[perhaps this needs to be a longer essay. The ideas seem clear in my head, but may only be sketched here.]
Think of three realms: the digital realm, the physical realm, and the social realm.
Impressive as they are, LLMs have only shown the ability to master the digital realm. The physical realm, with its many arrangements of particles and millennia of evolution, is more complex. The human social realm, with the rapidity of cultural evolution, has reached an even higher level of complexity.
When we hope for today’s models to cure cancer, we are expecting the masters of the digital realm to solve a problem outside of the digital realm. Cancer is a problem in the physical realm. And it may also have causes in the social realm.
When we hope for artificial intelligence to revolutionize education, we are asking it to solve a problem in the social realm. Those of us who follow the Alpha School by reading the Austin Scholar substack know how much she emphasizes the role of motivation strategies in addition to the AI learning tools.
Cybersecurity appears to be a problem in the digital realm. But it is actually a problem in the social realm. I want convenient access to certain computer files, such as my bank account, because of their relevance to my social world. But by the same token criminals would like to impersonate me in order to have access to such files. The easier it is for me to access a file, the easier it is to impersonate me. As systems have evolved in recent decades, the drive to make it harder to impersonate has made access less convenient. I waste much more time trying to authenticate myself than I did twenty years ago. Yet vulnerability remains. As Thomas Sowell says about problems in the social world, “There are no solutions, only trade-offs.”
Modern philosophers, following Descartes, tend to gloss over the social realm. They want to retreat to the room where he meditated and emerged with “I think, therefore I am.” But “I think” is not the best way to describe how we acquire knowledge. Thinking is social. We decide what to believe by deciding who to believe.
The digital realm is very important. The major LLM labs have achieved a great deal. I am grateful to be able to use their tools. But I take seriously the importance of the physical realm, which is more complex. I also take seriously the importance of the social realm, which is even more complex. So I doubt that genuine artificial intelligence is close at hand.
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