this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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Let's abstract if further. Rip every page out of the dictionary and put it through a shredder. All the knowledge is still there, the paper hasn't been destroyed and the knowledge can be accessed by someone patient, it's just not in a form that can be easily read.
But is that pile of shredded paper knowledgeable?
Are you trying to say that the word 'knowledgeable' has some implication of intelligence? Because, depending on context, yes it can. Or are you trying to say that LLMs take a lot of time and/or energy to reassemble their shredded data? To answer your question, yes, the pile of shredded paper contains knowledge, and its accessibility is irrelevant to the conversation.
I'm saying both - a parking lot covered with shredded dictionaries isn't knowledgeable. It doesn't know anything.
Your exchange makes me think about the chinese room thought experiment.
The person inside the room has instructions and a dictonary they uses to translate chinese symbols into english words. They never leave the room and never interact with anyone. They just translate single words.
They don't understand chinese, but the output of the system (the room) gives the impression that there is thinking behind the process. If I remember correctly, it was an argument against the Turing test. The claim was that computers could be extremely efficient into constructing anwsers that seems to be backed by human consciousness/thinking.
Right, so the parking lot covered with shredded dictionaries needs a human mind or else its just a bunch of trash.
The human inside the Chinese room, or in the parking lot picking up and organizing the trash, or in a discussion with a chatbot is still critical to the overall intelligence/knowledgeability of the system. It's still needed for that spark and, without it, it's just trash.
I think you are right. IMHO the room actually does speak/understand Chinese, even of the robot/human in the room does not.
There are no neurons in your brain that "understand" English, yet you do. Intelligence is an emergent property. If you "zoom-in" enough everything is just laws of physics and those laws don't understand English or Chinese.
If we carry the thought experiment forward, the parking lot requires a human to put in energy to make the whole system knowledgeable. In order for knowledgeability or intelligence to emerge we still need a human involved in the process, whether it's a Chinese room or a parkinglot covered with shredded dictionaries or a chatbot productivity software.
We have not eliminated the human from the process, and until we do, we can not say that it is intelligent or knowledgeable.