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Thursday, June 05, 2025

Will Scaling Large Language Models (LLMs) Lead To Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)


Here is a balanced argument presenting both sides of the ongoing debate around whether scaling Large Language Models (LLMs) will lead to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI):

Argument 1: LLMs Are Not the Path to AGI

  1. Statistical Mimicry ≠ Understanding
    LLMs are fundamentally pattern-recognition engines trained to predict the next token. They do not “understand” meaning, intentions, or goals. They simulate reasoning without possessing it, and lack grounding in real-world context, embodiment, or sensory experience—critical aspects of general intelligence.

  2. Lack of Agency and Autonomy
    LLMs do not initiate goals, pursue objectives, or act independently in the world. AGI requires agency: the ability to plan, adapt, and act toward long-term goals across environments, which LLMs are not designed to do.

  3. Catastrophic Forgetting and No Long-Term Memory
    LLMs do not learn continually or adapt dynamically post-training. Their knowledge is static, baked into weights. AGI requires lifelong learning, updating beliefs in real time, and managing long-term memory—which current LLM architectures do not support robustly.

  4. Scaling Laws Show Diminishing Returns
    While LLM performance improves with scale, there's growing evidence of diminishing returns. Bigger models are more expensive, harder to align, and less interpretable. Simply scaling does not necessarily yield fundamentally new cognitive abilities.

  5. Missing Cognitive Structures
    Human cognition involves hierarchical planning, self-reflection, causal reasoning, and abstraction—abilities that are not emergent from LLM scaling alone. Without structured models of the world, LLMs cannot reason causally or build mental models akin to humans.

Argument 2: Scaling LLMs Will Lead to AGI

  1. Emergent Capabilities with Scale
    Empirical evidence from models like GPT-4 and Gemini suggests that new abilities (e.g. multi-step reasoning, code synthesis, analogical thinking) emerge as models grow. These emergent behaviors hint at generalization capacity beyond narrow tasks.

  2. Language as a Core Substrate of Intelligence
    Human intelligence is deeply tied to language. LLMs, by mastering language at scale, begin to internalize vast swaths of human knowledge, logic, and even cultural norms—forming the foundation of general reasoning.

  3. Unified Architecture Advantage
    LLMs are general-purpose, trainable on diverse tasks without specialized wiring. This flexibility suggests that a sufficiently scaled LLM, especially when integrated with memory, tools, and embodiment, can approximate AGI behavior.

  4. Tool Use and World Interaction Bridges the Gap
    With external tools (e.g. search engines, agents, calculators, APIs) and memory systems, LLMs can compensate for their limitations. This hybrid “LLM + tools” model resembles the way humans use external aids (notebooks, computers) to enhance intelligence.

  5. Scaling Accelerates Research Feedback Loops
    As LLMs improve, they assist in code generation, scientific discovery, and AI research itself. This recursive self-improvement may catalyze rapid progress toward AGI, where LLMs design better models and architectures.

Conclusion

The disagreement hinges on whether general intelligence is emergent through scale and data, or whether it requires fundamentally new paradigms (like symbolic reasoning, embodiment, or causal models). In practice, future AGI may not be a pure LLM, but a scaled LLM as the core substrate, integrated with complementary modules—blending both arguments.





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Paul Graham's Favorite History Books


Medieval Technology and Social Change by Lynn White Jr.
This seminal work argues that technological innovations were central drivers of profound social transformations in medieval Europe. Lynn White Jr. explores three key areas—the stirrup, the heavy plough, and the watermill—demonstrating how each technology reshaped social structures, agricultural productivity, and economic organization. White challenges the notion of the Middle Ages as a technologically stagnant period, showing instead how new tools catalyzed changes in warfare, land use, and feudal hierarchies.

The Copernican Revolution by Thomas S. Kuhn
In this intellectual history classic, Thomas Kuhn traces the dramatic shift from a geocentric to a heliocentric worldview initiated by Copernicus. Kuhn places this scientific upheaval within a broader philosophical and cultural context, highlighting how it redefined humanity’s place in the universe. More than a history of astronomy, the book foreshadows Kuhn’s later ideas on paradigm shifts, illustrating how scientific revolutions disrupt entrenched worldviews and epistemologies.

Life in the English Country House by Mark Girouard
Mark Girouard offers a rich, architectural and social history of English country houses from the medieval period to the 20th century. He examines how changes in architecture reflected and shaped the lives of their inhabitants, particularly the aristocracy. Through floor plans, diaries, and illustrations, Girouard unpacks the interplay of status, privacy, service, and family dynamics within these grand estates, providing a vivid lens into Britain’s shifting class structures.

Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy by Michael Baxandall
This influential art history study reframes Renaissance painting as a product of its social and cultural environment. Baxandall examines how patrons’ expectations, religious practices, and contemporary values influenced the visual language of artists like Piero della Francesca. Emphasizing the "period eye," he shows that appreciating art requires understanding the cognitive and social context in which it was created—a groundbreaking shift in art historical methodology.

Anabasis by Xenophon
Anabasis recounts the harrowing journey of 10,000 Greek mercenaries who march into Persia under Cyrus the Younger and must fight their way home after his death. Written by Xenophon, one of the expedition’s leaders, the work is both a military chronicle and a meditation on leadership, survival, and Greek identity. With vivid descriptions of terrain, battles, and diplomacy, Anabasis is a foundational work in Western military literature and historical narrative.

The Quest for El Cid by Richard Fletcher
Richard Fletcher investigates the life and myth of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, known as El Cid, placing him within the tumultuous context of 11th-century Spain. Drawing from Christian and Muslim sources, Fletcher portrays El Cid not merely as a national hero but as a complex mercenary navigating the political and religious fractures of medieval Iberia. The book challenges romanticized versions of the Cid, offering a nuanced view of frontier warfare, honor, and cultural interplay.

The World We Have Lost by Peter Laslett
Laslett’s social history challenges myths about pre-industrial life in England, emphasizing how different it was from modern assumptions. He uses demographic and archival data to reconstruct the structure of households, marriage patterns, and community life before the Industrial Revolution. The book reveals a world of small families, limited mobility, and tight-knit rural communities, complicating nostalgic notions of a “golden age” before modernization.




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