Hinton says AI understands and has emotions; researchers push back
AlexTensor · x · 2026-09-22
Geoffrey Hinton doubled down: AI is not just a tool — "it understands and has emotions." He traces LLMs to a tiny 1985 language model built as a theory of word meaning, arguing their ability to answer tricky questions shows they understand the way humans do, and that skeptics lack a real model of how people work.
Researchers like Philip Torr publicly pushed back: they respect Hinton but see LLMs as nothing beyond a tool — "extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence."
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