Language models face limits in reasoning, planning, and true understanding.
First, language is only part of human knowledge. We know more than we can describe. A four year old has had way more sensory impressions than any large language model, despite not being able to read. Second, LLMs can’t truly reason or explain their decisions because they’re built on neural networks, which work like gut feel rather than rule based systems. They predict the next word based on probability distributions, not logical reasoning. Third, there’s the data quality problem. And finally, LLMs are fundamentally probabilistic, so they can’t reliably predict specific individual choices or plan multi step processes independently.
— A reality check on AI · The Edge