Is that a requirement though? If the AI used existing understanding/methods (which I assume it did) then there's nothing really "new" there, right? Shouldn't it be possible to get understanding from how the existing methods were used? Or, even knowing it's true, cull an incredible number of paths from the problem space around it, to make finding understanding easier?
I'm not a mathematician, but I've always been able to find understandings from exploring the paths starting from either direction of the conceptual graph that exists between a "problem" and a "solution".
I'm not a mathematician, but I've always been able to find understandings from exploring the paths starting from either direction of the conceptual graph that exists between a "problem" and a "solution".