I converted my post-it based task tracker to an iOS app. It has no subscription, no data leaves your phone, and it costs 2 USD. It’s got no AI features but you can add tasks with siri by way of a shortcut.
Much less ambitious than what 3anddone is trying to do. But If you’re interested, check it out. It’s called “Grask”.
This piece circles, without naming it, around the concept of “deontic scorekeeping” central to the work of Robert Brandom on semantics. The idea that our ability to create and sustain conceptual systems depends on the give and take of reasons within a social setting. Brandom has been front of mind for me lately because elements of his theory both explain why LLMs should work in principle, and where they are bound to be radically deficient. An LLM encodes the normative regularities of our linguistic/conceptual games into its weights, but it cannot be a real participant in our games because it is incapable of staking durable commitments or changing its dispositions over time.
Worth reading: Robert Brandom, “Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment”
I mean, many companies operate within particular domains but don't have much skin in the domain itself in a way that is meaningful to other participants there -- like Oracle builds software for healthcare, ostensibly, but any actual user of their products will tell you they are nightmarish with regard to usability, and research shows that patients are often harmed as a result. So healthcare isn't their game, it's selling healthcare software.
Likewise OpenAI doesn't have "skin" of any shape or value in e.g. the mathematics community or even in mathematics research per se. In my cynical view, they are exploiting the exposure of mathematical research to automation in an effort to create a case study of their product obsoleting a highly visible and well-leveraged and relatively small profession. Regardless, I doubt even they would say they have durable skin in mathematics in any sense, certainly not in either of the senses I mentioned above. But their output inhabits the same space as mathematicians, who have to contend with the consequences
What a coincidence, I've also picked up inferentialism but never really got into it.
I'm interested in the reversal that Sellars proposes - it seems clear to me that "representation" is not prior to the space of reasons, despite how unintuitive it is.
> An LLM encodes the normative regularities of our linguistic/conceptual games into its weights, but it cannot be a real participant in our games because it is incapable of staking durable commitments or changing its dispositions over time.
I see no reason why this can't be the case in the future, even though I think inferentialist-based theories are generally strong. Can't you force LLM's (or whatever AI architecture will exist in a decade) to stake durable commitments itself, then? They're at least autonomous enough to run computers. I agree that that is a core part to true meaning & autonomy, but nobody just lets them yet. I don't think inferentialism is a consciousness-based argument, either, so that escape hatch isn't available. I also don't think this is a necessary condition to engage in the space of reasons (but maybe then I'm misunderstanding it, or retreating to a more Sellarsian understanding). Could you explain on this more?
Though again, I only have the book sitting on my desk, and I haven't cracked it open...
I actually agree with you. LLMs could become participants in the future, but this would require (1) durability of real awareness over time (an architecture change from the current fixed-weights + transient context architecture) and (2) that humans grant them the status of equal participants (probably not a terribly high bar given how people already treat these things). I'm not aware of any real progress toward (1), and all the stand-ins people have developed live in the context layer or textual artifacts, which are poor stand-ins for durable memory.
And yeah, consciousness based arguments are bunk IMO. It's clear that LLMs are in a basic sense "aware", and even to some extent "sapient" (in Brandom's usage), i.e. they can justify claims and object to things at least locally. I follow Rorty on the question of consciousness, which is to say that consciousness has no deeper meaning in practice beyond "are you awake", and in philosophical discussion it's largely a proxy for "are you one of us" in some amorphous sense.
Well that's too bad, since Rorty completely misses the point on consciousness.
Consciousness, the interesting part anyway, is qualia, or the "it is like something to be me" as Nagel put it.
Intention, as Dennett used it in his book "The Intentional Stance" is the "are you one of us" angle, and is distinct from consciousness because as the book title suggests, it is a stance taken with respect to some other system (person, cat, dog, turtle, LLM) rather than a description of subjective experience.
So I think it is your (and Rorty's) positions that are bunk. It is very, very far from clear that LLM's are in any basic sense "aware" let alone "sapient". They are extraordinarily able to manipulate language in a way that leads to text generation that has traditionally been assumed to indicate consciousness and/or intelligence. But we have no way of knowing if it is like anything to be an LLM, even though most of us are busy taking the Intentional Stance towards them.
I guess I'd say that your qualia aren't a something, but they're not a nothing either. We can't say what they are. They're not publicly describable, and therefore not publicly attributable. As Wittgenstein would say, "They cancel out."
And as I think Dennett himself would say, qualia are just Sellars's Given rearing its ugly head again.
Well, while I love much of Dennett's work, I emailed him after "Consciousness Explained" was published to say that I was disappointed that it appeared to describe what we are conscious of, not how we are conscious. He sent back a short note to say "You're probably right".
I think it means if we all have to justify ourselves to each other, we collectively come up with an sustainable ecosystem of ideas that we can understand. So if we stop justifying ourselves to each other, the ecosystem doesn't get built or sustained, and we stop understanding things. Not the person you responded to, but that's my reading.
If a short sentence like that could accurately summarize Robert Brandom’s deontic scorekeeping, he would have wasted a good chunk of his career.
I mean this with zero snark: if you’re interested, you’d be best off asking an LLM or doing a search. But the overall idea is that Brandom described how concepts and meaning are created socially by a kind of game in which people keep track of the claims that other people commit to.
If you accept Brandom’s framework, then it can be argued that LLMs can’t meaningfully participate in this process. This could be considered an explanation of why people have a negative reaction to LLM involvement in activities that are meaningful to humans - even though most people won’t be familiar with the theory, they would instinctively recognize that something important is lacking, such as commitment over time.
Brandom wrote a shorter version of the book, called "Articulating Reasons", which is available in full on his faculty page [1], or from booksellers. He's a very wordy writer (kind of exhausting to read, even for someone who enjoys philosophy), but if you get ahold of Making It Explicit, chapters 2 and 3 have the meat of the ideas I'm talking about here.
Edit: One of my ways of benchmarking new AI models is actually to type a version of this prompt in and see how sophisticated the response is: "Talk to me about the concept of deontic scorekeeping in the context of llms". You'll get good mileage out of that.
I think in future, each company will built its own universe of mathematics consisting of prized discoveries. Maybe one Mathematical Universe per Company in the multiverse of mathematics.
Humans change over time due to what they experience. It’s different from waking up from a ten-year coma and having access to a record of what happened to yourself in an alternative timeline where you didn’t fall into the coma.
This may not be helpful or strictly accurate, but when I see deontology or variants of that word, I substitute "SHOULD". It is like a duty or obligation.
NOTE: This would suggest a surface reading of Brandom's "deontic scorekeeping" might be keeping score of who has what obligations, who is following or breaking rules, etc.
Then the argument against LLMs being party to that is that we don't really assign roles and responsibilities to LLMs, they don't really have "duties" or "obligations" in the way a member of society will have. We don't negotiate with them over who should do what, they don't contribute to the rules that are set for them.
I'm literally just guessing based on the context here though, since the few times I've tried to watch podcasts with Brandom I generally bounce after 15-20 minutes feeling I haven't really understood anything he is saying.
Mathematicians always define their terms exactly, in order to begin their discussion. Philosophers never define their terms exactly, because then they would have nothing to discuss.
Because language is mimetic, and people are consuming huge quantities of AI-generated text. I.e. saying that an LLM can't be an equal participant in our language games isn't saying that it can't play by the rules. In fact that's what LLMs are trained to be best at.
What an LLM can't do (at least with the current architecture) is sustain a commitment that it can be held accountable for later. It doesn't have durable "perspective". It can't update its priors. Maybe a new architecture will come along that gives LLMs memory plasticity, at which point they will shift into being individuated quasi-persons, but that's not what we've got now.
Rather the opposite, AIs are arguably deontically asymmetric because they are powerful and virtual digital entities, and thus should be very concerning to the human species. Not because they current have no internal abstract state for learning state like humans and animals.
Recursive self improvement is a bulk process that shapes the weights of the next model. The weights are still frozen. Each individual "agent" would need to able to durably update its own dispositions to get to what I'm talking about.
I'm not suggesting mathematics and language are the same thing, but I am saying (which shouldn't be controversial) that mathematics as a discipline exists within the medium of language, and that mathematical reasoning, discovery, and proof happen via people proposing, justifying, testing, and objecting to formulations in language. This isn't a metaphysical claim about whether math is real or captures inherent structures of the universe etc.
Ok, then what is an agent that provides a 'thinking' or reasoning loop around said model?
You ended your first post with: "An LLM encodes the normative regularities of our linguistic/conceptual games into its weights, but it cannot be a real participant in our games because it is incapable of staking durable commitments or changing its dispositions over time."
And so if there is an agent, a thinking loop, that can recursively adjust over time...how does your statement hold up? I'm particularly talking about 'staking durable commitments or changing its dispositions over time'. Recursive self improvement is all about these 2 things, especially when it's the 'outer thinking loop' doing the improvement.
But you're right, Mathematics exists as a medium within Language. But then Language is just a transfer of ideas from one mind to another.
This principle is the heart of what the article is talking about: a transfer of logical mathematical ideas passed from a human to another. And the sense of 'shared understanding' that comes with it. It has nothing to do with keeping score.
It's about getting a 'sense' for why someone thought or rationalized an idea in order to connect some other idea. You get an 'ah-ha' moment, and some of those moments are gone, or a different path is taken to reach the moments now. That is what the 'weeping' is about (not that I agree with the article. I think anyone can spend however they want. Math doesn't have to change, it's that people want it to, apparently, because it's 'easier' to do something different, or for some other reason I don't know about).
It would only be true if you consider Mathematics and Language to be the same thing.
Both depend on Logic, which is where "deontic scorekeeping" comes in. You can only establish something (score) is true and believable by 'keeping score' and having some level of understanding about the language or math you are reading.
The article is mostly referring to the connection that comes from shared understanding between humans, particularly mathematicians, as they build new shared understanding, and realize there are limits to what they can know and 'leave behind' logic for others to pick up and carry on.
That connection has been severed, or strained a bit, but I'm sure new ones will be created. It just might be of the same flavor that mathematicians prefer, therefore they weep.
And if I understand "deontic scorekeeping" correctly, these forums are a better representation of the concept. You will lend some amount of belief to what is said/read based on what you know.
Ideas are contagious and AI is our most powerful vector yet.
I suppose we would see some interaction with AI in that sense, but it'll take place over the course of learn cycles and when AI starts ingesting its own ideas it typically goes wrong somewhere down the line.
- I clicked "try in gemini", typed a prompt, got an unimpressive result.
- Then I realized Gemini 3 was active.
- I tried switching models.
- I was presented with a $99/mo subscription offering.
- I scrolled down and clicked to get cheaper options.
- I chose the $19.99 "AI Pro" monthly option and paid.
- In chat I was able to use Argon. Cool. Seems pretty smart.
- I asked Argon if I could use it through opencode with my Google account.
- Argon said yes, but then told me I'd have to use the Gemini CLI as middleman.
- I told it I didn't know there was a CLI for Gemini; I'd just use that.
- It told me how to install gemini-cli.
- I authenticate via Google OAuth inside gemini-cli.
- Gemini-cli rejects my login, says the app is deprecated for subscription users, who must use agy.
- I install agy.
- In agy, I open the model selection menu.
- "Gemini 4 Argon is currently available to Ultra plan subscribers." Odd... Gemini 4 Argon is the model (included in my Pro plan) that told me to do this.
- I discover that Claude Opus 5.5 is included in the subscription. I switch to it and give it a debugging task.
- Within about 5 minutes: "Individual quota reached. Please upgrade your subscription to increase your limits."
- This is dumb. Google stole twenty bucks from me; I want my money back.
- I go to the Gemini web app to cancel my subscription. I paid on my phone, so I have to cancel on my phone.
- The Gemini iOS app has a "manage my subscription" page. I go there to manage my subscription.
- This "manage my subscription" page includes no way of cancelling.
- After a minute of confusion I go to the App Store > Subscriptions > Gemini > Cancel.
- My subscription will end at the end of the month (no refund).
- Then I have to find the complaint form so I can request a refund.
- But I did request one.
Anyway, "frontier intelligence" just wasted about an hour of my life.
o brother, i had the same problem when i first wanted to use Gemini-Cli. after hours spent, a friend of mine and i did a direct comparison, he with claude-cli and i with gemini-cli. task was to create a small arduino cpp app. gemini was not able to produce even compilable code... waste of time and energy.
for me, a google model can be as good as they want, in the end, they are still google, probably one of the most bureaucracy riddled big companys out there. evrything i see from then gives me feeling that evrything has been decided by a committee that do care more about politics and not customer needs. the shit one has to go trough to get the gemini-cli running is a good example of that.
Sadly, it's succumbing to the "the mods are -justifiably- uncomfortable with cleaning house and the quality of discussion is regressing to the Internet Mean" disease that every pretty-much-open-access link aggregator that attaches a link discussion forum contracts.
Why assume that novelty is a criterion for the worth of someone's literary output? Things can tread familiar ground, use familiar forms, and still be remarkable or worthwhile. (Imagine saying to Shakespeare: "Why write a book of love sonnets? Didn't Petrarch already do that?")
That said, I haven't read more than a few pieces by Carson and I'm curious to read more.
As a broad generality, you're right about novelty being a poor criterion.
But in the specific context of the Nobel Prize in Literature... The Prize's official mandate specifies an author who has "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction". There's also a "for the greatest benefit to humankind" criteria.
With those ground rules, writing Yet More Books in well-trod genres - but just slightly better than any of the other authors there - really doesn't seem to cut it for the Nobel Prize.
> "in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction". There's also a "for the greatest benefit to humankind" criteria.
None of these two rules imply super duper novelty of the genre? Like, not at all, as far as those two rules are concerned, you can write a biography or genre detective story and still produce "outstanding work in an idealistic direction" or something for the "benefit to humankind".
I don't see "new" in either of the criteria you quoted. It also doesn't fit with the explicit reasons given for awarding the prize to many past recipients. Sometimes originality is a factor, but in many cases the reason is just judged merit.
I try to understand what's the criterion, and inferred novelty since the other Nobel prizes seem to be awarded for some novel contributions. As I said, just trying to understand significance.
reply