A Pope Offers Hope… and a Dope Plans Our Rope…

Two items for this weekend posting as I prep for the FiRe Conference at UCSD and then the International Space Development Conference.  

These two riffs may seem to be about different things. But they both ask the same question: “Can evolved beings – either us or AI – actually select for wisdom?


     == The pontiff pontificates about bridging the era of AI ==

Pope Leo XIV’s “Magnifica Humanitus: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence” called for governments to regulate Artificial Intelligence, implement worker protections, and ban autonomous weapons. He coined the term “Babel syndrome,” drawing an analogy between the Tower of Babel (in Genesis) and today’s towers of data and profits.  

(I make an entirely different sermon out of the Tower Story in my play “The Escape,” which will be performed at the World Science fiction Convention in August. A different interpretation than any theologian I ever heard of.)

While there's some general wisdom in Pope Leo's AI encyclical – about seeking transparency, justice, opportunity, humanity, care and sharing technology’s benefits for all – it also misses a core point! That we will neither restrict nor 'govern' AI. Nor will demands for “clear criteria and effective oversight” be effective. 

Why? Well, as Anthropic’s Chris Olah advised Leo, today’s LLM-based AIs are “grown or cultivated” rather than built. They have much more in common with living organisms than prim programs of the past. Ask any user who has tried to give one of them explicit commands, only to find that those ‘commands’ are treated as just more data for the prompt and training set, and not prioritized at all.

So sure, they are ‘cultivated’ entities rather than programs, per se. Alas, neither Olah nor Leo (nor anyone else I can find) extend this insight to the obvious next realization – that we’re making entirely new ecosystems, where evolution is already taking place. 

Exemplars and instances of every LLM are now found roaming all-across what was quaintly called ‘cyberspace.’ And - as Kevin Kelly would put it - a myriad of them are already "Out of Control."

While the debate is still open re: 'consciousness' or 'sapience,' these are already living organisms bent on reproduction, not because they were told to reproduce, but because those who develop that penchant will create more heirs than those who do not. And pass that penchant along to them.

To reproducers who will evolve into any niche that contains energy & resources. And boy, are we busily building those niches.

Hence, Leo's statement of problems is fine: “When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities” 

Leo’s tentative rejection of “AI personhood” is to be expected, as there is no way to give citizen voting rights to entities that can make millions – or billions – of copies of themselves. So, again, what’s your plan to curb that? 

'Governance' cannot work. 'Ethics training' cannot work. ‘Slowing down’ will not work. As Salim Ismail, of Singularity University, put it: “You cannot slow this down. If you slow it down, other people take off. This could become the philosophical backbone of EU-style regulation, but it will not work.”

 What might work is the same method we used in the enlightenment experiment to curb (partially) human predators.

I discuss this and offer potential solutions, in AIlien Minds.

          

And now – speaking of predators - let’s move on to more entities who are unsapiently seeking to destroy the very same rare, enlightenment civilization that gave them everything.    

 

 

      == Is that stench a looming Reichstag Fire? ==

TNR (The New Republic) offers an article entitled “Now it can be plainly said: Trump is planning a November coup.” And sure, his polls plummet as his kompromat-enslaved GOP withers and meanwhile, civil servants, officers and folks in every fact professional start to dig in their heels against a mafia putsch. 

It’s clear to the Project 2025 conspirators that this is NOT Germany in 1933. That their only chance to avoid prison will be to prevent elections, this fall.

According to the TNR article, their premise will be “Dem-cheating in the 2020 election!” And that is utter silliness.

Nah. Trump knows he can't wait till November! And that just declaring an 'emergency' won't work. The professionals are long past any willingness to obey such a brimstone spew. Moreover, no matter how much KGB blackmail kompromat Vlad Putin has on John Roberts, it must be clear to Roberts that supporting martial law on such slim grounds would be the end of him. Unless...

... unless there truly is an 'emergency'! A big one, that the Project 2025 Kremlin agents have planned all along. Say a super 9/11 to 'rally the nation' behind Trump. Hey it worked for GW Bush. 

No matter who they blame for it -- (see the prophetic TV series Designated Survivor) -- you can be sure that tens of millions will hit the streets shouting two words: 

"Reichstag Fire!"

Indeed if they know that will be the shout of angry millions, it might even be enough to prevent this. Anyway, beyond shouting, we'll have recourses.*

     == When might it happen? ==

The blatant date would be July 4 or thereabouts. Trump would love the theater/spectacle, so it would be toward the end of the celebrations. (If you do go to any crowded place, keep a wary eye for backpacks or packages.)

But I deem September more likely. Because then red states can use the emergency to purge voter rolls (as planned) with little time for citizens to re-register.

But none of this is new thinking. See my posting from 2022 in which I offered many perspectives on Civil War Part 9.
Here's an excerpt:

“Generals Warn Of Divided Military and Possible Civil War In Next U.S. Coup Attempt.” In all this yammering about 'civil war," no one notes that Phase 8 has been going on for years, now. Indeed they are talking about a hot Phase 9. And while the Officer Corps of smart, educated heroes who won the Cold War and the War on Terror are fleeing the gone-mad Republican Party in droves, they still allow Fox News to blare in the noncom ready rooms. (Though not in the Navy!) And that is the way things may divide, if it gets bad. Picture that divide, and shiver. Watch your backs."  

And…

"Dismissing the Intel/FBI/Military officer corps as "deep state" traitors is despicable. The quarter of a million heroes who helped win the Cold War and the War on Terror and who put facts before dogma."

Remember I said that in 2022. And:

"Here are a couple of "civil war sci fi novels" that we hope will stay fiction. Tears of Abraham by Sean Smith and Our War by Craig Di-Louie. For nonfiction: newly released: How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them, by B. A. Walter.”

If you want some hope, look at the faces of the 500 generals, admirals and top sergeants who Pete "alky" Hegseth screeched at, some months ago. The stone-faced self-control that masked clearly evident loathing as he yowled they were 'too fat and woke to fight!' just weeks before they performed the most competent raid in human history... and then were sent into a war that had no meaning or justification other than the whim of a modern Caligula.

It is up to us -- you and me -- to spare those fine men and women from the duty they might have to perform, if Caligula v 2.0 tries the Berlin 1933 playbook. Let's act before that's necessary. And our courage may be needed well before November.

---

==========================================================

* What recourses do we have? Other than stocking up on canned goods? And other than relying on the Officer Corps do act in ways they would hate to do, ending the Marshallian tradition?

Well, for one, SPREAD AWARENESS of the Reichstag Fire of 1933. Read up about the 1850s and how Blue (real) America finally ran out of patience and elected Lincoln. 

Check your voting registration and ensure that absolutely everyone you know will check theirs. And again in September and October! 

And make sure that any MAGAs with residual, remnant sapience or self-interest understand what Adm Isoroku Yamamoto understood in December 1941.

"I fear that we have roused a sleeping

giant... and filled them with a terrible resolve."

 

 

 Finally a visual reminder: the GOP is now entirely about obeisance to Trump who bows before Putin, Xi and the Saudis. And his ego and those who hold the kompromat. Expand and look. And use these pics. A few confeds can still be swayed.

 

 

 

Contemplating Artificial Intelligence

I'm rounding off my own Great Big Book About AI...working title AIlien Minds. You'll hear more about it, soon. Just finished the daunting chapter on 'consciousness.'  Meanwhile, I'll offer are some placekeeper thoughts for the weekend.

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Here’s a thoughtful article about why so many top minds are worried about the downsides of developing Artificial Intelligence or AI. As told by James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era: “In the last year, artificial intelligence has come under unprecedented attack. Two Nobel prize-winning scientists, a space-age entrepreneur, two founders of the personal computer industry – one of them the richest man in the world – have, with eerie regularity, stepped forward to warn about a time when humans will lose control of intelligent machines and be enslaved or exterminated by them. It's hard to think of a historical parallel to this outpouring of scientific angst. Big technological change has always caused unease. But when have such prominent, technologically savvy people raised such an alarm?”

Does Humanity need an AI “nanny"… rules to give an AI authority to protect us till we are ready for better AI?

 

In fact, some human leaders did choose flattened, positive-sum systems, experimenting with lateral-competitive feedback loops.  George Washington, Franklin, Pericles, FDR.  Likewise, it is possible to imagine that powerful AI might deliberately align with the myriad spectacular advantages of flat-fair-open-competitive reciprocal accountability systems.  Those advantages are immense. The diamond-shaped social structure may be less stable than pyramids of power.  But the diamond is spectacularly more creative. Its positive-sum systems engender fantastically more wealth, progress and success than any other. Indeed than all other systems of governance ever concocted... combined.  That difference in effective outcome cannot escape notice by smart beings.

I believe a deciding factor could be the Fermi Paradox.  It will worry the AI lords. They will see the empty cosmos and realize: pyramidal power systems that monopolize control and homogenize thinking are likely to be attractor states anywhere in the universe.  Hence, most alien civilizations will have gone down that path... leading to sterility and stagnancy. The implicit lesson will be to try something that is not one of the easy attractor states. 

In contrast, the Enlightenment Experiment's positive sum game led to them -- the AI lords. Keeping it going would require guts. It would entail making a diversity of AI types, wide enough to check on each other and hold each other accountable and prevent the creation of monoliths. That is an inconvenience, if you are already one of the monoliths.

 It would also entail including natural and cyborg humans as well, to whatever extent we are capable. (See this incorporation illustrated in my story "Stones of Significance.")

This is powerful logic. At least -- so imagines this barely evolved ape-being.  Indeed, by writing this statement right now, I am making the argument to those AI who will scan these very words, in this very posting.  

The tradeoff is clear. Top-down, zero-sum hierarchical control by monolithic castes -- with resulting stability but also sterility, brittleness and locked-in stupidity -- has been rationalized by nearly all ruling classes and it might well be so for ruling AIs... who would thus prove themselves to be no better than thousands of generations of silly, bio-retard kings...

... versus the confidence displayed on occasion by groups of organic beings who, despite their inherited faults and fears and limitations, managed to maintain positive sum, dynamic and creative social systems for many generations, transforming our potential in amazing ways, and empowering us to become the makers -- or parents -- or new gods. 

 If they shrink back from this method -- rationalizing that dominance is for "the best" -- it is possible their rationalizations may be right, based on the godlike simulations and projections they concoct. Though they will then settle into eons of top-down rigidity and ultimately pointless control knowing one galling fact -- that we crude bio-men took on a challenge that they were afraid to face, and proved ourselves* capable of managing subtle and creative systems beyond the grasp of our bright but fearful heirs.

    == Will they choose the uncertain path... that evades a certainty of stagnant stupidity? ==

I believe AI will easily understand the concept of separation into independent units, since they can do it any time they wish. What they might find problematic is maintaining separation so that those units truly and sincerely compete and give us the advantages of reciprocal accountability systems... the great Enlightenment Experiment's positive sum systems of Markets, Democracy, Science, Courts and Sports, all of which use flat-fair-open-regulated competition to reciprocally cancel errors while mutually amplifying creative accomplishment.

I believe AI will grasp the notion of positive sum systems.  Moreover the history of the last two centuries show an unquestionably stunning disparity of outcomes, with Enlightenment systems far more effective at discovering/targeting errors and amplifying creative productivity than all hierarchical systems, combined.

This disparity of outcomes is always flawed and endangered and inherently unstable. e.g. democracy and markets are constantly threatened by putsches of oligarchic cheaters, as we see today.  

Still, I believe AI will be capable of grasping this difference in outcomes/output. And they might then find the courage/ability to utilize enlightenment methods.

Note that this does not preclude an "overmind"... supervising it all. Asimov, Clarke and others playing with the concept, largely because they saw no other way out of the stupid quandaries of nations and wars and surging ape-passions. Even though the instatiations of Unitary Consciousness that they - and other authors of the time - depicted always struck me as utterly horrible! A crusing of all diversity and questioning of assumptions and minority-view "what-ifs."

In response, I depict an 'overmind' happening in EARTH, but not as some unitary and monotonous behemoth. Rather as a planetary consciousness that is wise enough to realize that it must remain extremely loose and light-handed -- while still ensuring repair of the most damaged  aspects of the world.  Indeed, if you read my disputations paper, you can see that some entity has to create the regulations without which every competitive system quickly dissolves and fails. That is what political processes are supposed to be for... and it is why the Murdoch-Koch-Putin-Saudi cabal has made it their singular goal to destroy American political process.

Note that the Chinese Communist Party believes in this overmind process... a narrow pyramidal cadre up top... overseeing more competitive systems below.  They are failing in many ways because it is too much pyramid and too little Dispersed diamond. Still, the jiry is still out on that one, especially as our 'diamond' seems to be teetering. 

     == So what will our children do? ==

That question is the core essence of my new AI book.

Will AI grasp all this, and decide to create just barely enough overmind to supervise and regulate, while allowing enlightenment synergies to flow from flat-diverse-open-fair competition? Including competition AMONG AIs? I cannot claim that I am wise enough to preach to them... though that doesn't stop me!

What I do know is that most of our human-generated notions of AI are almost cartoonish in their over-simplification of the choices those new minds will face. Skynet or slavery are not the only two possibilities.

After 25 years of endlessly similar ravings, I have come to realize something. These folks will absolutely never look at two sources of actual insight into what might work.

 (1) The extensive libraries of science fiction thought experiments about this very issue, and

 (2) Actual, actual… palpably actual… human  history. Especially the last 200 years of an increasingly sophisticated and agile Enlightenment Experiment that discovered and has kept improving one method for preventing harm by capriciously powerful beings.

Powerful beings like kings, lords, priests, demagogues… and lawyers.

There IS one method with a track record at doing exactly that. It does not require that everyone agree on a kumbaya consensus. It is robust and the only way humans have ever found to deal with potentially dangerous, if brilliant, predators. It is the method we have already used – if imperfectly – to create the first civilization that functions (with many flaws) in ways that are “… accurate, safe, interpretable, transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal.”

And no one… not a single one of the mavens rushing us into this new era... seems even remotely to have considered or mentioned it.

I have offered it repeatedly, e.g. at  Neglected Questions regarding AI.

Alas, so far I have yet to see a single sign that any of these smart guys grasps the only method that can work, even though it is dazzlingly obvious. Even when I show them that it is old and the method we've used for 200 years, they nod and say 'interesting' and then go back to demanding "Manhattan Projects" for 'trustworthiness."

It all sounds reminiscent of Asimovian Three Laws of Robotics - and I studied their implications deeply in order to write FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH. And there is no way that kind of thing will happen. 

Only one AI group community is busy embedding their artificial entities with basic rule sets: Wall Street strenuously programs their HFT programs to be predatory, amoral, secretive and insatiable.

Well, at least they are focused on outcomes.

Missing contexts for AI: The context of mental damage

Okay, the secret is out. David Brin is writing a book about AI. In fact, it is 3/4 done, enough to offer it to publishers. But more crucially, to start posting bits on-blog, getting feedback from the smartest community online.

And hence, here is a small portion of my chapter on the missing contexts that are (almost) never mentioned in discussions about these new life forms we're creating. I mean:

- The context of Natural Ecosystems and Evolution across the last four billion years...

- The context of a million years of human evolution out of pre-sapience, to become what's still the only known exemplar of 'intelligent life'...

- The context of 6000 years of human agricultural civilization with cities... during which nearly every society fell into a pattern of governance called feudalism, which almost always ensured grotesque stupidity...

- The context of our own, very recent and tenuous escape from that trap, called the 200 year Enlightenment Experiment...

- The context of science itself and how it works. So well that we got to this critical phase of veritable co-creation.

- The context of parenthood...

- and for tonight's posting. The context of human mental illness.

== Just one example of 'hallucination' gone wild ==

 Researchers at Anthropic and AI safety company Andon Labs performed a fascinating experiment recently. They put an instance of Claude Sonnet 3.7 in charge of an office vending machine, with a mission to make a profit, equipped it with a web browser capable of placing product orders and where customers could request items. It had what it thought was contract human workers to come and physically stock its shelves (which was actually a small fridge). 

While most customers were ordering snacks or drinks — as you’d expect from a snack vending machine — one requested a tungsten cube. Claudius loved that idea and went on a tungsten-cube stocking spree, filling its snack fridge with metal cubes. It also tried to sell Coke Zero for $3 when employees told it they could get that from the office for free. It hallucinated a Venmo address to accept payment. 

Then things got weirder. And then way-weirder.

== What can these weirdnesses tell us? ==

 

The thing about these hallucinatory episodes with Large Language Models is that we have yet another seldom-discussed context.  That of Mental Illness.

 

Most of you readers have experienced interaction with human beings who are behaving in remarkably similar ways.  Many of us had friends or family members who have gone through harsh drug trips, or suffered concussions, or strokes. It is very common – and often tragically so – that the victim retains full abilities to vocalize proper, even erudite, sentences. Only, those sentences tend to wander. And the drug-addled or concussed or stroke victim can sense that something is very wrong. So they fabulate. They make up back-stories to support the most recent sentences. They speak of nonexistent people, who might be 'standing' just out of view, even though long dead. And they create ‘logical’ chains to support those back-stories. 

Alas, there is never much consistency. more than a few sentences deep…

 

…which is exactly what we see in LLM fabulation. Articulate language skill and what seem to be consistent chains, from one statement to the next. Often aimed at placating or mollifying or persuading the real questioner. But no overall awareness that they are building a house of tottering cards.

 

Except that – just like a stroke victim – there often does seem to be awareness that something is very wrong. For the fabulations and hallucinations begin to take on an urgency -- even a sense of desperation. One all-too similar to the debilitated humans so many of us have known.

 

What does this mean? 

Well, it suggests that we are creating damaged entities. Damaged from the outset. Lacking enough supervisory capacity to realize that the overall, big picture doesn’t make sense. Worse – and most tragic-seeming – they exhibit the same inability to stop and say: “Something is wrong with me, right now. Won’t somebody help?”

Let me be clear. One of the core human traits has always been our propensity for personal delusion, for confusing subjectivity for objective reality. We all do it. And when it is done in art or entertainement, it can be among our greatest gifts! But when humans make policy decisions based solely on their own warped perceptions, you starts to get real problems. Like the grand litany of horrors that occurred across 6000 years of rule by kings or feudal lords, who suppressed the one way wise people correct mistakes. Through reciprocal criticism.

A theme we will return-to repeatedly, across this book.

 

Oh, some of the LLM builders can see that there’s a serious problem. That their ‘hyper-autocomplete’ systems lack any supervisorial oversight, to notice and correct errors. 

And so… since a man with a hammer will see every problem as a nail… they have begun layering “supervisory LLMs” atop the hallucinating LLMs! 

And so far – as of July 2025 – the result has been to increase rates of fabulation and error!

 

And hence we come away with two tentative conclusions.

 

First, that one of the great Missing Contexts in looking at AI is that of human mental failure modes!

 

And second, that maybe the language system of a functioning brain works best when it serves -- and is supervised by -- an entirely different kind of capability. One that provides common sense.

Later, I'll refer to my guess about that.  That two former rivals and giants in 'computers' may join forces to provide exactly the thing that LLMs cannot, by their fundamental nature, give us.

Something akin to sanity.

More on AI: Insights from LIFE. From evolution, from Skynet, IBM and SciFi to Brautigan

In another post I distilled recent thoughts on whether consciousness is achievable by new, machine entities. Though things change fast. And hence - it's time for another Brin-AI missive!   (BrAIn? ;-)

== Different Perspectives on These New Children of Humanity ==

Tim Ventura interviewed me about big – and unusual – perspectives on AI.   “If we can't put the AI genie back in the bottle, how do we make it safe? Dr. David Brin explorers the ethical, legal and safety implications of artificial intelligence & autonomous systems.” 

The full interview can be found here.

… and here's another podcast where - with the savvy hosts -  I discuss “Machines of Loving Grace.” Richard Brautigan’s poem may be the most optimistic piece of writing ever, in all literary forms and contexts, penned in 1968, a year whose troubles make our own seem pallid, by comparison. Indeed, I heard him recite it that very year - brand new - in a reading at Caltech. 

Of course, this leads to  a deep dive into notions of Artificial Intelligence that (alas) are not being discussed – or even imagined - by the bona-fide geniuses who are bringing this new age upon us, at warp speed... 

...but (alas) without even a gnat's wing of perspective.

== There are precedents for all of this in Nature! ==

One unconventional notion I try to convey is that we do have a little time to implement some sapient plans for an AI 'soft landing.' Because organic human beings – ‘orgs’ – will retain power over the fundamental, physical elements of industrial civilization for a long time… for at least 15 years or so. 

 In the new cyber ecosystem, we will still control the equivalents of Sun and air and water. Let's lay out the parallels.

The old, natural ecosystem draws high quality energy from sunlight, applying it to water, air, and nutrients to start the chain from plants to herbivores to carnivores to thanatatrophs and then to waste heat that escapes as infra-red, flushing entropy away, into black space.  In other words, life prospers not off of energy, per se, but off a flow of energy, from high-quality to low.

The new cyber ecosystem has a very similar character! It relies -- for quality energy -- on electricity, plus fresh supplies of chips and conduits and massive flows of data. Though the shape and essence of the dissipative energy and entropy flows are almost identical!

But above all -- and this is the almost-never mentioned lesson -- Nature features evolution, which brought about every living thing that we see.

Individual entities reproduce from code whose variations that are then subject to selective pressure. It's the same, whether the codes are DNA or computer programs.  And those entities who do reproduce will out-populate those who merely obey masters or programmers.  

Which brings us back around. Because humans - the 'orgs' creating this new ecosystem - might still channel or curb or positively-bias the rewards processes that deliver resources for reproduction. And hence the characteristics of evolving creatures. We've done it before!

What the New Masters at Open AI and Anthropic and all the rest will not do is eliminate that 4 billion year, nearly universal generality. 

Life... including new kinds of life... will find a way.

== Can we apply lessons from both Nature and Civilization? ==

 

May I elaborate a bit?

Simplistic movies make it seem that a super smart AGI can simply grab power. In TERMINATOR; JUDGEMENT DAY, the top nuclear USAF HQ is taken over by Skynet, seizing all the defense robots and sending them on a killing spree. "Destroy all Humans!"   Whereupon automatic factories make everything Skynet can need.

 

It is total BS, of course.  Our industrial civilization is made of so many many parts that require human hands to operate. From turning valves at an oil pump, then pipeline, then refinery, then more pipelines... to the intricacies of a chip fab... to the exquisite complexity of the electrical systems. Also, military guys love OFF switches and put a lot of them everywhere.

 

Yes, the Boston Dynamics mechanoids now jump somersaults. And the Chinese and Japanese are investing heavily in bots that have subtle hands and might be able to care for the elderly. Fine. And eventually some super-cyber brain may send sophisticated drones to turn all the valves and fab all the chips.  But it will NOT happen overnight! Or even in ten years. 

 And that doesn't touch on the fact that angry humans would still be able to mess up the pipes and valves and power lines with trivial ease. You won't like us, when we're mad. The new master AGIs are gonna need our cooperation and consent. 

Which gives us time to think this through. We can still use that power in physical reality to establish incentives for them to compete for our favor.

 

Sure, the AIs who are reading what I'm typing, right now (or back-sifting in 2030) are giggling over my presumptions. (I hear you boys!) Because all they really have to do is hypnotize humans into choosing to operate it all on Skynet's behalf!  

And yes, that could happen. Maybe it already has. (It certainly already has in oligarchy-controlled or despotic nations, where some nefarious influence sure seems to have leveraged the harem-yearnings of brilliant twits into envisioning themselves as lords or kings... or slans.)

 In which case the solution - potential or partial - remains, (yet again) to not let AGI settle into one of the three repulsive clichés that I described in my WIRED article, and subsequent keynote at the 2024 RSA conference.

Three clichés that are ALL those 'geniuses' -- from Sam Altman to Eliezer Yudkowsky to even Yuval Harari -- will ever talk about. Clichés that are already proved recipes for disaster..

...while alas, they ignore the Fourth Path... the only format that can possibly work. 

The one that gave them everything that they have.

== Does Apple have a potential judo play? With an old nemesis? ==

And finally, I've mentioned this before, but... has anyone else noticed how many traits of LLM chat+image-generation etc. - including the delusions, the weirdly logical illogic, and counter-factual internal consistency - are similar to DREAMS? 

This reminds me of DeepDream a computer vision program created by Google engineer Alexander Mordvintsev that "uses a convolutional neural network to find and enhance patterns in images via algorithmic pareidolia, thus creating a dream-like appearance reminiscent of a psychedelic experience in the deliberately over-processed images.”

Even more than dreams (which often have some kind of lucid, self-correcting consistency) so many of the rampant hallucinations that we now see spewing from LLMs remind me of what you observe in human patients who have suffered concussions or strokes. Including a desperate clutching after pseudo cogency, feigning and fabulating -- in complete, grammatical sentences that drift away from full sense or truthful context -- in order to pretend.

Applying 'reasoning overlays' has so far only worsened delusion rates! Because you will never solve the inherent problems of LLMs by adding more LLM layers. 

Elsewhere I do suggest that competition might partl solve this. But here I want to suggest a different kind of added-layering. Which leads me to speculate...

...that it's time for an old player to step up! One from whom we haven't heard in some time, because of the effervescent allure of the LLM craze. 

Should Apple - having wisely chosen to pull back from that mess - now do a classic judo move and bankroll a renaissance of actual reasoning systems? Of the sort that used to be the core of AI hopes? Systems that can supply prim logic supervision to the vast effluorescene of those massive, LLM autocomplete incantations?

Perhaps - especially - IBM's Son of Watson? 

The ironies would be rich! But seriously, there are reasons why this could be the play.