Does AI think?
If you know a little about artificial intelligence, the question seems a bit silly. The large language models that power ChatGPT and other AI platforms are often described as elaborate versions of autocorrect. After digesting vast libraries of human-written text, these systems have trained themselves to predict which word is best suited to follow another in any given context. That’s an impressive feat of algorithmic regurgitation, according to this view, but it’s not thinking. In an influential 2021 paper, linguist and AI skeptic Emily M. Bender and colleagues wrote that LLMs are merely “stochastic parrots.” While these chatbots might know what word is supposed to come next, they don’t know why that word should come next.
But some people who work most intimately with AI say the answer isn’t so simple. I recently interviewed Icahn School of Medicine associate professor Dr. Eyal Klang for an article in City Journal about how artificial intelligence will change medicine. (In a nutshell: mostly for the better, but with possible pitfalls.) After a stint as a doctor in the Israeli Air Force, Klang joined Israel’s famous Sheba Medical Center. There he became fascinated by AI’s potential to improve health care, and he helped build a leading AI research center. Today he is the director of the Generative AI Research Program at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital system. In short, Klang has spent much of his career working to apply AI tools in a field that demands both deep analytical thinking and subtle emotional intelligence.
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James B. Meigs is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a City Journal contributing editor.
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