AI is a Digital Parrot: Word-Traps, False Logic and the Illusion of Intelligence
by Charles Hugh Smith
AI programs parrot content and techniques generated by humans. Since they use natural language, we’re fooled by equivalence into thinking, “hey, the program is as smart as we are, because only we use natural language.”
The same conceptual trap opens in every purported equivalence. If an AI program can find the answer to a complex problem such as “how do proteins fold?”, and do so far faster than we can, we immediately project this supposed equivalence into “super-intelligence.”
The problem is the AI program is simply parroting techniques generated by humans and extrapolating them at scale. The program doesn’t “understand” proteins, their functions in Nature or in our bodies, or anything else about proteins that humans understand.