ADA AI: What can you do with a hallucination? Play along!

Last weekend, my daughter and I cuddled up on the couch for our weekly "Ada Twist, Scientist" viewing session. This particular episode caught my attention because it directly connected to my work with artificial intelligence.

In the episode, Ada was working on a creative writing assignment when she turned to her latest invention: an AI story creator bot she had programmed herself.

What fascinated me was how Ada approached the bot's hallucinations. After getting frustrated when her AI bot generated nonsensical scenarios for her story, Ada realized: "Maybe these aren't mistakes," she explained to her friends, "they can be unexpected inspiration!"

After the show ended, I couldn't stop thinking about Ada's approach. In my own work, I usually see AI hallucinations as problematic—something to be avoided or eliminated. But Ada's perspective offered a completely different frame: what if these hallucinations could serve as creative sparks?

The next day, I tried Ada's method for a project I was stuck on. I prompted an AI to generate some ideas and deliberately looked for the hallucinations—the fabricated examples, the slightly nonsensical connections, the ideas that couldn't quite work in reality. Then, like Ada, I used my human judgment to identify which of these unexpected elements might lead somewhere interesting.

As Ada so wisely demonstrated (as she always does—such a great show!), sometimes the most notable and fantastic innovation happens at the intersection of technology AND human imagination. By embracing rather than rejecting AI hallucinations (the creative ones, not the dangerous ones), I've put my finger on a powerful new tool for creative thinking—all thanks to a curious girl scientist and her imperfect but inspiring AI story bot. Thanks, Ada!

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