The Science Behind Original Intelligence
Co-Invented by Founders. Proven by Research.
Hupside is built on original science, not repurposed theory or intuition about creativity.
The Science of Original Intelligence (OI) was co-invented by two of Hupside’s co-founders,
Adam Green and Dan Johnson, through years of peer-reviewed research spanning
neuroscience, creativity science, and computational measurement. Together, they developed
both:
- a modern scientific definition of originality that remains valid in the age of AI, and
- the methods required to measure originality objectively, at scale, from humans, AI, and
human-AI collaboration
Hupside is the direct commercialization of that work.
Co-Inventors of Original Intelligence
Adam Green & Dan Johnson
Co-Founders and Co-Inventors, Hupside
Adam Green and Dan Johnson are among a small group of scientists globally whose research
directly addresses the defining problem of the AI era:
How do we measure the originality that humans add when humans and AI collaborate?
Answering this question also addresses the parallel question of how to measure originality
in new AI systems as they emerge.
Their work explains why traditional creativity measures fail in an AI environment—and how
originality must be redefined and re-measured to remain meaningful.
Redefining Creativity for the AI Era
Adam Green’s research has reshaped how creativity is understood in modern science. His work
demonstrates that creativity cannot be defined by novelty or usefulness alone—both of which AI
now produces at scale.
Instead, human creativity is defined by process:
how people generate meaning, integrate distant ideas, and deliberately expand an idea space
beyond statistical prediction.
Dan Johnson’s work complements this by showing how those creative processes can be
detected, modeled, and quantified in real human output using computational methods.
Together, their research establishes a critical distinction:
What matters is not whether an output looks creative—but whether it is genuinely distinct from what AI
would produce without human contribution.
This distinction is the foundation of Original Intelligence.
Measuring Idea Space Expansion
A core scientific breakthrough behind Hupside is the ability to measure originality as distance
traveled in an idea space, rather than as stylistic novelty or subjective judgment.
Dan Johnson is a leading pioneer in computational creativity assessment. His work introduced
and refined methods such as:
- semantic distance modeling,
- divergent semantic integration (DSI),
- thematic profile analysis,
- multilingual originality measurement, and
- automated creativity scoring using machine learning and large language models.
These methods demonstrate—across creative writing, design, problem-solving, and everyday
ideation—that originality can be measured objectively, reliably, and at scale.
Adam Green and Dan Johnson’s research introduced distance in idea space as a basis for
quantifying creativity. Adam Green’s research provides the cognitive and neuroscientific
grounding for why this distance matters: ideas that expand the space are the ones that drive
adaptation, innovation, and differentiation.
This joint work makes Hupchecker possible.
Proving the AI Homogenization Problem
Green and Johnson’s research also addresses a growing but poorly measured risk: AI-driven
homogenization.
Their work shows that while AI has substantial potential to improve productivity in many tasks,
it flattens the distinctness of human ideas that has always been the driver of creative value. As
more people rely on the same models, outputs converge toward shared statistical centers.
What appears novel in isolation becomes repetitive at scale.
This effect is now empirically demonstrated—including Green and Johnson’s research in more
than 300,000 human thinkers, and it explains why AI adoption alone does not create durable
competitive advantage.
Original Intelligence is the measurable counterforce.
From Academic Research to Platform
Hupside exists because this research led to a clear conclusion:
In an AI-everywhere world, originality is no longer visible, intuitive, or reliably rewarded unless it is
measured.
Adam Green and Dan Johnson did not adapt legacy creativity tests to AI.
They co-invented a new measurement framework, explicitly designed for an AI
environment—one that:
- does not rely on self-report
- measures distance in idea space expansion from both human and AI baselines, and
- remains valid as AI models evolve.
Hupchecker operationalizes that science.
Scientific Authority, Field Leadership
Together, the founders bring rare and complementary credibility
Adam Green
- 70+ peer-reviewed publications
- Founder, Society for the Neuroscience of Creativity
- Editor-in-Chief, Creativity Research Journal
- Director of the Georgetown Laboratory for Relational Cognition, and Professor of
Psychology and Neuroscience - Principal Investigator on large, multi-national and cross-institution research programs
- Leading authority on the cognitive and neural basis of originality
Dan Johnson
- Pioneer of computational creativity and originality measurement
- Author of foundational methods for extracting originality from narratives
- Developer of semantic, thematic, and multilingual originality metrics
- Principal Investigator on large-scale data-driven creativity studies
- Professor and founder of academic data science programs
- Leading authority on objective, automated creativity assessment
Their collaboration is not advisory. It is co-inventive.
Why This Matters
Most AI strategies fail not because of technology—but because organizations cannot see who is
creating value with AI.
Original Intelligence solves that problem because it was built by the scientists who:
- redefined creativity for an AI world,
- proved why AI collapses the differentiation that makes creativity valuable, and
- developed the only methods capable of measuring humans’ contribution to originality in
an AI everywhere world
This is the science behind Hupside.
Our Published Research: