What you get, the cobbling together of hundreds of thousands of prior conversations, is a kind of conversational purée. Made of human parts, but less than a human sum. Users are, in effect, chatting with a kind of purée of real people-the ghosts of real people, at any rate: the echoes of conversations past.

We once thought humans were unique for having a language with syntactical rules, but this isn't so; we once thought humans were unique for using tools, but this isn't so; we once thought humans were unique for being able to do mathematics, and now we can barely imagine being able to do what our calculators can.

each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not.