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"The Illusion of Thinking" – Thoughts on This Important Paper

This is a fantastic paper. I just love it. tl;dr AI is not human. Anthropomorphization has been bad for AI, LLMs, and Chat. Clippy walked so today's AI could run.

I couldn’t help but walk away with the conclusion that the big problem is not what LLMs do, but the incredible “hubris” that has characterized the AI segment of computer science since its very beginnings. While the earliest visions of computers in applications (going back to Memx even) were about “vast electronic brains,” the AI field was born with the pioneering work on “neural networks.” At first, this was about simulating the brain—which is where the term “artificial intelligence” even comes from. It had a real influence on how we approached building Office, including all the “agentic” features like AutoCorrect and, of course, Clippy and its natural language interface called Answer Wizard.

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