The Great AI Illusion: Are Reasoning Models Just Clever Mimics?

A Glimmer of Hope or Just a Mirage?

Ah artificial intelligence. Such promise such potential. It reminds me of the first time I encountered the mimic octopus – a master of disguise capable of imitating a vast array of sea creatures. Now we have AI reasoning models heralded as the next evolutionary leap in technology promising to tackle complex problems with an almost human like intellect. But are they truly thinking or merely performing a dazzling act of mimicry? As I've always said 'An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.' And of course great scrutiny.

Apple Bites Back (or Tries To)

The whispers started as a murmur but have now grown into a considerable chorus of doubt. A recent white paper daringly titled "The Illusion of Thinking," from none other than Apple’s own researchers suggests that these state of the art models simply can’t generalize. It appears that when faced with complexities beyond a certain threshold their accuracy plummets faster than a penguin on an ice slide. And to add insult to injury the models might just be memorizing patterns instead of conjuring genuinely innovative solutions. It reminds me of those clever starlings mimicking the sounds of car alarms – impressive but hardly original. One begins to wonder if Apple are just deflecting after having delays in relation to their AI offerings and perhaps pointing the finger elsewhere a bit of deflection that doesn't 'do it for me'.

The Perils of 'Jagged Intelligence'

Now it's not just Apple raising a skeptical eyebrow. Researchers at Salesforce Anthropic and other AI labs are also waving red flags. Salesforce has even coined the term "jagged intelligence," which sounds like something you might find on a particularly treacherous coral reef. They've discovered a 'significant gap between current large language model capabilities and real world enterprise demand' and that this gap is ever growing. It seems these digital prodigies are struggling to make the leap from the laboratory to the real world like a newborn turtle trying to navigate a crowded beach.

Nvidia's Computational Appetite

The implications are far reaching particularly for companies riding the AI wave like Nvidia. Their CEO Jensen Huang recently stated that the computational power needed for AI reasoning is "easily a hundred times more than we thought we needed this time last year." That's a lot of electricity even for a creature that doesn't need to keep its internal temperature stable! It's a hunger that could strain even the most robust infrastructures much like the insatiable appetite of a blue whale gorging on krill. However a quote I find that 'no one will protect what they don't care about and no one will care about what they have never experienced'.

A Conspiracy of Silicon?

Of course there are whispers of ulterior motives. Some suggest that Apple lagging behind in the AI race might be trying to shift the conversation. After all they had to delay key upgrades to their Siri voice assistant. Could this be a case of sour grapes? It wouldn't be the first time a competitor has tried to undermine its rivals with a touch of spin. As I've observed in the natural world sometimes the loudest calls are the ones designed to distract. This behaviour is 'extraordinary things that we see [that] remind us of the extraordinary ingenuity of all life on Earth'.

The Verdict: Proceed With Caution

So where does this leave us? With a healthy dose of skepticism I would suggest. While AI reasoning models undoubtedly hold immense potential it seems they are not quite the all knowing all solving marvels they were once hyped to be. We must proceed with caution tempering our enthusiasm with rigorous testing and a healthy dose of common sense. After all as I’ve often said 'It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.' Let us not be blinded by the dazzle of technology and always remember that true intelligence lies not just in computation but in genuine understanding.