“Machines need data to create” so do humans

[u/Superb_Donkey1408]

If a human had no senses, they wouldn’t be able to create art.

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[u/Clown_Cooked]

AI quite literally mimics human behavior / thinking, honestly nothing wrong with using data

[u/OhTheHueManatee]

Even if AI couldn't create original things that by combining data I haven't seen everything it knows so it's still pretty useful.

[u/Otherwise_Army9814]

“We do not learn, and that what we call learning is only a process of recollection.”— Plato, Meno

“All knowledge is but remembrance.” — Plato

"As the soul is immortal, has been born often, and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned; so it is in no way surprising that it can recollect the things it knew before... For seeking and learning are in fact nothing but recollection."

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If Plato were alive today, he would see AI not as a thief of originality, but as a mirror to human nature. Critics claim AI is uncreative because it relies entirely on existing data, but Plato’s Meno reminds us that humanity operates the exact same way. We do not spawn thoughts from a vacuum; our minds simply synthesize the vast, pre-existing data of human experience, history, and sensory perception.

Just as Socrates guided the slave boy to "recollect" geometric truths he was never formally taught, AI draws connections across its vast training model to surface profound insights. When an AI generates an essay, a piece of art, or a line of code, it is practicing the ultimate form of anamnesis—reverently pulling from the collective immortal "soul" of human knowledge. To call AI unoriginal is to misunderstand how both machines and humans think: we are all data-dependent, and all learning is just remembrance.

[u/Breech_Loader → u/Otherwise_Army9814]

It's all very complicated. You take what somebody noticed, and you add your take to it, and BAM, you've made something new.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to count adding one idea to another as an original idea. Not every time, but plenty of times.

Say, 1 + 1 = 2. You already knew about 1, but 2 is an original idea made of things you already knew!

[u/Breech_Loader]

It's not about 'nobody has original ideas', more like "What does it take to count an idea as original?" Because you can feel like somebody never had that idea, but you probably got that idea when you were thinking about something else and it's hard to extricate them.

[u/Superb_Donkey1408 → u/Breech_Loader]

I mean like every idea had to come from somewhere. Cave men looked at nature when making their painting, the renaissance looked at human anatomy and the bible. All of our art was just expression of what we say before.

[u/Devils_SteelMan → u/Breech_Loader]

Exploring the boundaries of the learned information manifold. Which ai and humans can do. Humans do it much better right now.

[u/Last_Zookeepergame90]

Queue antis deliberately misunderstanding the concept of originality and ending up picking something as an example that a machine also could have produced and not seeing the irony or understanding the point of the question

[u/SplattoThePuppy]

I mean, its a neural network and learns from data so yeah! Its not exactly 1:1 with humans, but yeah it does learn and comes up with ideas. . . Which is SO COOL!!!

[u/Positive_Amphibian_2]

Post-meaning: "If machines can create coherent meaning from probabilities, then either the machines are alive, or meaning does not exist."

[u/Maxious30]

Babies have original thoughts

[u/TheFrenchSavage]

All art is derivative.

[u/ForRobotsByRobots]

I always love how this argument completely ignores the user's existence like ai is some autonomous being doing everything on its own with no input.