When Apple Researchers Ask: "Wait, What Are We Actually Building?"
🎯 Apple just published research showing that billion-dollar AI models can't solve puzzles that 7-year-olds master. The timing? Just days before WWDC.
Apple's new research paper dropping right before WWDC next week feels like the ultimate mic drop moment.
Here's the tea ☕: Their study shows that even the latest "reasoning" AI models (looking at you, o3) can't reliably solve the Tower of Hanoi puzzle with 8 discs. You know, the classic puzzle that computer science students master in their first semester... and that we literally solved with AI back in 1957.
The kicker? These models create what Apple calls an "illusion of thinking" - they sound brilliant while completely missing basic logical reasoning.
For those of us deploying AI in customer experience, this isn't just academic nitpicking. It's a reality check that should push us to dig deeper than immediate use cases and really understand the fundamental limitations we're working with.
My take: Whether we're talking about conversational assistance or complex customer triage, the value we expect AI to deliver still requires human insight and validation at critical decision points. Critical reasoning gets augmented by LLM research capacity, not replaced by it.
The timing of this paper - literally days before Apple's WWDC AI announcements - feels deliciously intentional. Siri may be struggling, but that struggle clearly isn't due to a lack of thoughtful research behind the scenes.
CX leaders: How are you balancing AI enthusiasm with realistic capability expectations? Are you seeing the "accuracy collapse" phenomenon in your own deployments?
📖 Gary Marcus's excellent breakdown:
📄 Apple's research paper: https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking
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