It’s really humbling how a fundamentally simple algorithm interpreting a ridiculously complex and vast data set is capable of a simulacrum of thought.
That data set, of course, is the formalisation of human culture, taken from our works. It begs the question of whether our fundamental algorithm for parsing that data is really that much different. We cannot think without tokens, symbols.
We can be, and we can feel, but we cannot think without them. So, where is the intelligence, really? Is it in our heads, or in the data?
Is the data the computation, like an unfathomably vast choose-your-own-adventure book, or is the computation the data, like a one time pad decryption algorithm that creates a universe simulator from the chaotic arrangement of atoms in a beach full of sand?
Is this really “artificial” intelligence, at all? Or just the steam engine of human intellect?