Don’t be fooled—LLMs don’t reason

Large language models lack the genuine reasoning capabilities that enabled AlphaGo to defeat Go champion Lee Sedol in 2016, according to an MIT Technology Review opinion piece. While AlphaGo combined intuitive neural networks with explicit game-tree search to evaluate future consequences, modern LLMs generate text token-by-token based on statistical patterns without deliberative reasoning machinery. The article argues that developing AI systems with true reasoning powers—rather than probabilistic prediction alone—is essential for producing trustworthy results in fields like science and medicine.