Edward Hughes
Works on artificial intelligence systems built to generate genuinely new knowledge rather than just apply existing knowledge, as co-founder and chief scientist...
“I don't think that move 37 was creative. I think that move 37 was innovative without being creative.”
Machine Learning Street Talk · AI Research & Frontier Labs · September 2026
Context
Tim Scarfe had just said he assumed the two of them agreed that AlphaGo's move 37 was creative. Hughes contradicts him on the spot and spends the rest of the turn separating the two words: innovation is turning unknown unknowns into known knowns, while creativity requires someone to recognise afterwards that the thing done was creative. His follow-up question is who did that recognising for move 37.
Transcript
…because it's just too complicated for us to be examining all of them in combination. And the promise, I think, of AI scientist systems, agents that really understand this horizontal, is that they might be able to weaken multiple constraints at once and thereby enhance the ability for creativity.
…concepts and beyond. And we could actually mine those representations as a new form of science. So these things are discovering interesting things that perhaps we would discover but haven't discovered yet. And we could actually use this as a laboratory for discovering interesting new knowledge.
Well, interestingly, I don't think that move 37 was creative. I think that move 37 was innovative without being creative. That I think about innovation is innovation is the process of taking unknown unknowns and making them into known knowns. And in order to get an innovation, you can't generate an innovation if you sort of already knew what it was you were looking for. You have to have something that's unexpected, but that also becomes valuable. So, what's the difference then between innovation and creativity?…
Yes, I mean, because you were discussing how we recognize creativity, and the social component is extremely vexed because it's very tempting to think there's some degree of social proof in creativity. And indeed, perhaps there is. I mean, there's a famous example of a Urinal with a bit of masking…
Yes, I think I want to come back to the idea of a relationship between creativity and constraints for a moment. So if we look right back at evolution itself, I think evolution quite clearly is creative. It's certainly generated this enormous amount of diversity in the natural world. And the way…
Yes, you've opened so many loops there. I don't know how to close them off in order, but I'll try my best. The thing that you just said is very interesting, which is this very vexed issue of coherence, right? I mean, atonal harmony is the great example of this. And I often argue with my co-author…
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