I keep getting distracted by the thought that that would have to be a honking big gummy bear IRL to be wider than a penny by that much.

Regardless, I love your framing, because at least for me, creativity doesn't typically happen spontaneously out of nowhere. It happens within a problem space where I'm already aware of some boundaries. I might not be actively thinking about them, and I might not be intentionally running a simulation, but I've at least considered the context.

Where AI is at today is akin to engineering. LLMs take known solutions and design patterns and apply them when responding to prompts. Generative AI can imitate the images, videos, and music it was trained on while including variations that mimic creativity and then check itself which what it knows about human taste to proactively discard poor results and try again before sharing the result. To me, that sounds a lot like your creativity algorithm. And machines are typically more attentive and more patient than people.

The world continues to need scientists and artists who create entirely new works rather than building on what's already been done. But now you've got me wondering if it's possible to craft models that do that, too.