LeCun points to four essential characteristics of human intelligence that current AI systems, including LLMs, can’t replicate: reasoning, planning, persistent memory, and understanding the physical world. He stresses that LLMs’ reliance on textual data severely limits their understanding of reality: “We’re easily fooled into thinking they are... See more

LLMs are tools that often masquerade as solutions, an unfortunate state of affairs which has led to remarkable amounts of confusion, frustration, rage, and opprobrium. Almost all of the criticisms aimed at their outputs (as opposed to their training) stem from this deceptive category error.

we need not retreat into the well-trodden trenches of luddites vs. tech bros. There’s a smarter way of understanding the rise of LLMs while preserving our critical thinking, all while shining a crucial, easily overshadowed light on how our ability to reason with language is the essence of humanity.