LLMs are the Wrong Kind of AI

Jonathan Schaeffer thinks we're building AI the wrong way.

While large language models have produced remarkable results, he argues that hallucinations, bias, and unreliability aren't bugs that can be fixed—they're consequences of the underlying architecture itself. In his view, LLMs are an important stepping stone, but not the path to the kind of AI we can truly trust.

We discuss whether current AI systems are "good enough," automation bias, AI regulation, data centers, environmental costs, and the race toward AGI. We also debate whether society should slow down long enough to put meaningful guardrails in place before deploying increasingly powerful AI systems at scale.

Jonathan Schaeffer is a Professor of Computing Science at the University of Alberta and a pioneer in artificial intelligence research.