Does more intelligence → more creativity? The paper takes this question more seriously than most.
"I thought AlphaGo was based on probability calculation and that it was merely a machine. But when I saw this move, I changed my mind. Surely AlphaGo is creative. This move was really creative and beautiful. […] It was a really meaningful move."
— Lee Sae Dol, after Move 37
The paper uses this as the canonical example of AI creativity — but argues it's a limited form.
The paper imports Margaret Boden's framework. Creativity = novel + surprising + valuable. And three nested levels:
| Level | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Combinational | Unfamiliar combinations of familiar ideas | Poetic imagery, recombining engineering modules |
| Exploratory | Finding new elements within existing conceptual spaces | Composing in a known style; AlphaGo Move 37 |
| Transformative | Creating entirely new conceptual spaces | Quantum mechanics, Picasso's Cubism, inventing a new genre |
"It can be argued that AI achievements to date — such as Move 37, the automated proving of new theorems, or the discovery of novel protein structures via AlphaFold — belong predominantly to Boden's first and second levels. They represent profound exploratory creativity within well-defined, human-provided conceptual spaces."
Move 37 and AlphaFold are exploratory, not transformative. They find new elements in human-defined spaces; they don't invent the space.
Transformative creativity ≈ inventing new conceptual primitives ≈ overcoming the abstraction barrier.
"Reaching Boden's third level, transformative creativity, may be the hallmark requirement of ASI."
This is the strongest definition of ASI the paper offers: not "smarter than humans" but "can invent new conceptual frameworks the way Einstein, Newton, or Cubism did."
By this bar, no current system is close.
The paper carefully separates these: - Scientific creativity — grounded in predictive power and empirical truth. Objectively scoreable. - Artistic creativity — value is socially constructed, requires deep understanding of human culture and emotional tendencies. Harder for an alien intelligence to perform meaningfully.
For an ASI to exhibit transformative artistic creativity, it would need genuine grounded understanding of human culture and its trajectory. This is a different (and arguably harder) requirement than scientific creativity.