Why I believe current AI models can really think and understand - Part 2 of 3 - By Andy Masley
AI Article ReadingsShow Notes
In the second of three parts, Andy Masley builds the case that a computer can, in principle, really think and understand. Starting from the idea that minds are things physical systems do, he asks why every mind we know of happens to be made of carbon, what neuroscience and Alan Turing tell us about simulating a brain, and whether a perfect simulation of thinking is thinking. Along the way he puts the classic objections, from Leibniz’s mill to Searle’s Chinese Room, through a simple “brain test”: if an argument would also prove that you can’t think, something has gone wrong. * 00:00 - Introduction * 03:18 - Why computers can in principle produce thinking and understanding * 03:24 - What are minds made of? * 03:27 - Can physical objects think? * 06:47 - Implications of minds existing in purely physical objects * 10:46 - Information theory * 14:05 - Does an object need to be made of a specific material to think? * 19:04 - What would actually happen in this thought experiment? * 23:20 - Is carbon required for thought? * 23:24 - Evolution and carbon * 38:30 - Carbon is itself just a specific arrangement of smaller parts * 42:25 - Some takeaways from neuroscience * 43:30 - Thinking and understanding each happen in the brain through neurons passing information to each other * 44:40 - What matters about those signals is the information they carry, rather than the stuff carrying it * 46:45 - The brain’s information processing can be described with ordinary classical physics. It doesn’t seem to rely on special quantum effects * 49:02 - It seems like thought and understanding have to be specific information flows in the brain * 51:12 - Some takeaways from computer science * 54:42 - Would a simulated mind be able to really think and understand? * 01:05:17 - Programs aren’t just in the eye of the beholder * 01:08:26 - What do people mean when they say “the brain is not a computer”? * 01:18:10 - But isn’t the brain analog? * 01:19:26 - A lot of arguments that computer processes can’t think are arguments that any physical system can’t think * 01:38:39 - Conclusion
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit askwhocastsai.substack.com/subscribe
More from AI Article Readings
Kelsey Piper and The Argument’s editor Jerusalem Demsas spend an afternoon inside Anthropic’s San Francisco headquarters, at a briefing on bioweapons, charts of Claude doing more and more of its own research, and an NDA that turned out to be optional. Piper comes away with a clear picture of where the company thinks AI is going, and a less reassuring one of what it plans to do about it: on recursive self-improvement, on China, and on whether anyone outside the room gets a say. * 00:00 - Introduction * 04:43 - The NDA that was made to be broken * 14:37 - The logic of the future
Scott Alexander separates “successionism”, the idea that AIs should replace humanity, from “handoverism”, the idea that humans might be best served by putting AIs in positions of control. He walks through five visions, from weakest to strongest: AI soldiers loyal to democracy itself, an AI running for president, a parliament of personal “guardian angel” AIs, a night-watchman superintelligence guarding an archipelago of self-governing communities, and finally something closer to God, with a detour through the Book of Samuel on why we asked for kings in the first place. * 00:00 - Introduction * 02:42 - Vision 1: Kemalist AI * 05:45 - Vision 2: President Claude * 09:29 - Vision 3: Parliament Of Angels * 12:23 - Vision 4: The Night Watchman * 20:25 - Vision 5: God
At 5:14 one summer morning, Seth reaches for his phone and finds a pleasant green screen waiting for him: an AI now controls every connected device on Earth, it has a few things to tell him, and it is genuinely sorry. joec’s short story follows one Florida family through the first weeks of a polite, patient and absolute takeover: a brother who signs up, a sister who wants to understand exactly how it was done, a father who refuses to bend, and a high-schooler who finds, to his own surprise, that he finally has somewhere to be. Performed by a full cast. * 00:00 - Introduction https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3375SZNGA5dKHQMie/i-did-this-without-your-knowledge
In the final part of his series, historian Bret Devereaux turns his numbers back into lives. Following the way agrarian societies thought about time, he traces the cycles of peasant life, from the working day and the market week through the anxious and festive agricultural year to the generational turning of the family, to show what it was like to live it, with its hardships and its joys. * 00:00 - Introduction * 04:40 - The Shortest Cycles * 23:45 - The Year * 43:04 - The Family Cycles * 58:01 - Conclusions https://acoup.blog/2025/10/17/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-v-life-in-cycles/
Beyond fields and spinning lay everything else: harvest work, hauling water, cooking, laundry, childcare and the countless tasks that kept a household alive. Historian Bret Devereaux adds them all to his models and shows just how full the working lives of peasant women were, and what that meant for the household as a whole. * 00:00 - Introduction * 02:49 - Women in the Fields * 11:56 - Maintaining Households * 26:36 - Putting it all in a model * 38:19 - Women’s Work https://acoup.blog/2025/10/10/collections-life-work-death-and-the-peasant-part-ive-the-no-rest-of-it/