What exactly do you mean by "original?"

It used to be that at least human beings were the ones formulating the questions for AI to answer. At least that was a sign of the originality and creativity of the human mind. But that has quickly changed. ChatGPT now prompts human beings to ask if it wants questions answered that the human being hasn't yet asked. Is there a limit to the ability of AI to ask questions it hasn't been asked yet? Can AI be original?

So, what makes a question original? Obviously, if a question has't been asked before, then it would be original. But someone might think a question is original simply because the person is unaware that it has already been asked. Before the digital area, knowledge of whether a question had been asked before was limited to access to printed books and to the time needed to search those books. Now, that's not a factor. With AI, a person can search the internet to see if a specific question has already been asked. AI can expose the illusion that a person has original thoughts. Too bad for humans.

That still leaves the problem of what originality is. What is it? One of the strengths of human culture is that we share innovations and become so accustomed to what has been shared that we don't think that we didn't create it. On a basic level, as individuals we don't create the language we use. We don't create many of the ideas that are standard for us. We don't create the type of emotions we can feel And, in terms of creative arts like novels, we don't create the realistic behaviour of fictional characters that follows well-known patterns. Individual writers usually don't create the genres in which they write.

For instance, a romance novel or a science fiction novel follow the patterns of the genre that readers expect to find. Science fiction novels had an origin that developed with new science and technology, with pioneers in the genre like H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. Some science fiction writers occasionally introduce variations and innovations to the genre. But, after the initial stages of the creation of a new genre, what follows is generic and thus not essentially original.

The history of discovery and innovation is fascinating, even if there is some distortion in isolating discovery and innovation from the historical context that led to it. Thus there were a series of ideas that led to the moment that Charles Darwin wrote his book on natural selection. Unfortunately for Darwin, he worked so long on the unpublished manuscript, about 20 years, that Alfred Russel Wallace independently made the same discovery and Darwin had to share the honour with Wallace.

But what an individual thinks and feels seems original to the individual, even if it isn't.

I imagine that genuine originality might meet all these conditions:

• It makes sense in some way and is not simply an indecipherable, chaotic jumble.
• It has a form of truth or consistency to it.
• It is speculative.
• It is a unique reinterpretation, redefinition or reconfiguration. For example, the discoveries in psychology of Carl Jung built on reinterpreting dreams, myths and occult literature.
• It is counter-intuitive, paradoxical or contradictory to conventional thinking. For example, Zen questions.
• It has otherness and difference and yet still fits life.
• It is verifiably original.

So, to what extent are these criteria essentially human and will remain essentially human -- or can AI meet some of these criteria and maybe all of them some time in the future?

My podcast The Old Curiosity Podcast