Can artificial intelligence be smarter than a person? Answering that question often hinges on the definition of artificial intelligence. But it might make more sense, instead, to focus on defining what we mean by “smart.”

In the 1950s, the psychologist J. P. Guilford divided creative thought into two categories: convergent thinking and divergent thinking. Convergent thinking, which Guilford defined as the ability to answer questions correctly, is predominantly a display of memory and logic. Divergent thinking, the ability to generate many potential answers from a single problem or question, shows a flair for curiosity, an ability to think “outside the box.” It’s the difference between remembering the capital of Austria and figuring how to start a thriving business in Vienna without knowing a lick of German.

But what if that common view is wrong? What if AI’s real comparative advantage over humans is precisely its divergent intelligence—its creative potential? That’s the subject of the latest episode of the podcast Crazy/Genius, produced by Kasia Mychajlowycz and Patricia Yacob.

Let’s look at this scenario it clearly tells us that artificial intelligence cannot be smarter than human beings, an ominous example. One algorithm was supposed to figure out how to land a virtual airplane with minimal force. But the AI soon discovered that if it crashed the plane, the program would register a force so large that it would overwhelm its own memory and count it as a perfect score.

So the AI crashed the plane, over and over again, presumably killing all the virtual people on board. This is the sort of nefarious rules-hacking that makes AI alarmists fear that a sentient AI could ultimately destroy mankind. (To be clear, there is a cavernous gap between a simulator snafu and SkyNet.)