What's your definition of a novel idea? How do you measure that?

I've had a 15 year+ successful career as a SWE so far. I don't think I've had a single idea so novel that today's LLM could not have come up with it.

I've had plenty. Independent discovery is a real thing, especially with juniors.

Well that's not true - see the Terry Tao article using AlphaEvolve to discover new proofs.

Additionally, "novel ideas" isn't something that is included in something that smart people do so why would it be a requirement for AI.

How many people generate novel ideas? When I look around at work, most people basically operate like an LLM. They see what’s being done by others and emulate it.