It’s not a naive question at all: it’s a very nuanced and controversial question in at least two major ways. The question of what constitutes reasoning is extr

It’s not a naive question at all: it’s a very nuanced and controversial question in at least two major ways. The question of what constitutes reasoning is extremely difficult to answer or attempt to answer in a rigorous way. We struggle with clear bright lines on this even as concerns biological organisms with vastly more flexible goal-directed behaviors, and on the closely related concept of consciousness, we lack a consensus even for humans in the womb. Speaking for myself I tend to focus on “useful” levels of planning, generality, and goal-seeking to sidestep some of the thornier philosophical issues. Even there things are wildly controversial. There is a significant group (including some very serious and credentialed experts) who claim that the trajectory is clear: some version of AGI is not only possible with these architectures but so imminent as to demand drastic policy decisions. There is another group (likewise including unimpeachably credentialed experts) who claim that there is no evidence for this extraordinary claim, and that attention decoders in no way show potential for this kind of generality. My understanding of the math and mechanism, for whatever it’s worth, inclines me to agree with the latter group.