# Fluid Transformers and Creative Analogies: Exploring Large Language Models' Capacity for Augmenting Cross-Domain Analogical Creativity

## TL;DR

This study systematically evaluates large language models' ability to generate cross-domain analogies, revealing their potential to aid creative problem solving while also highlighting associated risks like harmful content.

## Contribution

It provides empirical evidence on LLMs' usefulness and risks in augmenting cross-domain analogical reasoning through three comprehensive studies.

## Key findings

- LLMs' analogies are often helpful in problem reformulation.
- Approximately 80% of analogies lead to observable problem changes.
- Up to 25% of outputs may be potentially harmful, mainly due to upsetting content.

## Abstract

Cross-domain analogical reasoning is a core creative ability that can be challenging for humans. Recent work has shown some proofs-of concept of Large language Models' (LLMs) ability to generate cross-domain analogies. However, the reliability and potential usefulness of this capacity for augmenting human creative work has received little systematic exploration. In this paper, we systematically explore LLMs capacity to augment cross-domain analogical reasoning. Across three studies, we found: 1) LLM-generated cross-domain analogies were frequently judged as helpful in the context of a problem reformulation task (median 4 out of 5 helpfulness rating), and frequently (~80% of cases) led to observable changes in problem formulations, and 2) there was an upper bound of 25% of outputs bring rated as potentially harmful, with a majority due to potentially upsetting content, rather than biased or toxic content. These results demonstrate the potential utility -- and risks -- of LLMs for augmenting cross-domain analogical creativity.