<p>Is language a space for creativity, a mathematically precise system embedded in our brains from birth, or both at the same time?</p>
<p>Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, and theorist. He is a professor of linguistics at MIT and the author of a classification of formal languages known as the Chomsky hierarchy. His work on generative grammars significantly contributed to the decline of behaviorism (a systematic approach to studying the behavior of humans and animals) and facilitated the development of cognitive sciences.</p>
<p>Chomsky's most famous work, <strong>Syntactic Structures</strong> (1957), had a huge impact on the development of language science worldwide. Over time, Chomsky's theory has evolved, but its fundamental position has remained steadfast - the ability to use language is innate. The scholar believes that universal grammar, as a common set of syntactic rules, is embedded in the brain. Thus, the logic by which we construct sentences and operate language constructs is dictated by nature itself, the biological features of our brain, and this is one of the conditions under which universal grammar exists.</p>
<p>And now for the most interesting part - it seems that the emergence of large linguistic models like ChatGPT calls into question all of Chomsky's conclusions and opens new horizons in both neuroscience and cognitive sciences. Systems that are structured completely differently from our brains have managed to tackle the task of "generating the next word." </p>
<p>By the way, Noam Chomsky is still alive (94 years old) and teaches at the University of Arizona. His current thoughts on AI and GPT in particular can be heard in his interviews:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgxzcOugvEI">Chomsky on ChatGPT, Education, Russia and the unvaccinated</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMscNuSUy0I">Noam Chomsky: Language, Cognition, and Deep Learning with Lex Fridman</a></li>
<li><a href="https://lingbuzz.net/lingbuzz/007180">Paper</a></li>;
</ul>
<p>#AI #noam_chomsky #LLMs #linguistics</p>
