Anthony Chemero
Cognitive Scientist
University of Cincinnati philosopher and cognitive scientist who argues large language models are not intelligent in any human sense — they can imitate and even “BS,” but, in his words, they “don’t give a damn.”
In his words
LLMs are not intelligent in the way that humans are because they “don’t give a damn.”
Biography
Anthony Chemero is a professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Cincinnati and a leading figure in embodied cognitive science — the study of how thinking depends on having a body that is situated in, and cares about, a physical and social world. His 2009 book “Radical Embodied Cognitive Science” is a touchstone of the field.
Why LLMs are not minds
In a 2023 paper in Nature Human Behaviour, Chemero argued that large language models are fundamentally unlike human intelligence because they are not embodied. Humans are living beings who care about their own survival and their world; that stake, he contends, is what makes cognition meaningful. LLMs, by contrast, “aren’t really in the world” and don’t care about anything — they generate fluent text without knowing what any of it means.
They don’t actually know what the things they say mean.
Chemero grants that LLMs can convincingly “lie and BS” much as their makers do — but reads that as mimicry, not understanding. His embodiment argument runs parallel to the cognitive-limits critiques of Gary Marcus and the linguistic case made by Emily M. Bender that fluent output is not evidence of a mind behind it.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/anthony-chemero