A satirical debate has 'Iblis' apply standard large‑language‑model critiques to people: short working memory, reliance on scratchpads, shallow pattern‑matching, and transfer failures. The gag shows many 'hallucination' and 'world‑model' complaints fit humans too, suggesting evaluation artifacts and scaffolding design drive a lot of perceived 'understanding' gaps.
— Reframing AI deficits as human‑typical failure modes encourages more honest benchmarks and methods (e.g., scratchpads, prompts) before drawing sweeping policy conclusions about AI competence or danger.
Scott Alexander
2025.09.02
100% relevant
Lines like 'Without a scratchpad, they only have a working context window of seven plus or minus two' and defenses invoking 'Thinking Mode' mirror chain‑of‑thought and memory critiques used on LLMs.
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