Artificial Life (ALife) as an interdisciplinary field draws inspiration and influence from a variety of perspectives. Scientific progress crucially depends, then, on concerted efforts to invite cross-disciplinary dialogue. The goal of this paper is to revitalize discussions of potential connections between the fields of Computational Creativity (CC) and ALife, focusing specifically on the concept of Open-Endedness (OE); the primary goal of CC is to endow artificial systems with creativity, and ALife has dedicated much research effort into studying and synthesizing OE and artificial innovation. However, despite the close proximity of these concepts, their use so far remains confined to their respective communities, and their relationship is largely unclear. We provide historical context for research in both domains, and review the limited work connecting research on creativity and OE explicitly. We then highlight specific questions to be investigated in future work, with the eventual goals of (i) decreasing conceptual ambiguity by highlighting similarities and differences between the concepts of OE and creativity, (ii) identifying synergy effects of a research agenda that encompasses both concepts, and (iii) establishing a dialogue between ALife and CC research.

The enactive AI framework wants to overcome the sense-making limitations of embodied AI by drawing on the bio-systemic foundations of enactive cognitive science. While embodied AI tries to ground meaning in sensorimotor interaction, enactive AI adds further requirements by grounding sensorimotor interaction in autonomous agency. At the core of this shift is the requirement for a truly intrinsic value function. We suggest that empowerment, an information-theoretic quantity based on an agents embodiment, represents such a function. We highlight the role of empowerment maximisation in satisfying the requirements of enactive AI, i.e. establishing constitutive autonomy and adaptivity, in detail. We then argue that empowerment, grounded in a precarious existence, allows an agent to enact a world based on the relevance of environmental features in respect to its own identity.