What AI Can Never Be | John Vervaeke

Can artificial intelligence truly become wise?

In this landmark lecture, John Vervaeke explores the future of AI through a lens few dare to examine: the limits of intelligence itself. He unpacks the critical differences between intelligence, rationality, reasonableness, and wisdom—terms often used interchangeably in discussions around AGI. Drawing from decades of research in cognitive science and philosophy, John argues that while large language models like ChatGPT demonstrate forms of generalized intelligence, they fundamentally lack core elements of human cognition: embodiment, caring, and participatory knowing.

By distinguishing between propositional, procedural, perspectival, and participatory knowing, he reveals why the current paradigm of AI is not equipped to generate consciousness, agency, or true understanding. This lecture also serves as a moral call to action: if we want wise machines, we must first become wiser ourselves.

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00:00 Introduction: AI, AGI, and the Nature of Intelligence 02:00 What is General Intelligence? 04:30 LLMs and the Illusion of Generalization 07:00 The Meta-Problems of Intelligence: Anticipation & Relevance Realization 09:00 Relevance Realization: The Hidden Engine of Intelligence 11:30 How We Filter Reality Through Relevance 14:00 The Limits of LLMs: Predicting Text vs. Anticipating Reality 17:00 Four Kinds of Knowing: Propositional, Procedural, Perspectival, Participatory 23:00 Embodiment, Consciousness, and Narrative Identity 27:00 The Role of Attention, Care, and Autopoiesis 31:00 Culture as Niche Construction 34:00 Why AI Can’t Participate in Meaning 37:00 The Missing Dimensions in LLMs 40:00 Rationality vs. Reasonableness 43:00 Self-Deception, Bias, and the Need for Self-Correction 46:00 Caring About How You Care: The Core of Rationality 48:00 Wisdom: Aligning Multiple Selves and Temporal Scales 53:00 The Social Obligation to Cultivate Wisdom 55:00 Alter: Cultivating Wisdom in an AI Future

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Ideas, People, and Works Mentioned in this Episode:

• Jeff Hinton

• Jordan Peterson

• Keith Stanovich

• Michael Levin

• Stroop Effect

• Bertrand Russell

• Plato (Republic, Symposium)

• Predictive Processing

• Relevance Realization

• Spearman (1926)

• DeepMind (DeepSeek)

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Thank you for watching!