Yes, it doesn't really matter how intelligence is defined, just that in aiming at creating an artificial mind, we'd try to include whatever was useful, includin

Yes, it doesn't really matter how intelligence is defined, just that in aiming at creating an artificial mind, we'd try to include whatever was useful, including imagination. My reasoning is, if one machine can do it (us), it's possible for another machine to do it. (Though there's a question of whether we are smart enough to create that machine.) Exponential search space is a killer. Some form of heuristic seems necessary. Perhaps we will one day be able to simulate the heuristics we ourselves use - and then improve on them (e.g. apply them to more data than we can; use more complex heuristics; etc along the lines you say). Given variation between intellectual abilities of human beings, it is does not have an obvious fixed limit, and we may be able to extend the range of that variability. Though I expect increasing the associations an "imagination" can find suffers from exponential explosion.