred Eppe's last seminar at the DSF institute — quite informal, but with a perspective worth keeping. Around 50,000 years ago, the "human spark" may have emerged when humans became able to combine mental spaces in flexible, double-scope ways. This ability to blend concepts might be why humankind entered a phase of rapid cultural and technological development — from tools and art to mathematics and language. At the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona (IIIA-CSIC), Manfred explored how such blending can be made computational: represent concepts logically, find common structure, generalise, combine, check consistency, evaluate. The central question: how can AI — especially generative AI — be used to implement, extend, or replace this blending process? In that sense, we might currently be witnessing the AI spark, where artificial entities enter a phase of rapid and unprecedented development.