Recently, I often hear discussions about the “technical limits of AI” or the “collapse of the AI investment bubble.” However, in real society, the practical use of AI continues to advance rapidly and shows no sign of slowing down.
I believe that the language model currently used by AI differs fundamentally from the one we humans actually use, and for that reason, I think the current boom will eventually come to an end.
The limitation of today’s AI language models lies in the fact that they are based on machine learning, which merely simulates the memory recall and response mechanisms of human cognition. No matter how much the speed and accuracy of machine learning improve, I do not believe a singularity will ever occur.
Humanity has not yet truly understood the essence of language.
Language was the first cognitive tool acquired by humankind. Before that, however, as small individual beings born merely as cognitive entities—infants—humans undergo a process of discretization within the chaos of unconscious cognitive memory, transforming them into beings capable of building civilization.
The main reason for this inability lies in Western philosophy. In Western thought, the subjective, first-person perspective is the default and unshakable standpoint.
If you watch any lecture or video on “consciousness,” you will always encounter the same schema: Consciousness = subjective experience / reality.
The greatest failure of Western philosophy and Western-based linguistics is that they never developed a discussion about the origin of the three grammatical persons—a structure that is fundamentally nested in nature. Even though grammatical person distinctions are a common phenomenon across Western languages, their deep significance was completely overlooked.
In contrast, Japanese lacks explicit grammatical distinctions of person, yet without an internally structured triadic framework—(1st / 2nd) nested within 3rd person—it becomes impossible to determine “who is doing what to whom.” Without this, no shared context can exist. And without shared context, language cannot function as a tool of communication at all.
However, Western linguistics, grounded in the philosophy of subjectivity, has adopted the premise that “language is a tool for communication” without ever questioning the origin of the three grammatical persons. I see this as a fundamental problem.
Moreover, I contend that the triadic structure of grammatical persons—tangible and intangible, nested within one another—is itself the true universal grammar.
This nested structure of the three persons functions as a mechanism that transforms Saussure’s signified (concept) into a shared contextual meaning among speakers.
Saussure, in his theory of linguistic value, stopped his inquiry at the level of the signified, that is, the conceptual side of meaning, leaving the matter unresolved beyond that point. Chomsky noticed this gap, but his attempt to resolve it through syntactic rules (syntax)—the order of words—was, in my view, a failure.
While I support Chomsky’s idea of universal grammar, I oppose his belief that universal grammatical knowledge is innate or genetically embedded within the human species.