TDS Archive

An archive of data science, data analytics, data engineering, machine learning, and artificial intelligence writing from the former Towards Data Science Medium publication.

Member-only story

Can Machines Dream? On the Creativity of Large Language Models

Exploring the Role of Hallucinations, Dependencies, and Imagination in AI Creativity

Salvatore Raieli
TDS Archive
Published in
11 min readJan 31, 2025

--

“Discover the creativity of large language models through thought-provoking visuals, exploring AI imagination, the role of hallucinations, and the factors influencing machine creativity
Image generated by the author using DALL-E

Creativity requires the courage to let go of certainties. — Erich Fromm

Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way. — Edward de Bono

Creativity is considered along with the ability to reason a uniquely human ability. The arrival of Large Language Models (LLMs) and their ability to mimic human skills has begun to undermine this view. There has been much discussion about whether LLMs are capable of reasoning, but less about the creativity of these models.

Quantifying reasoning is easier (evaluation is conducted on problem-solving benchmark datasets), but quantifying creativity is more complex. Nevertheless, creativity is one of the activities that makes us human: writing books and screenplays, generating poetry and works of art, making groundbreaking discoveries, or devising theories all require creativity.

--

--

TDS Archive
TDS Archive

Published in TDS Archive

An archive of data science, data analytics, data engineering, machine learning, and artificial intelligence writing from the former Towards Data Science Medium publication.

Salvatore Raieli
Salvatore Raieli

Written by Salvatore Raieli

Senior data scientist | about science, machine learning, and AI. Top writer in Artificial Intelligence

Responses (2)