alt Hacker News>GenAI is great at combining existing things in new ways (interpolation). It's terrible at creating new things from scratch (extrapolation).
I think you believe a fallacy about how human cognition works if you think we actually do something different than interpolation
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I think this is somehow related to GenAI’s issue of “confident incorrectness”. I’ve been trying to prompt GenAI with some highly challenging prompts recently, especially terse ones:
> Which Anjunabeats and Anjunadeep compilations have the most breakbeat tracks?
GenAI was able to give me breakbeat tracks that were on the Anjuna labels, but it completely flubbed on whether and which those tracks were on compilations. It was very confidently, mostly incorrect.
I think this is somehow isomorphic to the “interpolation vs extrapolation” issue. GenAI is forced to generate an answer, and there’s no mechanism by which we can interrogate the model for its confidence (at least, that’s my understanding).
And yet, I asked “How confident are you in your answer along different dimensions, ie whether those tracks are breakbeat, whether they are Anjuna tracks, or whether they are on those compilations?”
And its answer was surprisingly satisfying, it only gave 30% confidence that the tracks were on the compilations, which is where it flubbed.
Anyway, personal observations, GenAI is meant to be interacted with, not just a single prompt black box.
Then where do new ideas come from? Do the muses bestow divine creativity upon artists, poets, and musicians?