Ideas and thought in the detours

For NYT Opinion, Giorgia Lupi argues that the best ideas come from getting lost:

The same is true for a great recipe, a great story or even a thoughtful PowerPoint presentation. A.I. may be (mostly) accurate, but it’s not considerate. The greatest contributions to humanity — art, inventions, even products — show evidence of people who got lost in a problem and came out the other side with an idea they would not have found otherwise. That does not happen by taking a shortcut to the center. It happens in the detours.

AI promotes skipping to the answer, which is useful when the problem is well-defined and the solution is concrete. But even then, you’re missing out on the in between.

Christoph Niemann shared a similar sentiment last year with art: “Automating the creation of art is like automating life, so you can make it to the finish line faster.” Terence Tao said similar with mathematics.

Lupi, Niemann, and Tao all use generative AI tools in their process. Just not for the ideas and pathfinding.