This argument can be applied recursively. For example: the information in the human genome is just information from the environment transferred into the genome

This argument can be applied recursively. For example: the information in the human genome is just information from the environment transferred into the genome by evolutionary learning. Ultimately you get back to some kind of first cause argument where everything goes back to God or whatever natural process created information in the universe. Either nothing new is actually new or everything new is new. In the end it becomes moot. A novel rearrangement of existing ideas that does something new or different is creativity. Can LLMs do that? I think they can to a limited extent, but not as well as humans. Is it something we get with scale or does it require a fundamental architectural innovation? Don't know.