I’m not sure what the concept of and “entirely new” or “fully novel” idea means in practice. How many such things actually exist and how often should we expect any mind however intelligent to find one? Ideas can be more or less novel, and we can have thresholds for measuring that, but where should we place the bar?
If you place it at “generate a correct or useful hypothesis you don’t actually have enough data to locate in idea-space” then that seems like a mistake.
I’d put it more near “generate and idea good enough to lead to a publishable scientific paper or grantable patent.” This still seems pretty close to that? Sometimes “obvious” implications to scientific papers go unacknowledged or unexplored for a very long time.
If we make the criteria too strict, then maybe I never had a single Original Thought™ in my life. Everything is just a remix.
I suspect that in practice, “original thought” means a combination that was never made (popular) before, if it seems to work or passes some other criteria (e.g. artistic), i.e. not just a random text.
I agree, but when people want to use the presence or absence of Original Thought™ as a criterion for judging the capabilities of AI, then drawing that line somewhere matters, and the judge should write it down, even if it is approximate.
I’m not sure what the concept of and “entirely new” or “fully novel” idea means in practice. How many such things actually exist and how often should we expect any mind however intelligent to find one? Ideas can be more or less novel, and we can have thresholds for measuring that, but where should we place the bar?
If you place it at “generate a correct or useful hypothesis you don’t actually have enough data to locate in idea-space” then that seems like a mistake.
I’d put it more near “generate and idea good enough to lead to a publishable scientific paper or grantable patent.” This still seems pretty close to that? Sometimes “obvious” implications to scientific papers go unacknowledged or unexplored for a very long time.
If we make the criteria too strict, then maybe I never had a single Original Thought™ in my life. Everything is just a remix.
I suspect that in practice, “original thought” means a combination that was never made (popular) before, if it seems to work or passes some other criteria (e.g. artistic), i.e. not just a random text.
I agree, but when people want to use the presence or absence of Original Thought™ as a criterion for judging the capabilities of AI, then drawing that line somewhere matters, and the judge should write it down, even if it is approximate.