Stephen Downes

How often have you heard this about AI? "It's just a next-token predictor." Strictly speaking, that's true. But that understantes what it is. As Carlo Iacono explains, "The critique of AI as 'just prediction' makes the mistake of focusing only on the mechanism rather than what emerges from that mechanism at scale. It's like saying humans are 'just neurons firing' - technically true but missing everything meaningful about human experience and capability."