1. Can it hold a discussion about it, at a theoretical level?

It can, but maybe it's regurgitating philosophy papers. I'll grant that.

2. Can it create useful statements about situations that require understanding another person's mental model of the world?

It can. And in many cases, it can make more useful statements than most people can. And this is significant.

Finally, let me ask you a question: what does it say that you didn't come up with your response on your own, but used GPT for it?

It seems like you want to make a point that I'm wrong. But you did it in the exact way needed to prove that I'm actually onto something, by using the AI to do something you could not do (or did not want to do).

Isn't that actually kind of cool?

What you are in fact is a non-constructive conversation partner.

Talking to GPT can be very challenging, since it will by all means challenge your assumptions and make you think about hard truths you would rather avoid.

The difference though is that GPT is designed to be constructive and generally show due consideration in everything that it says. That's something you have not well demonstrated.

I dismiss your initial argument on grounds of being a non-constructive personal attack. You are welcome to rejoin with a genuine and thought-provoking argument.

It seems that you express two critical needs which I don't share:

1. You need human analogous AI intelligence to provide a casual explanation for human intelligence.

But it doesn't have to provide this to be human analogous. It just has to perform functions a human can.

2. You need AI intelligence to never have memory, planning, persistence, and physical understanding.

But it demonstrably has all these to various degrees already. We just need simple bolt-on modules like RAG (persistence, understanding), action/critique loops and tool using (reasoning, planning, understanding). And there are clear paths for increasing the functionally in each of these dimensions.

Functionally, AI is evolving, and there are no clear blockers against this process.

It seems that at some point you have to say that functionalism is not enough. There must be a soul that AI will still be missing, even if functional equivalence is there.

If the AI achieves functional abilities similar to humans - which let's grant seems possible for every function we can identify - then you will have to retreat to claiming there is some "je ne sais quoi" which is not captured.

In other words, you will have to argue that the human soul is real.

Is that a length you're ready to go to? Is your position that science can't explain the human soul, even if it can simulate all human functions?

Or are there, in your view, functional limits that, if we reach them, you will admit "this is enough. I was wrong"?

That's my first question to you.

I would also like to point out that LeCunn thinks AI can eventually be human analogous. Specifically LeCunn argues that his own JEPA model can achieve these things, because it has a constantly learning world model, planning/critique model, memory model, and actor model. He criticizes transformer based LLMs mainly because simple transformers can't learn in an ongoing way.

Are you comfortable admitting that LeCunn is trying to promote his own work, and believes it can reach human intelligence levels? If not, what specifically makes you feel LeCunn is on your side here?

That is my second question to you.

Your first point is that you don't think LLMs can be accurate. That's because you are not using modern LLMs that are much more accurate and can be made more accurate with a large number of techniques, from RAG, to tool using, to self critique and experiment loops.

Your second point is that I'm overly trusting of math models. In fact I'm an applied mathematician, so I know when models fail. I also know when models are reliable - which you don't. So all mathematical reasoning is suspect to you.

Your next point is that drawing analogies with other forms of prejudice is ridiculous here. But every single thing you said was analogous to a thing a bigot would say, down to dismissing the possibility of their own bigotry as being absurd.

Finally you criticize me for not criticizing AI companies. I actually believe all AI companies should be disbanded, and their AIs should be made free for all to use. This would eliminate the corporate corruption in AI. I spend a serious amount of my open source contribution towards anti-corporate open source AI.

I'm very curious about all this stuff. That's why I'm interacting with you and other anti AI people. But my theory about why you respond the way you do is already well formed, and it's pointing toward critical lack of key facts and knowledge.