Scouting out possible approaches to a problem used to require human labor.

You had to convince the labor (and perhaps a whole team) to do a project that probably won't work.

So you only mounted research expeditions when it was likely to work… or so obviously important that it didn't matter.

But LLMs make great research goblins.

The result is you can explore more options in lower-stakes environments than ever before.

That makes the likelihood you discover great ideas structurally higher.