It would be nice if innovation could happen "just by dreaming," says Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, who stresses that imagining things is "crucial for being innovative."

That is why the professor of information science at Oxford University believes artificial intelligence (AI) won't be able to compete with human creativity for the time being.

"Humans can imagine things that don't exist yet," he told DW, because despite being trained on massive datasets AI is working with data from the past.

So, the datasets used for machine learning reflect what we can learn from the past for the present, he added, enabling AI to make insights from collected data more accessible, "but it doesn't invent anything new."

If the present or the future differs significantly from the past, AI cannot help us find the right solutions. For example, if people during Henry Ford's time had been asked what they wanted, most would have likely said "a faster horse" — a solution rooted in past experiences.

AI is thus a tool for evaluating large datasets and increasing efficiency, especially in economically stable times. However, we do not live in stable times. The challenges posed by climate change require innovations beyond........

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