Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 140.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2026-09-02 20:02:45+00:00
        From: Dr. Herbert Wender <drwender@aol.com>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.4: repetition vs intelligence?

Dear Willard,

in the very beginning of the 2025 thread „repetition vs. intelligence“ (Humanist
39.4) you thematized AI's_ echoing behaviour:

„My question is this: to what extent,in what ways, do the strategies of the so-
called Large Language Models produce results that only echo back to us current
linguistic behaviour (parole), in effect saying nothing new, however useful […]?“

Perhaps we should discuss more about the usefulness of Q-A systems (aka expert
systems) with NLP interfaces instead to intensify the debate about sameness,
identity and more or less delicate experiences.

Giving as stimulus to Google „fineman exploration exploitation“ I got back as
response by Goofl's AI:

"The exploration-exploitation trade-off is a fundamental mathematical and
computational dilemma about balancing the gathering of new information against
maximizing immediate rewards.
You might be referring to Richard Feynman’s restaurant problem, a specific
optimization problem that the famous physicist formulated and solved regarding
this exacttrade-off."

IMHO: For a man with weakened memory such exploitation of information resources
is quite intelligent enough.

Herbert





    Am Donnerstag, 8. Mai 2025 um 09:38:57 MESZ hat Humanist
<humanist@dhhumanist.org> Folgendes geschrieben:


              Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 4.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                      www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2025-05-08 06:51:41+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: repetition vs intelligence

This is about the current state and probable trajectory of artificial
intelligence, I'd hope without promotional futurism. (Prominence of the
future tense in writings about AI I find very interesting indeed, but
here it is, at least for me, only a distraction.)

My question is this: to what extent, in what ways, do the strategies of
the so-called Large Language Models produce results that only echo back
to us current linguistic behaviour (parole), in effect saying nothing
new, however useful, however news to the questioner? The current term
for the misbehaviour of LLMs when they make things up seems to be
'hallucination'; far more accurate would be 'fabrication'.
Hallucinations are much more interesting, but used of LLMs lets them off
the hook.

We could say, as a friend of mine did, that saying something new in my
sense, i.e. being truly creative, is exceedingly rare. But isn't that
exactly what we want of intelligence? What would the artificial kind
have to do to qualify? Or do we have examples, are they being noticed
and investigated?

Enough for now, I trust. Comments eagerly welcomed!

Best,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk



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