Three Levels of Creativity
-
Interpolation: Averaging what's been seen — generating a "new" cat image that's really just a blend of training data. Not truly creative.
-
Extrapolation: Creating strategies humans never conceived — AlphaGo's Move 37 against Lee Sedol. A move with less than 1-in-10,000 chance of a human playing it. This changed Go forever.
-
Invention: Creating entirely new games or concepts — like designing something as elegant as Go from scratch. Current AI cannot do this because the objective function is too abstract.
Why LLMs Can't Produce Move 37
AlphaGo had two components: model + search. The model alone achieves master/grandmaster level — good pattern matching, most likely moves. But search is what enables exploration beyond known territory, into new branches of the knowledge tree.
"Without search, the model just plays the most plausible move based on patterns. It can reach grandmaster level but not world champion, and never produce a Move 37."
Current LLMs have no search component — they can only combine training data, not explore beyond it.
Future Outlook
"Agent-based systems that are coming soon should be able to produce Move 37-like results."