Geoffrey Hinton

You often think actually using movements.

So when I'm wandering around my carpentry shop looking for a hammer, but thinking about something else,

I sort of keep track of the fact I'm looking for a hammer by sort of going like this.

I wander around going like this while I'm thinking about something else.

And that's a representation that I'm looking for a hammer.

So we have many representations involved in thinking, but one of the main ones is language.

And a lot of the thinking we do is in language.

And these large language models actually do think.

So there's a big debate, right, between the people who believed in old-fashioned AI and

that it was all based on logic, and you manipulate symbols to get new symbols, they don't really think these neural nets are thinking.

Whereas the neural net people think, no, they're thinking.

They're thinking pretty much the same way we do.

And so the neural nets now, some of them, you'll ask them a question.

and they'll output a symbol that says, I'm thinking.

And then they'll start outputting their thoughts, which are thoughts for themselves.

Like, I give you a simple math problem.

Like, there's a boat, and on this boat there's a captain.

There's also 35 sheep.

How old is the captain?

Now, many kids of age around 10 or 11, particularly if they're educated in America, will say the captain is 35 because they look around and they say, well, you know, that's a plausible age for a captain.