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Preprinted! Been working on this for ~1 year w wonderful coauthors Nancy & Mark: > Understanding Artificial Neural Networks: Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Have you noticed many experts say they don't understand AI? What's going on? 🤯 Let us tell you... 1/

Here are some flagrant examples, although the appendix is full of them of them too — basically experts and journalists alike seem to repeat this mantra that we do not understand how contemporary AI works. See appendix at the end here for more: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 2/

This hangs with the other statements in fig 1: 1️⃣ ANNs (artificial neural networks) are inspired by human organism 2️⃣ ANNs are a black box we don't understand 3️⃣ We understand neither ANNs nor cognition therefore they are similar All 3 are misplaced! We unpack this... doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 3/

OK, let's talk about 3 important concepts: ANNs, LLMs, & AI: "Definitions of AI and LLM are hard to pin down [&] ANN is an umbrella term for models" Black box: Really not what people think because actually you can open it (read on in the PDF to find out) by design! doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 5/

Leibniz' Mill: "argument against the idea that mechanical components suffice to understand cognition" All are important & misused (1st 2) or forgotten about (last) to pretend we don't understand AI. OK & lil peek ahead to appreciate the pun this enables in section 4 (doi.org/10.5281/zeno...)! 6/

Before we use those 3 to tease apart what's going on, however, we have to contend with where we are. In 2010s we actually did avoid these traps, yes, even industry! “the most extreme promises of AI are based on a flawed premise: that we understand human intelligence” doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 7/

Thanks Olivia this looks great

Oh, thank you!!

Looking forward to reading the paper