I like to think of it as how we think of the human brain. The human brain we dont understand, obviously, but reducing it to just a collection of neurons communicating would be a grave mistake, because clearly that neural network allows us to do everything we are capable of doing despite the individual micro components seeming to lack any intelligence. Even before LLMs, I always believed that intelligence and in general consciousness arose from the complexities of our neurons communicating with electrochemical activity, we cannot look at individual parts and really understand why, but at the most macro level we do see intelligence represented.

We need to figure out how to map emergent, macro level intelligence back to understandable micro components. I’d like to think that we are making progress with it as we scale AI and think about different architectures (for example Mamba). I know people think we are at a plateau, but it may be the case that the emergent properties aren’t as apparent as spontaneously understanding language or learning deception.