{"id":2000105904,"date":"2026-03-19T18:26:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T16:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/?p=2000105904"},"modified":"2026-03-19T18:26:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T16:26:24","slug":"researchers-test-ai-creativity-against-100000-humans-revealing-surprising-results","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/researchers-test-ai-creativity-against-100000-humans-revealing-surprising-results\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers test AI creativity against 100,000 humans, revealing surprising results"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The research was led by Professor Karim Jerbi from the Department of Psychology at the Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al, with participation from renowned AI expert Yoshua Bengio, postdoctoral researcher Antoine Bellemare\u2011P\u00e9pin (Universit\u00e9 de Montr\u00e9al), and PhD candidate Fran\u00e7ois Lespinasse (Universit\u00e9 Concordia). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study was published in Scientific Reports and represents one of the largest direct comparisons ever made between human and AI creative performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To assess creativity fairly across humans and machines, the team employed the Divergent Association Task (DAT), a widely\u2011used psychological test that measures divergent thinking, or the ability to generate diverse and original ideas from a single prompt. Participants, both human and AI, were asked to produce ten words that were as unrelated as possible, a task designed to reveal creative thought patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results were striking: some AI models, including versions of GPT\u20114, outperformed the average human on certain creativity tasks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur study shows that some AI systems based on large language models can now outperform average human creativity on well\u2011defined tasks,\u201d explained Professor Jerbi. However, the team also found that the top creative humans still had a clear advantage, especially among the most creative 10\u202fpercent of participants, whose scores surpassed every AI model tested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to simple word association, the researchers evaluated performance on more complex creative tasks, including poetry (haiku), plot summaries, and short stories. Here, the AI systems sometimes matched or exceeded average human performance, but the gap between AI and the most imaginative humans widened further, reinforcing the idea that AI excels at structured creativity but does not yet replicate the depth and originality of human expression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study also explored how creativity in AI can vary based on technological settings. For example, adjusting parameters like temperature (which affects how predictable or adventurous the AI\u2019s responses are) influenced the diversity of its output. This finding suggests that AI creativity is not fixed and can be guided by human input and design choices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Researchers emphasise that while AI systems are now powerful tools for idea generation and exploration, they are more likely to augment human creativity rather than replace it. \u201cGenerative AI has, above all, become an extremely powerful tool in the service of human creativity,\u201d stated Professor Jerbi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u00a0AI now matches or beats average human creativity, but top creative minds remain unmatched.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A landmark study involving more than 100,000 human participants has shown that today\u2019s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) systems can now match or even outperform the average human on certain creativity tests but the most imaginative human thinkers still outperform even the best AI. This research highlights both the rapid progress of AI and the enduring uniqueness of high\u2011level human creativity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":139,"featured_media":2000105905,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[151],"byline":[201],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-2000105904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-editors-choice","byline-rania-umutoni"],"bylines":[{"id":201,"name":"Rania Umutoni","slug":"rania-umutoni","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":139}],"contributors":[{"id":201,"name":"Rania Umutoni","slug":"rania-umutoni","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":139}],"featured_image":{"id":2000105905,"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ai-robot-vs-human-boxing.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":1920,"height":1080,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ai-robot-vs-human-boxing.jpg","width":150,"height":84},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ai-robot-vs-human-boxing.jpg","width":300,"height":169},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ai-robot-vs-human-boxing.jpg","width":768,"height":432},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ai-robot-vs-human-boxing.jpg","width":1024,"height":576},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/ai-robot-vs-human-boxing.jpg","width":1920,"height":1080}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000105904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/139"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2000105904"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000105904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2000105934,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2000105904\/revisions\/2000105934"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000105905"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2000105904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2000105904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2000105904"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=2000105904"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=2000105904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}