Ai Thinking

Why a concept called epiplexity may explain where intelligence really comes from. Intelligence, at its core, is a compression problem. Humans cannot track every falling apple, so we invent gravity. We cannot memorize every chess position, so we develop strategy. We cannot remember every sentence we’ve ever read, so we acquire grammar. In each case, intelligence emerges from the same constraint: we cannot brute-force the world. When computation is limited, discovering structure becomes essential. A recent paper from researchers at Carnegie Mellon and NYU introduces a concept that captures this idea precisely. They call it epiplexity — the portion of information that a computationally bounded learner can actually extract. The idea helps explain several puzzles about modern AI, from AlphaZero’s superhuman chess ability to the surprising effectiveness of reasoning-based models. More importantly, it reframes a deeper question: Where does intelligence actually come from? The Static vs. Euclid Problem Consider a simple thought experiment. You have two things in front of you. One is a terabyte of television static — pure noise, every pixel random. The other is a copy of Euclid’s Elements, the geometry text that shaped two thousand years of mathematics. ...

Not long ago, Notion founder Ivan Zhao published a widely shared essay, Steam, Steel, and Infinite Mind, using the Industrial Revolution as a metaphor for understanding AI. In his framing, AI is an “infinite mind” that will fundamentally reshape the structure of knowledge work. He also invoked Marshall McLuhan’s “rearview mirror” idea, arguing that we are still embedding AI chat boxes into existing workflows, far from touching the deeper structural shift. This essay takes a different route. Instead of relying on industrial metaphors, it picks up McLuhan’s core toolkit — “the medium is the message,” extension and amputation, hot and cool media, the rearview mirror effect, and the tetrad of media effects — and applies it directly to AI. Industrial metaphors are good at analyzing productivity and economic organization. McLuhan’s framework goes deeper. It asks how AI is altering perception, cognition, and understanding itself. I. “The Medium Is the Message” | AI’s Real Impact Is Not What It Produces McLuhan’s most famous line comes from Understanding Media: “The medium is the message.” He elaborates: “The personal and social consequences of any medium — that is, of any extension of ourselves — result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” ...