as i read Language is primarily a tool for communication rather than thought by leading language researcher Evelina Federenko from MIT, et. al. i’m reminded of my similarly-held belief that language is not thought. actually, in my experience, most thought is poorly communicated and only a minority of thought is shared, even fewer online.

i feel something when i experience the world; when i Live. art, nature and music telepathically communicate feeling to me.

because of my belief that language is not thought, therefore, i don’t believe that ai “Thinks”. ai — more generally machines — is phenomenal at recognizing patterns; better than us. but that doesn’t mean that it can Think.

Thinking to me is more sporadic. inspired. not discovered or recognized. i may stare at the fall colors of a tree and this relaxes me enough — or takes me to a place — to Think about some technical problem or inspires me enough to do something like paint, draw or write my abstract interpretation. maybe for those who are musically talented, it inspires a tune. it’s this huge leap from fall leaves to a technical solution that i would call Thinking; at least in part. a subset of Thinking is pattern recognition.

is Thinking purely about problem solving? no. i believe Thinking is a superset of solving. solving absolutely involves Thinking. i believe solving draws from experience; from data. but not all Thinking needs quantitative data. Thinking is interpretation. yes, senses and emotions are “data”, but often poorly communicated data.

this is what makes humanity amazing; our ability to draw from things that are NOT communicated. this is what makes each one of us unique and collectively more powerful and complex than machines. humans are large collections of “spectrums”; machines are well-defined states. we are even more complex than quantum computers. frankly, i don’t know why we obsess with comparing machines to humans. both in terms of mental and physical capabilities. it feels like “delusions of grandeur” or some form of “god complex”.

don’t get me wrong, i believe communication is powerful and therefore, ai is powerful. but i don’t think it replaces Thinking. also, hot take, but i don’t believe most “work” involves Thinking; living involves Thinking.