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Opinion
We humans are proud creatures
Recently, the controversy about whether or not AI can reason has heated up. OpenAI’s o1 model, released a few months ago, was welcomed with a mix of reactions, ranging from “It’s just smoke and mirrors” to “A new paradigm of AI.”
AI’s reasoning capabilities (or lack thereof) appear to strike a sensitive chord in many of us. I suspect that admitting an AI can “reason” is perceived as a hit on human pride, as reasoning wouldn’t be exclusive to humans.
In the nineteenth century, arithmetic was considered an intellectual prowess (hey, when have you seen a cow add together two numbers?). Still, we had to get used to using calculators that were way more capable than us.
I have seen shocking statements going from “We are about to achieve Artificial General Intelligence” or “AI got to the level of a PhD” to radical dismissals of the reasoning capabilities of AI, like “Apple Calls Bullshit On The AI Revolution.”
In other articles, I have commented on how nonsensical the AGI claims made by fans of Elon Musk. In this piece, I examine the opposite end of the spectrum: people who claim AI can’t reason at all.
Gary Marcus, one of the most outspoken AI denialists (I don’t call them…
