Part 2/10:
In the opening sections, Shapiro addresses the motivation behind developing autonomous, thinking machines. The exponential growth of machine intelligence and the expanding capabilities of large language models suggest that machines could soon operate beyond simple data processing.
He highlights that modern large language models can perform a range of intellectual tasks—brainstorming, planning, cause-and-effect analysis—so long as their input window isn't too large. However, limitations in their memory and context windows mean they require sophisticated architectures to simulate ongoing, autonomous thought.