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Can a machine have an original idea?
Ada Lovelace wrote that her engine could originate nothing, only do what it was ordered to. Machines now turn up things no person has seen.
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A little context
Think of the last idea you were proud of, and try to trace where it came from: a half-remembered book, perhaps, or two things you had never put side by side until one afternoon. Very few ideas come from nowhere. The question is whether what you did with yours is something a machine could do too.
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- Is a thing worth more because it was hard to make?We prize the handmade and the hard-won. If a machine made the same thing in a second, ask what, if anything, would be missing from it.
- When does an idea become yours?An AI gives you the same opinion it gives thousands of others. Is it yours?
- If anyone can make anything in seconds, will anyone still be seen?The ability to produce does not guarantee that anyone has time to receive what is made.
