I really wish it was called chain of instruction. Because it's definitely not thought.
We do that sort of thing when we don't know what the thing we're trying to describe is and have nothing better - a contemporary example of an appropriate use of this would be "dark matter". But we do know what this is. It's "instruction steps". Not a series of thoughts!
Can we please aim higher than Victorian-era allegory and metaphors. If we don't, we'll keep getting people saying stuff like "GPT-6 is better at hiding its thoughts".
Like I said elsewhere marketing stepped in shit and it's gonna stick.
I'd expect it in social sciences - where functionalist explanation are often appropriate, but its easy to step over the margin into metaphor and personification. But not computer sciences - where it's obviously absurd. These professionals should know better.
first, they are certainly not instructions so that is a much worse name
but more importantly, we use words in new contexts all the time. Do you object to calling the computer device "mouse" because it's not a mouse? how about "neural network"? "ignition" on an electric vehicle?
"cot" is no more misleading than thousands of words you use every day.
Regardless, marketing wise they stepped in shit.
Most people just feel better treating AI as a conscious thing that 'thinks'. As a coworker or whatever. Plenty of people seem to be using AI as some sort of therapy, and it's just nasty to force them not to do so.
Your human experience can, surely, be different but understand that others can dismiss it just as easily as you dismiss theirs.
"The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be "voluntarily" reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements. But taken from a psychological viewpoint, this combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought—before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others."