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AIs understand
Cast your vote:
Results (14 votes):
Total
(14 votes)
For 8 (57%)
Abstain 0 (0%)
Against 6 (43%)
For (7)
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Geoffrey HintonGodfather of Deep Learningvotes For and says:
Suppose I say to a chatbot, I saw the Grand Canyon flying to Chicago. And the chatbot says, that can't be right. The Grand Canyon is much too big to fly to Chicago. And I say, no, no, no, it was me flying to Chicago. While I was flying to Chicago, I ...
more AI Verified source (Jun 3, 2026)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Bertrand MeyerComputer scientist and software engineering professorvotes For and says:
With recent progress in LLMs and other Modern-AI tools, it is becoming increasingly hard to argue that these systems “do not understand“ what they are doing.
AI Verified source (Feb 26, 2026)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Sébastien BubeckAI researcher at OpenAIvotes For and says:DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly.
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Ilya SutskeverAI researcher, co-founder and former former chief scientist at OpenAIvotes For and says:
I'd like to take a small detour and to give an analogy that will hopefully clarify why more accurate prediction of the next word leads to more understanding, real understanding. Let's consider an example. Say you read a detective novel, [...] then le...
more AI Verified source (Mar 22, 2023)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Blaise Agüera y ArcasVP and Fellow at Google Research; AI researcher and authorvotes For and says:
Fundamentally, concepts are patterns of correlation, association, and generalization. Suitably architected neural nets, whether biological or digital, are able to learn such patterns using any input available. Neural activity is neural activity, whet...
more AI Verified source (2022)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Pierre Beckmann & Matthieu QuelozPhilosophers; authors of Mechanistic Indicators of Understanding in Large Language Modelsvotes For and says:
Large language models (LLMs) are often portrayed as merely imitating linguistic patterns without genuine understanding. We argue that recent findings in mechanistic interpretability (MI), the emerging field probing the inner workings of LLMs, render ...
more Disputed source (Jul 7, 2025)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Steven T. PiantadosiUC Berkeley psychology professor; computational cognitive scientistvotes For and says:
We argue that LLMs have likely already achieved some key aspects of meaning which, while imperfect, mirror the way meanings work in cognitive theories, as well as approaches to the philosophy of language.
Disputed source (Aug 5, 2022)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly.
Abstain (0)
Against (6)
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Elan BarenholtzFAU psychology professorvotes Against and says:
The model has no exposure to the kinds of information we typically associate with meaning. It knows nothing about the redness of “red” or the spatial extension of “far.” It is blind, deaf, and unembodied. [...] There is no content at the address. No ...
more AI Verified source (May 19, 2026)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Emily M. BenderLinguist; AI criticvotes Against and says:
That language models are modeling just the form [...] that's not the same thing as meaning. And they don't have access to the meaning.
AI Verified source (Apr 28, 2026)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Melanie MitchellAI researcher; complexity scientist and authorvotes Against and says:
And language models are passive. They’re fed all this text, they predict the next word. [...] It’s only the world of language.
AI Verified source (Feb 11, 2026)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Barry CooperWriter on technology and the humanitiesvotes Against and says:
It takes the weight of human language, sifts through all the pieces, and constructs an answer in a form it does not comprehend to answer a question it did not understand.
AI Verified source (Jan 26, 2026)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Gary MarcusProfessor of Psychology and Neural Sciencevotes Against and says:
create bullshit in the sense that they [...] mimic the general thing...they fake their way through everything
AI Verified source (Nov 20, 2025)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly. -
Yann LeCunComputer scientist, AI researchervotes Against and says:
[LLMs] don't really understand the physical world. They don't really have persistent memory. They can't really reason and they certainly can't plan.
AI Verified source (Mar 7, 2024)DelegateChoose a list of delegatesto vote as the majority of them.Unless you vote directly.