Speed is not the solution to Generative AI

What is it about human thought and creativity that cannot be captured by a computer?

I have always said that humans are smart but slow, while computers are dumb but fast. A human plus a computer is very powerful.

Generative AI is all about making computers think for themselves. Despite the doomsday warnings and related fantasy, computers remain a dumb workhorse. Researchers have decided to buy ever more computer power to try to emulate human creativity. But this hasn’t worked,  nor do I think it will, because no matter how much a computer can access information, this is probably not the key to creativity.

It is worth emphasising here that there is a difference between knowledge and intelligence.  Providing a computer with as much memory and information as possible will definitely make it knowledgeable but will it make it intelligent?  Elon Musk famously diverted a shipment of Nvidia processors from Tesla to SpaceX to provide the computer power to know everything.  But Musk is wrong in believing that this will trip the intelligence switch.  A dumb computer with access to a faster processor and all the information in the world is still a dumb computer. Knowing what has failed historically is valuable in so far as you can avoid repeated failure but it does not stimulate creative success.

Why are humans slow thinkers? Rather than this being a weakness, perhaps this is a creativity trait? Humans do not know everything but given a limited dataset can conjure up brilliant solutions. Rather than combing through billions of potential combinations, could it be that restricting knowledge to a limited set can stimulate a leap of thought that creatively bridges the gap? Asking questions is a human trait and the first step toward finding a solution…