GPT-2 and the Nature of Intelligence

OpenAI's GPT-2 has been discussed everywhere from The New Yorker to The Economist. What does it really tell us about natural and artificial intelligence? The Economist: Which technologies are worth watching in 2020? GPT-2: I would say it is hard to narrow down the list. The world is full of disruptive technologies with real and potentially huge global impacts. The most important is artificial intelligence, which is becoming exponentially more powerful. Consider two classic hypotheses about the development of language and cognition. One main line of Western intellectual thought, often called nativism, goes back to Plato and Kant; in recent memory it has been developed by Noam Chomsky, Steven Pinker, Elizabeth Spelke, and others (including myself).