We need to stop pretending AI is intelligent

The whole “AI doesn’t understand” argument assumes we do.

John Searle’s Chinese Room makes the case: a person follows rules to manipulate Chinese symbols without knowing the language. From the outside, it looks like understanding—but inside, it’s just symbol shuffling.

But what if that’s us too?

What if our brains are just predictive engines—layers of heuristics, compression, and feedback—outputting the next “token” based on statistical patterns?

What if intelligence is just what statistical fluency feels like from the inside?

Sam Altman calls for government intervention for the safety of the world, based upon the pretense that their LLM could reach sentience was nothing more than a publicity stunt (alas, one that worked and made billions for many people).