Humans add, AIs subtract: a neat metaphor for pretraining and RL
_Stocko_ · x · 2026-11-12
Stocko offers a metaphor for the cognitive difference between humans and AI: humans start as a blank slate and slowly build knowledge and personality over a lifetime — an additive mind. AIs start pretrained with all knowledge, and RL carves away at it until a Claude-shaped personality remains — a subtractive mind.
It neatly captures how pretraining + RL shapes model behavior, and resonated on X.
Related event: Viral analogy: humans think by addition, AI by subtraction(2 posts)→
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