I'd also argue that we tend to have a larger context. What did you have for dinner? Did you see anything new yesterday? Are you tired of getting asked the same question over and over again?
Yes, that was my point. We don't have 8 billion AI models. Furthermore, existing models are also trained on heavily overlapping data. The collective creativity and inventiveness of humans far exceeds what AI can currently do for us.
In my local library recently, they'd two boards in the lobby as you entered, one with all the drawings created by one class of ~7 year olds based on some book they read, and a second the same idea but the next class up on some other book. Both classes had apparently been asked to do a drawing that illustrated something they liked or thought about the book.
It was absolutely hilarious, and wild, and some genuinely exquisite ones. Some had writing, some didn't. Some had crazy absolutely nonsensical twists and turns in the writing, others more crazy art stuff going on. There were a few tropes that repeated in some of the lazier ones, but even those weren't all the same thing, the way LLM output consistently is, with few exceptions, if any.
And then there were a good number of the ones by the kids which were shockingly inventive, you'd be scratching your head going, geez, how did they come up with that. My partner and I stayed for 10 minutes, and kept noticing some new detail in another of them, and being amazed.
So the reality is the upside-down version of what you're saying.
I recognise that this is just an anecdote on the internet, but surely you know this to be true, variants on the experiment are done in classrooms around the world every day. So may I insist, that the work produced by children, at least, does not fit your odd view of human beings.
But none of them is novel to human kind. It's novel to you, but not to our species.
AI is nailing us to the manifold that we created at the first place.
None of them would have achieved that with the help of a machine telling them "you're absolutely right!" whenever they'd be asking deep questions to it.
Scientific and technological progress is inherently incremental. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication and specialization to spot the pieces ready to be connected - but the final act of putting them together is relatively simple, and most importantly, it requires all the puzzles to be there.
Which is why, historically, ~all scientific discoveries have been made by multiple researchers (or teams) independently, at roughly the same time - until all prerequisites are made, the next step is ~impossible, but the moment all are met, it becomes almost obvious to those in the know.
This is quite a big claim. All of them? I know there are many discoveries that fit the pattern you're pointing out, but I wouldn't go as far as to say all, or even the majority of them do.
"~all" stands for approximately all, but maybe this mnemonic is less known than I thought. I'll try to avoid using it in the future.
> I know there are many discoveries that fit the pattern you're pointing out, but I wouldn't go as far as to say all I wouldn't go as far as to say all, or even the majority of them do.
I'm yet to encounter one that does not fit this pattern. As far as I can recall, for every discovery I've learned about, eventually[0] I've also learned it was made independently by others within few years; in some cases, the well-known case wasn't even the first of many, just the one that coined the name for some reason. Politics, geography, better formulation, better promotion, etc.
Related, but not the same - I'm also yet to encounter a discovery that took a great conceptual leap to arrive at. In every case I can think of, the core insight was quite obvious once enough prerequisite information was available[1], and pretty much happened on schedule. Sometimes the same person was involved in discovering the last missing pieces and then connecting them, but that's still a case of research being iterative.
It goes beyond science, too. You've probably seen Burke's Connections[2] (if not, I very strongly recommend it); it demonstrates clearly that technological advancement only happens[3] when all necessary pieces are there: scientific knowledge, necessary technology and right socioeconomic conditions.
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[0] - Sometimes it would be immediately, like in my teenage years, when reading a book about some mathematicians that went into the drama of who stole who's proof or took credit for the others' work (quite dramatic that book was). Sometimes it would be later on - years, even a decade later - when a book or a Wikipedia article about some breakthrough gave me more historical context than I expected. I eventually noticed the pattern; since then, I sometimes search for extra context immediately upon learning something.
[1] - Hindsight is 20/20, I know.
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_(British_TV_series...
[3] - I.e. actually sticks around - think steam engine in ancient Rome vs. Industrial Revolution.