You can tell an agentic system. "Go and find a novel area of math that has unresolved answers and solve it mathematically with verified properties in LEAN. Verify before you start working on a problem that no one has solved this area of math"
That's not creative prompt. That's a driving prompt to get it to start its engine.
You could do that nowadays and while it may spend $1,000 to $100,000 worth of tokens. It will create something humans haven't done before as long as you set it up with all its tool calls/permissions.
LLMs by themselves are not able to but you are missing a piece here.
LLMs are prompted by humans and the right query may make it think/behave in a way to create a novel solution.
Then there's a third factor now with Agentic AI system loops with LLMs. Where it can research, try, experiment in its own loop that's tied to the real world for feedback.
Agentic + LLM + Initial Human Prompter by definition can have it experiment outside of its domain of expertise.
So that's extending the "LLM can't create novel ideas" but I don't think anyone can disagree the three elements above are enough ingredients for an AI to come up with novel ideas.
I remember reading a previous HN post about Tailscale and a certain commenter said that Tailscale is ideologically driven, small-scale operation and they prefer an alternative like NetMaker which has more backing.
$100M seems more than a small-scale operation or is $100M in tech actually small scale?
You might not know in advance which is a problem but it seems pretty trivial issue. Just test it and see if it works, if it doesn't return it and get a different one. Then repeat the process until you get the one you need.
That's not creative prompt. That's a driving prompt to get it to start its engine.
You could do that nowadays and while it may spend $1,000 to $100,000 worth of tokens. It will create something humans haven't done before as long as you set it up with all its tool calls/permissions.