Without diving too deep into the linguistic weeds here, the upshot is that human beings, as a species, benefit tremendously from using language to share our knowledge, both in the present and across generations. Understood this way, language is what the cognitive scientist Cecilia Heyes calls a “cognitive gadget” that “enables humans to learn from others with extraordinary efficiency, fidelity, and precision.”

Our cognition improves because of language — but it’s not created or defined by it.

Take away our ability to speak, and we can still think, reason, form beliefs, fall in love, and move about the world; our range of what we can experience and think about remains vast.

But take away language from a large language model, and you are left with literally nothing at all.

— Benjamin Riley.

Link to the full short essay here: Large language mistake.