Mr.RAJESH loves words,and,rightly so,he is a renowned author.The same is true for the vocabulary Selective Amnesia uses at every touchpoint.
MR.RAJESH has chosen one word—“Intelligence”—and does impeccable, detailed research that he turns into clairvoyant insight about civilization’s most arcane “AI” with a whole-systems overview of all known technologies (past and present), crammed with dense details, stories, anecdotes, and lessons from the front lines… and ACCURATELY RATES as “LIMITED”.
limited Limited LIMITED
नीम हकीम खतरे जान
There’s a Panchatantra Story: The King and the Foolish Monkey
The Setup: A foolish but well-meaning pet monkey served as a loyal guard to a king.
The Incident: While the king was resting, a fly landed on his nose. The monkey, wanting to protect his master, picked up a heavy sword and struck the fly to kill it.
The Consequence: He killed the fly, but in his ignorance, he severely wounded the king.
The Moral: Blind action with “LIMITED-INTELLIGENCE” brings destruction, not help.
AI is now out of the chat, and it has becomes invisible.Invisible AI has changed the power dynamics between humans and machines. Rather than us issuing prompts to AI, AI increasingly prompts us, and subtly, sometimes without our awareness, it’s shaping our behavior. And,herein comes AI LIMITATION.Human brains and minds are designed with a sense of discrimination to keep us safe and our minds don’t accept AI intelligence “as it as” and discriminate.
Brain is a biological construct and no artificial brain can be created.Only humans have the sense of discrimination.Even no other creature has.
आहारनिद्राभयमैथुनं च सामान्यमेतत्पशुभिर्नराणाम् ।धर्मो हि तेषामधिको विशेषो धर्मेण हीनाः पशुभिः समानाः ॥
—Sri Sankara Bhagavatpada,Sutrabhasya
Man is no different from animals,Human beings and animals have the same urges. They eat and sleep and copulate and besides, the feelings of fear are common to both. “What, then, is the difference between the two?It’s The Intelligence of the Sense of Discrimination.”
@stochastic parrot”—An ancient Greek word for guesswork fuels a term that suggests supersmart computer programs are just mimicking whatever they see.
I believe that You Can’t Code Intelligence !
———————
In Can Digital Computers Ever Achieve Consciousness? Marcus Arvan argues:
What makes something analog rather than digital? Consider a thermometer filled with Mercury. When the temperature outside rises, the Mercury in the thermometer expands and rises. Now consider a mechanical watch. As time passes, the gears inside the watch turn and the hour, minute, and second hands turn too.
These devices are analog because they represent one type of change (increase in temperature or time) by another similar change (Mercury expanding or gears turning).
Human consciousness seems just like this. When the sun slowly gets brighter outside, you experience the light slowly getting brighter too—just like when it gets hotter outside, the Mercury in a thermometer slowly expands. Similarly, when you look at a color wheel, you can see how the color red slowly shades into orange when it is mixed with yellow.
Digital computers do nothing like this at all.
A circuit in a digital computer is simply a repeating series of “ones” and “zeros.” Digital programs merely process binary strings of code. When the program signals ‘one’, the processor will fire 5 volts, and when it signals zero, the processor will not fire at all.
Scientists used to think that our brains function like this—that a neuron either fires (‘one’) or it doesn’t (‘zero’). But we now know that this is false. Brains are analog. Neurons do not simply fire or not fire. They fire in different shapes and communicate outside of synapses by electromagnetic waves.
———————
In the highly acclaimed book—What Is Intelligence? Lessons from AI About Evolution, Computing, and Minds,Blaise Agüera y Arcas offers:
a unified picture of intelligence from molecules to organisms, societies, and AI, drawing from a wide array of literature in many fields, including computer science and machine learning, biology, physics, and neuroscience. It also adds recent and novel findings from the author, his research team, and colleagues. Combining technical rigor and deep up-to-the-minute knowledge about AI development, the natural sciences (especially neuroscience), and philosophical literacy, What Is Intelligence? argues—quite against the grain—that certain modern AI systems do indeed have a claim to intelligence, consciousness, and free will.
The Panchatantra monkey is a perfect companion to Kay's frog — both act with full conviction with partial perception. The frog starves in front of real flies; the monkey kills the king while trying to protect him. Same error, different consequences. And the proverb captures in four words what my essay needed a thousand to say :)
On Blaise — I assume you quote him without fully agreeing, and I'm with you there. I wrote about him in The Venetian Blinds, where he was one of three thinkers trying to translate consciousness across disciplines. His claim that modern AI has a real stake in intelligence, consciousness, and free will is bold, but I don't think it survives contact with the distinction my essay draws. Here's the telling evidence: AI has made staggering progress on objective intelligence — the measurable, testable kind — and almost none on the subjective. If the two were the same substance on one dial, scaling the first would have moved the second. It hasn't. That asymmetry is the whole argument.
BTW I'm not claiming AI can never get there. Only that we don't yet know what 'there' is. The monkey's problem wasn't loyalty or effort — nobody told him a sword was the wrong instrument for a fly.
Thank you, as always, for stretching the essay further than I took it.
Consciousness and subjective experience is unknowable to the machine despite the claims of the tech bro that it is only a matter of cracking the computational puzzle.
Thank You. Pollan's book is on my wishlist after I caught him in a few interviews . I have held off buying the book as his claims are pretty close to what my beliefs here already are. If you do a book review let me know.
Rajesh thanks for such an engaging essay. I have spent some time pondering through the examples and concepts. Here is my take.
The grandmother saying nothing at the right moment may be the sharpest example in the essay. It shows why mastery of one instrument does not make one conductor of the whole orchestra. A system may generate options, calculate probabilities, or produce fluent answers, but intelligence in the fuller sense requires lived experience.
The enduring mistake is to confuse intelligence with judgement. Intelligence can often be measured. Judgement remains inseparable from context, prudence and wisdom.
Alan, you put a finger on the nerve this essay touches but doesn't press. You're right that the grandmother's gift isn't intelligence in any sense we currently measure. But let me offer a distinction I think sharpens your point.
Subjective intelligence and judgment aren't quite the same thing. Subjective intelligence is the capacity to see clearly — the nurse sensing something is wrong, the grandmother reading the room. Judgment is knowing what to do with what you see. The grandmother's perception that the moment needs silence is subjective intelligence. Her decision to actually stay silent — against every impulse to comfort or advise — is judgment. You can have the first without the second: someone who reads a room perfectly and then says exactly the wrong thing anyway.
This is why the AI evidence is so telling. LLMs have made staggering progress on objective intelligence and almost none on the subjective — and judgment, which sits one layer beyond even that, they haven't touched. If these were all the same thing scaled up, we wouldn't see the gap. We see it everywhere.
Your line about confusing the instrument with the conducor is an even better way of saying it than I did — there's an essay on judgment coming, and you've given me something I may use there. Thanks.
Mr.RAJESH loves words,and,rightly so,he is a renowned author.The same is true for the vocabulary Selective Amnesia uses at every touchpoint.
MR.RAJESH has chosen one word—“Intelligence”—and does impeccable, detailed research that he turns into clairvoyant insight about civilization’s most arcane “AI” with a whole-systems overview of all known technologies (past and present), crammed with dense details, stories, anecdotes, and lessons from the front lines… and ACCURATELY RATES as “LIMITED”.
limited Limited LIMITED
नीम हकीम खतरे जान
There’s a Panchatantra Story: The King and the Foolish Monkey
The Setup: A foolish but well-meaning pet monkey served as a loyal guard to a king.
The Incident: While the king was resting, a fly landed on his nose. The monkey, wanting to protect his master, picked up a heavy sword and struck the fly to kill it.
The Consequence: He killed the fly, but in his ignorance, he severely wounded the king.
The Moral: Blind action with “LIMITED-INTELLIGENCE” brings destruction, not help.
AI is now out of the chat, and it has becomes invisible.Invisible AI has changed the power dynamics between humans and machines. Rather than us issuing prompts to AI, AI increasingly prompts us, and subtly, sometimes without our awareness, it’s shaping our behavior. And,herein comes AI LIMITATION.Human brains and minds are designed with a sense of discrimination to keep us safe and our minds don’t accept AI intelligence “as it as” and discriminate.
Brain is a biological construct and no artificial brain can be created.Only humans have the sense of discrimination.Even no other creature has.
आहारनिद्राभयमैथुनं च सामान्यमेतत्पशुभिर्नराणाम् ।धर्मो हि तेषामधिको विशेषो धर्मेण हीनाः पशुभिः समानाः ॥
—Sri Sankara Bhagavatpada,Sutrabhasya
Man is no different from animals,Human beings and animals have the same urges. They eat and sleep and copulate and besides, the feelings of fear are common to both. “What, then, is the difference between the two?It’s The Intelligence of the Sense of Discrimination.”
@stochastic parrot”—An ancient Greek word for guesswork fuels a term that suggests supersmart computer programs are just mimicking whatever they see.
I believe that You Can’t Code Intelligence !
———————
In Can Digital Computers Ever Achieve Consciousness? Marcus Arvan argues:
What makes something analog rather than digital? Consider a thermometer filled with Mercury. When the temperature outside rises, the Mercury in the thermometer expands and rises. Now consider a mechanical watch. As time passes, the gears inside the watch turn and the hour, minute, and second hands turn too.
These devices are analog because they represent one type of change (increase in temperature or time) by another similar change (Mercury expanding or gears turning).
Human consciousness seems just like this. When the sun slowly gets brighter outside, you experience the light slowly getting brighter too—just like when it gets hotter outside, the Mercury in a thermometer slowly expands. Similarly, when you look at a color wheel, you can see how the color red slowly shades into orange when it is mixed with yellow.
Digital computers do nothing like this at all.
A circuit in a digital computer is simply a repeating series of “ones” and “zeros.” Digital programs merely process binary strings of code. When the program signals ‘one’, the processor will fire 5 volts, and when it signals zero, the processor will not fire at all.
Scientists used to think that our brains function like this—that a neuron either fires (‘one’) or it doesn’t (‘zero’). But we now know that this is false. Brains are analog. Neurons do not simply fire or not fire. They fire in different shapes and communicate outside of synapses by electromagnetic waves.
———————
In the highly acclaimed book—What Is Intelligence? Lessons from AI About Evolution, Computing, and Minds,Blaise Agüera y Arcas offers:
a unified picture of intelligence from molecules to organisms, societies, and AI, drawing from a wide array of literature in many fields, including computer science and machine learning, biology, physics, and neuroscience. It also adds recent and novel findings from the author, his research team, and colleagues. Combining technical rigor and deep up-to-the-minute knowledge about AI development, the natural sciences (especially neuroscience), and philosophical literacy, What Is Intelligence? argues—quite against the grain—that certain modern AI systems do indeed have a claim to intelligence, consciousness, and free will.
—————-
The Panchatantra monkey is a perfect companion to Kay's frog — both act with full conviction with partial perception. The frog starves in front of real flies; the monkey kills the king while trying to protect him. Same error, different consequences. And the proverb captures in four words what my essay needed a thousand to say :)
On Blaise — I assume you quote him without fully agreeing, and I'm with you there. I wrote about him in The Venetian Blinds, where he was one of three thinkers trying to translate consciousness across disciplines. His claim that modern AI has a real stake in intelligence, consciousness, and free will is bold, but I don't think it survives contact with the distinction my essay draws. Here's the telling evidence: AI has made staggering progress on objective intelligence — the measurable, testable kind — and almost none on the subjective. If the two were the same substance on one dial, scaling the first would have moved the second. It hasn't. That asymmetry is the whole argument.
BTW I'm not claiming AI can never get there. Only that we don't yet know what 'there' is. The monkey's problem wasn't loyalty or effort — nobody told him a sword was the wrong instrument for a fly.
Thank you, as always, for stretching the essay further than I took it.
Consciousness and subjective experience is unknowable to the machine despite the claims of the tech bro that it is only a matter of cracking the computational puzzle.
Just finished Michael Pollans brilliant book https://www.amazon.in/World-Appears-Journey-Into-Consciousness-ebook/dp/B0FC5LXCVV/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=64463407568&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.SWoyy1mGNv_1rlm3ovNp9v8lEfd6OBULD4UEgkl1Hko6ndQYnxdjGp2X-LmT01H3.mkuWRIIQ_0tXAhCBHs3kJJ5v5cQV5kAbpPBf-VJ54vQ&dib_tag=se&dplnkId=38e46427-82d8-4a11-a65c-a6ea0cfe371b&gad_source=1&hvadid=749709429495&hvdev=t&hvexpln=0&hvlocphy=9061658&hvnetw=g&hvocijid=2324975509440974280--&hvqmt=e&hvrand=2324975509440974280&hvtargid=kwd-2442597409659&hydadcr=23639_2349294&keywords=a+world+appears&mcid=c5a2e0cb4dde30ab803524e60fd7cf27&qid=1781348310&sr=8-1which delves into the hard problem of consciousness and why it's going to be a difficult problem to crack.
Thank You. Pollan's book is on my wishlist after I caught him in a few interviews . I have held off buying the book as his claims are pretty close to what my beliefs here already are. If you do a book review let me know.
Rajesh thanks for such an engaging essay. I have spent some time pondering through the examples and concepts. Here is my take.
The grandmother saying nothing at the right moment may be the sharpest example in the essay. It shows why mastery of one instrument does not make one conductor of the whole orchestra. A system may generate options, calculate probabilities, or produce fluent answers, but intelligence in the fuller sense requires lived experience.
The enduring mistake is to confuse intelligence with judgement. Intelligence can often be measured. Judgement remains inseparable from context, prudence and wisdom.
Alan, you put a finger on the nerve this essay touches but doesn't press. You're right that the grandmother's gift isn't intelligence in any sense we currently measure. But let me offer a distinction I think sharpens your point.
Subjective intelligence and judgment aren't quite the same thing. Subjective intelligence is the capacity to see clearly — the nurse sensing something is wrong, the grandmother reading the room. Judgment is knowing what to do with what you see. The grandmother's perception that the moment needs silence is subjective intelligence. Her decision to actually stay silent — against every impulse to comfort or advise — is judgment. You can have the first without the second: someone who reads a room perfectly and then says exactly the wrong thing anyway.
This is why the AI evidence is so telling. LLMs have made staggering progress on objective intelligence and almost none on the subjective — and judgment, which sits one layer beyond even that, they haven't touched. If these were all the same thing scaled up, we wouldn't see the gap. We see it everywhere.
Your line about confusing the instrument with the conducor is an even better way of saying it than I did — there's an essay on judgment coming, and you've given me something I may use there. Thanks.