What are large language models, really? And why do they so easily create the impression that we are facing an intelligence?
As we swing between naive enthusiasm and apocalyptic fear, drowned out by corporate marketing, artificial intelligence systems hide behind friendly interfaces and misleading metaphors. We rush to learn how to use them, yet when the time comes to ask what they are, we retreat from the technical and conceptual maze. The Egoless Phantom offers a map to navigate that maze and to stop moving through it blindly.
Bringing together technical explanation and philosophical reflection, this book explores artificial intelligence in all its dimensions. It explains how large language models work, how they are trained, and the challenges of artificial memory, while examining their effects on human interaction, work, economics, law, and culture.
The Egoless Phantom is an original exploration of one of the most influential and least understood phenomena of our time.
For readers who want to understand artificial intelligence without surrendering to the false certainties of the contemporary debate.