[ExI] Do all AI models represent “cat” in the same way?

[John Clark]

On Fri, Jan 16, 2026 at 10:02 PM Adrian Tymes via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

* >> Me: And if the direction in multi dimensional idea space for the word
>> "cat" is pointing in a specific direction (relative to other words) that is
>> similar to the direction in multi dimensional idea space that a picture of
>> a cat is pointing to (relative to other pictures) then they must have
>> something in common. And the only thing that could be is that both the
>> pictures and the words came from the same external reality;*
>
>
> *> Adeian: *
> *Incorrect.  There are other possible explanations. For instance, the
> creators of both sets of training data may have had similar cultural
> inspirations - they "painted", whether with paint or with words, the same
> mental image.*


*In that case I would've been correct because "both the pictures and the
words came from the same external reality"**, and for an AI that only has
access to such pictures or words, human interaction IS external reality. *


>  * > It could be that the AI is uncovering this mental model, suggesting
> that its training data does not have much representation from creators with
> substantially different mental models. *


*Although some lawyers might object and some companies might deny it, the
fact is that virtually all the words on the Internet are part of the
training data of every modern AI, and even if we're restricted to just what
occurs on this list there sure seems to be a lot of "substantially
different mental models".  And the same thing could be said about pictures,
or it would be if we were technologically able to post pictures on this
list of even mediocre quality. *

*John K Clark*

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