𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗚𝗮𝗽 𝗕𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗻 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗧𝗲𝘅𝘁
In recent years, machines have learned to write with remarkable fluency. Essays, reports, poems, and even philosophical reflections can now be generated in seconds. This has led many to ask a deeper question: Do machines understand what they write? The short answer is no—and the reason lies in a fundamental gap between human concepts and machine text. Meaning Before Language Human thinking is conceptual before it is linguistic. We form ideas from perception, experience, emotion, and social interaction. Language is merely a tool we use to express these pre-existing concepts. When a human speaks of justice , fear , or responsibility , the words are anchored in lived reality, values, and consequences. Machines, by contrast, encounter language without experience. They do not start with concepts and then choose words. They start with words and derive statistical relationships between them. Text Without Understanding A language model operates by identifying patterns in massive amounts ...