My take on Kuhn's paradigm shift is that it's still incremental progress, but the shift happens at a meta level. I.e., for the scientific example, you need some accumulated amount of observations and hypotheses before the paradigm shift can happen, and while the science "before" and "after" may look hugely different, it's still the case that the insight causing the shift is still incremental. In the periods before paradigm shifts, the science didn't stay still, waiting for a lone genius to make a big conceptual leap that randomly happened to hit paydirt -- if we could do such probability-defying miracles, we'd have special relativity figured out by Ancient Greeks. No, the science just kept accumulating observations and insights, narrowing down the search space until someone (usually several someones around the world, at the same time) was in the right place and context to see the next step and take it.
This kind of follows from the fact that, even if the paradigm-shifting insight was caused by some miracle feat of a unique superhuman genius, it still wouldn't shift anything until everyone else in the field was able to verify the genius was right, that they found the right answer, as oppose to a billion different possible wrong answers. To do that, the entire field had to have accumulated enough empirical evidence and theoretical understanding to already be within one or two "regular smart scholar" leaps from that insight.
With art, I have less experience, but my gut instinct tells me that even there, "artistic inspiration" can be too big a leap from what was before, as otherwise other people would not recognize or appreciate it. Also, unlike science, the definition of "art" is self-referential: art is what people recognize as art.
Still, I think you make a good point here, and convinced me that potential for creativity of LLMs, in their current architecture, is limited and below that of humans. You said:
> While LLMs might be capable of some forms of creativity depending on how you define it, I think it remains to be seen how LLMs' current architecture could on its own accomplish the kinds of creativity implicit in scientific progress in the Kuhnian sense of a paradigm shift or in what some describe as a leap of artistic inspiration.
I think the limit stems strictly from LLMs being trained off-line. I believe LLMs could go as far as making the paradigm-shifting "Kuhnian leap", but they wouldn't be able to increment on it further. Compared to humans, LLMs are all "system 1" and almost none "system 2" - they rely on "intuition"[0], which heavily biases them towards things they've learned before. In a wake of a paradigm shift, a human can make themselves gradually unlearn their own intuitions. LLM's can't, without being retrained. Because of that, the forms of creativity that involve making a paradigm-shifting leap and making a few steps forward from it are not within reach of any current model.
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[0] - LLMs basically output things that seem most likely given what came before; I think this is the same phenomenon as when humans think and say what "feels like best" in context. However, we can pause and override this; LLMs can't, because they're just run in a forward pass - they neither have an internal loop, nor are they trained for the ability to control an external one.
This kind of follows from the fact that, even if the paradigm-shifting insight was caused by some miracle feat of a unique superhuman genius, it still wouldn't shift anything until everyone else in the field was able to verify the genius was right, that they found the right answer, as oppose to a billion different possible wrong answers. To do that, the entire field had to have accumulated enough empirical evidence and theoretical understanding to already be within one or two "regular smart scholar" leaps from that insight.
With art, I have less experience, but my gut instinct tells me that even there, "artistic inspiration" can be too big a leap from what was before, as otherwise other people would not recognize or appreciate it. Also, unlike science, the definition of "art" is self-referential: art is what people recognize as art.
Still, I think you make a good point here, and convinced me that potential for creativity of LLMs, in their current architecture, is limited and below that of humans. You said:
> While LLMs might be capable of some forms of creativity depending on how you define it, I think it remains to be seen how LLMs' current architecture could on its own accomplish the kinds of creativity implicit in scientific progress in the Kuhnian sense of a paradigm shift or in what some describe as a leap of artistic inspiration.
I think the limit stems strictly from LLMs being trained off-line. I believe LLMs could go as far as making the paradigm-shifting "Kuhnian leap", but they wouldn't be able to increment on it further. Compared to humans, LLMs are all "system 1" and almost none "system 2" - they rely on "intuition"[0], which heavily biases them towards things they've learned before. In a wake of a paradigm shift, a human can make themselves gradually unlearn their own intuitions. LLM's can't, without being retrained. Because of that, the forms of creativity that involve making a paradigm-shifting leap and making a few steps forward from it are not within reach of any current model.
--
[0] - LLMs basically output things that seem most likely given what came before; I think this is the same phenomenon as when humans think and say what "feels like best" in context. However, we can pause and override this; LLMs can't, because they're just run in a forward pass - they neither have an internal loop, nor are they trained for the ability to control an external one.