I sometimes feel a peculiar resonance with these models: they catch the faintest hints of irony and return astoundingly witty remarks, almost as if they were another version of myself. Yet all of the problems, inconsistencies, and surprises that arise in human thought stem from something profoundly differen, which is our embodied experience of the world. Humans integrate sensory feedback, form goals, navigate uncertainty, and make countless micro-decisions in real time, all while reasoning causally and contextually. Cognition is active, multimodal, and adaptive; it is not merely a reflection of prior experience a continual construction of understanding.

And then there are some brilliant friends of mine, people with whom a conversation can unfold for days, rewarding me with the same rapid, incisive exchange we now associate with language models. There is, clearly, an intellectual and environmental element to it.