The Harsh Reality: LLMs (a.k.a. AI) Have No Creativity

Contrary to the misconception that "the misconception that AI lacks creativity is false," AI indeed lacks creativity.

Here, when I say AI, I'm referring to LLMs like ChatGPT. I'm not trying to discuss abstract concepts like "true creativity." It doesn't matter if there's a parrot or a person inside the LLM. The point is that they haven't produced any practical, creative results in the real world. I'm only concerned with the "practical" sense of "lacking creativity."

I don't have any theoretical basis for my claim. However, this makes my argument strong because I'm not proposing a hypothesis. The basis for my claim is simply my observations from reality.

LLMs seem to be good at certain creative tasks. When people say this, they probably mean that LLMs are good at things like "creating a Shakespearean-style rap using McDonald's menu items." They're also good at other creative tasks, such as:

1. Finding commonalities between a chair and the sun.

2. Coming up with unique settings for a novel, like a scenario where a dinosaur from the past becomes the President of the United States. Out of all the novel settings I've prompted ChatGPT to generate, the most entertaining one was where people became addicted to counting the number of pigeons, but it turned out they were actually counting the number of times they blinked.

I don't know if these tasks are truly creative. I'm not going to define what "creativity" means here. When I say LLMs lack creativity, I simply mean that they can't be used practically for tasks that I consider creative. Also, I'm not saying AI can't generate new content. It's just that the content is terrible.

I admit that my criteria for what I consider creative is vague. To explain it roughly, it means work that is not just modifying something that already exists. More specifically, when I say that LLMs can't do creative work, I mean that I have never actually used an answer obtained from a prompt like "Create something new and original (text content, technology, novel scenario, etc.)" in real life.

I've tried many times to get creative results from LLMs because it would be awesome if it were possible. However, I've never gotten a single usable result. Not once. They were all terrible.

When the term "truly new" comes up, people often say, "Creating something truly new is done by only a tiny fraction of people." But the bar for "truly new" in the sense that LLMs can't do it is incredibly low.

Based on my experience, I don't think LLMs could come up with the core content of any of my blog posts unless I roleplay as Socrates and forcefully guide them in that direction. The same goes for my various coding-related ideas.

So, am I a genius? If so, I'd appreciate some sponsorship.

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