The Fluid Architecture of Cognitive Possibility

The article discusses the emergence of large language models (LLMs) and their unique capacity to generate human-like thought processes without actually 'thinking' in a human way. Unlike humans who reason sequentially, LLMs operate within vast vector spaces, reshaping probabilities into coherent text. This behavior challenges conventional notions of intelligence as it allows machines to perform tasks—like writing poetry and simulating empathy—that were traditionally viewed as uniquely human. It proposes a new understanding of intelligence characterized by a 'fluid architecture of cognitive possibility' rather than linear, deductive reasoning.

The unsettling truth isn't that these machines 'understand' us. It's that they don't—and still, they perform with astonishing coherence.

We can begin to describe it—not as a function of symbolic logic or linear deduction, but as something more amorphous, dynamic.

Read at Psychology Today