Seminars relevant to Informatics

[Informatics Institute News <institute-news AT inf.ed.ac.uk>]

REMINDER, talk on Friday 30 October

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Dear all,

Please attend our joint ILCC/ CDT NLP seminar talk by Mete Ismayilzada , on October 30, 2026 at 11:00-12:00. 

Speaker: Mete Ismayilzada , EPFL, USI

https://airtable.com/appS4gTxm7BAJVK3b/tbl2FNoLdHQD7OdUx/rec2mPjyZdqXdvJ3B/fldsX5wdccAwWEXD7/atttsPGK2axbasGuY

Room: IF, G.03 and MS Teams (https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3411137975404634?p=MC10JTkwNEGzLf8bUD )

Title: Are LLMs Creative? It Depends on What You Measure

Abstract: Are large language models creative? I argue the answer depends almost entirely on the level at which creativity is measured. At the level of the product, our comparison of short-story writing across a population of LLMs and people finds models stylistically complex but short on novelty, surprise, and diversity, dimensions that we can improve directly within preference alignment. At the level of the process, we show that frontier models can retrieve the right facts yet fail to form the non-obvious connections between them, a gap product metrics may not capture. I argue that neither level suffices on its own: a full account requires both, and Boden's distinction between combinational, exploratory, and transformational creativity gives us a conceptually sharper framework to characterize them together, especially for scientific discovery, where breakthroughs often come from transformational ideas.

Book a meeting: For staff or students who’d like to meet with Mete Ismayilzada during their visit please check availability using the booking form.

Student Lunch: For research students who wish to meet with the speaker over lunch please sign up here.

Upcoming Seminars: Upcoming Seminars | ILCC | School of Informatics

Thank you, Pauline

 

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Pauline Patel

Institute Administrator | School of Informatics

Informatics Forum | Room 1.37 |  institutes-admin AT inf.ed.ac.uk

 

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