Links re Form and Meaning

This is a good moment to introduce three papers that help clarify that the current high-tech approach is to build AI systems that focus only on form not meaning and that therefore there is no understanding.

Climbing towards NLU by Emily M. Bender and Alexander Koller

Robo-writers: the rise and risks of language generating AI by Matthew Hutson in Nature (03 March 2021)

Why AI is Harder Than We Think  by Melanie Mitchell

There is also a 2019 paper by Michael I. Jordan entitled:

Artificial Intelligence—The Revolution Hasn’t Happened Yet

The opening paragraph contains the following:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the mantra of the current era. The phrase is intoned by technologists, academicians, journalists, and venture capitalists alike. As with many phrases that cross over from technical academic fields into general circulation, there is significant misunderstanding accompanying use of the phrase. However, this is not the classical case of the public not understanding the scientists—here the scientists are often as befuddled as the public.

Michael I. Jordan is a professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer science, and the department of statistics, at the University of California, Berkeley