The Cave of the 21st Century

Current language models are a statistical reflection of society as a whole, not a definitive representation of it. They work under a probabilistic definition of the answer, predicting which word is most likely to fit next, without truly understanding the causes of human history or its future consequences. They reflect collective patterns and not the particularity of any specific person.

This limitation finds a powerful parallel in Plato's Allegory of the Cave. In the original allegory, chained prisoners observe shadows projected on the wall and take them for reality itself, without knowing that an exterior world exists where things have volume, cause and depth. In this reality, we, the users, are the prisoners. But unlike the original allegory, we know they are shadows, and yet, we choose to remain seated. The responses generated by the LLM are the shadows, flat projections of aggregated knowledge that lack causal depth. We cannot see the volume of the answer, we obtain information in the simplest possible way, without comprehension or understanding from whoever makes us see.

A coherent answer can never be equivalent to a comprehended answer, or we will end up thinking that the shadows are the object, and in turn, we will never know the real object.

In Plato's myth there exists an exterior which the prisoner can reach, but, what would the exterior be in our situation? Genuine comprehension, the ability to understand the causes that lead us to an answer, anticipating consequences and building with judgement. In this case, we can find two paths to reach the exterior.

The first, quite dystopian and complex, is that AI reaches a conscious development similar to the human one, thus gaining its own judgement and making what is projected to us stop being a screen and start being a real plane.

The second, simpler, is that we ourselves stand up from the cave and turn around, developing a critical capacity to find the difference between a coherent answer and a truly comprehended answer, and that we stop treating the LLM as an oracle when it is, at best, a well-polished mirror.

It is worth mentioning that the first path, as I mentioned earlier, is quite dystopian, and at the same time, complex to demonstrate its viability. At this point, two concepts come into play that even apply to human consciousness. The philosophical zombie is a problem presented by David Chalmers, who presents a person identical to yourself, who reacts like you to external stimuli, but who does not truly feel or process what they express. This concept seeks to demonstrate that physical and behavioural identity does not guarantee, by itself, the existence of subjective experience.

On the other hand we have the other minds problem, where we are questioned how we can demonstrate that other people possess consciousness, feelings and real internal thoughts, if in the end, only our own consciousness is the one we can experience and verify its truthfulness.

For this reason, given the impossibility of demonstrating a conscious development similar to the human one, which is not even possible among humans under certain philosophical frameworks, the only viable path for us is the second one, with the differentiation between coherence and comprehension.

But… How did we end up living this allegory? With the imposition of the fast-paced society, with instant reward and with the need to always be connected.

Coherence before comprehension goes hand in hand with instant reward. Understanding causes takes time and effort, while a coherent and fluent answer gives the feeling of immediate resolution.

Constant connection, where if there is an answer at a touch's distance, erodes the habit of reasoning on our own before asking. We stop looking for volume and settle for the shadow.

Intolerance to uncertainty, where a fast-paced society has no time for "it depends", "I don't know yet" or "we need to think it over". With LLMs we are able to destroy uncertainty, that which in turn, has scared people so much.

The point at which we find ourselves, seated with our backs to reality, is nothing more than a consequence of a society that does not want to stop, that tries to make it seem that doubt is negative and stopping, losing a race that, in reality, does not exist.