Reading this, I can’t help but think of all those generative AI fanboys claiming, “ChatGPT passed the US Medical Licensing Exam and the Bar Exam for lawyers”, and insisting that people accept this as evidence of its emerging capacities.
Just like Nigel Richards, the non-Spanish-speaking Spanish Scrabble world champion, chatbots do not truly understand the meaning of the words they output. Unlike ChatGPT, Richards genuinely *knows* he doesn’t.
John Searle wrote about the error of conflating understanding or consciousness with mere symbol processing. in The Chinese Room Argument. Jorge Luis Borges, in “Funes the Memorious” famously wrote about the difference between perfect memory and higher-order thinking and judgement.
Funfact: in 2015 the same guy had won the French-language Scrabble world championship without speaking a word of French.
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Ariel Guersenzvaig, PhD 