Thinking is undefined so all statements about it are unverifiable.
There's many definitions of "thinking".
AI and brains can do some, AI and brains definitely provably cannot do others, some others are untestable at present, and nobody really knows enough about what human brains do to be able to tell if or when some existing or future AI can do whatever is needed for the stuff we find special about ourselves.
A lot of people use different definitions, and respond to anyone pointing this out by denying the issue and claiming their own definition is the only sensible one and "obviously" everyone else (who isn't a weird pedant) uses it.
The definition of "thinking" in any of the parent comments or TFA is actually not defined. Like literally no statements are made about what is being tested.
So, if we had that we could actually discuss it. Otherwise it's just opinions about what a person believes thinking is, combined with what LLMs are doing + what the person believes they themselves do + what they believe others do. It's entirely subjective with very low SNR b/c of those confounding factors.
There are people who insist that the halting problem "proves" that machines will never be able to think. That this means they don't understand the difference between writing down (or generating a proof of) the halting problem and the implications of the halting problem, does not stop them from using it.
Unicorns are not bound by the laws of physics - because they do not exist.
Is it only humans that have this need? That makes the need special, so humans are special in the universe.
We don't fully understand how brains work, but we know brains don't function like a computer. Why would a computer be assumed to function like a brain in any way, even in part, without evidence and just hopes based on marketing? And I don't just mean consumer marketing, but marketing within academia as well. For example, names like "neural networks" have always been considered metaphorical at best.
And then what do you even mean by "a computer?" This falls into the same trap because it sounds like your statement that brains don't function like a computer is really saying "brains don't function like the computers I am familiar with." But this would be like saying quantum computers aren't computers because they don't work like classical computers.
To put this in terms of "results", because that's what your way of thinking insists upon, a plane does not take off and land the way a bird does. This limits a plane's practicality to such an extent that a plane is useless for transportation without all the infrastructure you're probably ignoring with your argument. You might also be ignoring all the side effects planes bring with them.
Would you not agree that if we only ever wanted "flight" for a specific use case that apparently only birds can do after evaluating what a plane cannot do, then planes are not capable of "flight"?
This is the very same problem with "thought" in terms of AI. We're finding it's inadequate for what we want the machine to do. Not only is it inadequate for our current use cases, and not only is it inadequate now, but it will continue to be inadequate until we further pin down what "thought" is and determine what lies beyond the Church-Turing thesis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church%E2%80%93Turing_thesis#P...
Relevant quote: "B. Jack Copeland states that it is an open empirical question whether there are actual deterministic physical processes that, in the long run, elude simulation by a Turing machine; furthermore, he states that it is an open empirical question whether any such processes are involved in the working of the human brain"
If thinking is definable, it is wrong that all statements about it are unverifiable (i.e. there are statements about it that are verifiable.)
Well, basic shit.
edit : Thinking is undefined, statements about undefined cannot be verified.
The "hair-splitting" underlies the whole GenAI debate.
It ties into another aspect of these perennial threads, where it is somehow OK for humans to engage in deluded or hallucinatory thought, but when an AI model does it, it proves they don't "think."