Predictions on AI’s ever-developing complexity have tech optimists counting the days until the machine replaces the human mind. Artificial general intelligence is the term they use to describe the point in which AI will officially overtake human intelligence. However, certain experts in the field, among them Robert J. Marks, host of the Mind Matters podcast, protest the assumption. AI researcher and scientist Yann LeCun, the AI chief at Meta, said recently that the current AI systems are nowhere close to achieving human-like intelligence. LeCun said,

“We’re easily fooled into thinking they are intelligent because of their fluency with language, but really, their understanding of reality is very superficial,” he said. “They’re useful, there’s no question about that. But on the path towards human-level intelligence, an LLM is basically an off-ramp, a distraction, a dead end.”

-Thomas Macaulay, Meta’s AI chief: LLMs will never reach human-level intelligence (thenextweb.com)

This is something economist and Mind Matters contributor Gary Smith has often pointed out. AI may be able to algorithmically parse out certain outcomes, but it doesn’t understand what it produces. How could it? Unless it’s a sentient mind, AI will at best be a sophisticated computing tool, not a replacement for human intelligence and creativity. That sort of thinking goes beyond mere computation.