Top computer scientist: ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini don’t understand a word they say

 Computer scientist Peter J. Denning argues Alan Turing’s 1950 paper sent AI down the wrong road. In his new book, he says two Turing assumptions—that intelligence needs no body, and that imitation proves thought—have misled 75 years of research. Denning names ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini as systems that manipulate words without understanding them, and warns that agentic machines may prove more dangerous than superintelligence itself. Computer scientist Peter J. Denning argues Alan Turing’s 1950 paper sent AI down the wrong road. In his new book, he says two Turing assumptions—that intelligence needs no body, and that imitation proves thought—have misled 75 years of research. Denning names ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini as systems that manipulate words without understanding them, and warns that agentic machines may prove more dangerous than superintelligence itself.