Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
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Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
#2I agree with what's written, and I've been talking about the harm seemingly innocuous anthropomorphization does for a while.
If you do correct someone (a layperson) and say "it's not thinking", they'll usually reply "sure but you know what I mean". And then, eventually, they will say something that indicates they're actually not sure that it isn't thinking. They'll compliment it on a response or ask it questions about itself, as if it were a person.
It won't take, because the providers want to use these words. But different terms would benefit everyone. A lot of ink has been spilled on how closely LLM's approximate human thought, and maybe if we never called it 'thought' to begin with it wouldn't have been such a distracting topic from what they are -- useful.
Re: Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
#3I agree with what's written, and I've been talking about the harm seemingly innocuous anthropomorphization does for a while. If you do correct someone (a layperson) and say "it's not thinking", they'll usually reply "sure but you know what I mean". And then, eventually, they will say something that indicates they're actually not sure that it isn't thinking. They'll compliment it on a response or ask it questions abou…
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Re: Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
#4An article about AI "cognition" is written by LLM. You kidding.
Re: Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
#5> "Cognition" has a meaning. It's not vague. In psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind, cognition refers to mental processes in organisms with nervous systems.
Except if you actually look up the definitions, they don't mention "organisms with nervous systems" at all. Curious.
Re: Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
#6why? there is no why to something that is not possible
there is zero evidence that ai has achived, slow crawling bug level abilities to navigate ,even a simplified version of reality, as there would already be a massive shift in a wide variety of low level human unskilled labour and tasks.
though if things keep going like they are we will see a new body dismorphia ,where people will be wanting more fingers.
Re: Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
#7This framing makes sense. What we call “AI thinking” is really large-scale, non-sentient computation—matrix ops and inference, not cognition. Once you see that, progress is less about “intelligence” and more about access to compute. I’ve run training and batch inference on decentralized GPU aggregators (io.net, Akash) precisely because they treat models as workloads, not minds. You trade polished orchestration and SLAs for cheaper, permissionless access to H100s/A100s, which works well for fault-tolerant jobs. Full disclosure: I’m part of io.net’s astronaut program.
Re: Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
#8This framing makes sense. What we call “AI thinking” is really large-scale, non-sentient computation—matrix ops and inference, not cognition. Once you see that, progress is less about “intelligence” and more about access to compute. I’ve run training and batch inference on decentralized GPU aggregators (io.net, Akash) precisely because they treat models as workloads, not minds. You trade polished orchestration and SL…
"Yeah that's exactly the point - when you're actually working with these models on the infrastructure side, the whole 'intelligence' narrative falls away pretty fast. It's just tensor operations at scale. Curious about your experience with decentralized GPU networks though - do you find the reliability trade-off worth it for most workloads, or are there specific use cases where you wouldn't go that route?"
Re: Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
#9I agree with what's written, and I've been talking about the harm seemingly innocuous anthropomorphization does for a while. If you do correct someone (a layperson) and say "it's not thinking", they'll usually reply "sure but you know what I mean". And then, eventually, they will say something that indicates they're actually not sure that it isn't thinking. They'll compliment it on a response or ask it questions abou…
God, yes. The 'you know what I mean' thing drives me crazy because no, I actually don't think they do know what they mean anymore. I've watched people go from using it as shorthand to genuinely asking ChatGPT how it's feeling today. The marketing has been so effective that even people who should know better start slipping into it. Completely agree that we missed a chance to frame this correctly from the start.
Re: Why AI Doesn't Think: We Need to Stop Calling It "Cognition"
#10> "Cognition" has a meaning. It's not vague. In psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind, cognition refers to mental processes in organisms with nervous systems. Except if you actually look up the definitions, they don't mention "organisms with nervous systems" at all. Curious.
Fair pushback - you're right that strict dictionary definitions are broader. I probably should've been more precise there. My point is more about how the term is used in the actual fields studying it (cogsci, neuroscience, etc.), where it does carry those biological/embodied connotations, even if Webster's doesn't explicitly say so. But you're right to call out the sloppiness.