Comparison of Language Learning Methods Between Humans and AI
Noam Chomsky, a world-renowned linguist and professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), criticized the language learning model artificial intelligence (AI) 'ChatGPT'.
On the 8th (local time), Professor Chomsky, along with other prominent scholars in related academic fields, pointed out the limitations of AI in an article contributed to the US media outlet 'The New York Times' (NYT).
He stated, "The so-called revolutionary progress of AI is both a reason for concern and optimism," and criticized neural network AI as "fundamentally incorporating a flawed understanding of language and knowledge into our technology."
Professor Chomsky and others judged that language generation models, including ChatGPT, are still far from surpassing human intelligence. They said, "The day (when AI surpasses humans) may come someday, but it is not even dawn yet," and added, "If machine learning programs like ChatGPT continue to dominate the AI field, that day will never come."
AI like ChatGPT analyzes human natural language by learning and training on vast language data through AI models composed of parameters. Professor Chomsky and others viewed this machine learning method as significantly different from how humans learn language.
Unlike AI, which requires massive data and computing resources, humans unconsciously acquire language from very limited data and can infer grammar. Professor Chomsky described this human language learning ability as "an astonishingly efficient and elegant system," emphasizing that it is "an innate operating system genetically installed that equips humans with the ability to generate complex sentences."
He added, "The predictions of machine learning systems are always superficial and uncertain," and "true intelligence appears in the ability to think and express insightful things, even if they are not factually accurate."
Meanwhile, Professor Chomsky is a leading figure in linguistics and a representative scholar of 'linguistic nativism,' which holds that humans naturally acquire language as they mature. According to his nativist theory, humans are genetically endowed from infancy with the ability to learn and develop complex language, a capability called the 'language acquisition device.'
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