Medium Article: https://medium.com/@jsmith0475/your-ai-isnt-intelligent-it-s-just-really-good-at-pretending-ac2fe872e838?postPublishedType=initial The source, an excerpt titled "From AI Simulation to Synthetic Intelligence," argues that current Artificial Intelligence (AI) models, such as Large Language Models (LLMs), are fundamentally limited because they operate as sophisticated simulations based on probabilistic pattern matching rather than genuine cognition. Authored by Dr. Jerry A. Smith, the text identifies several critical architectural flaws in today’s AI, including catastrophic forgetting (the inability to continuously learn new information without overwriting old knowledge) and a reliance on correlation instead of causal reasoning, which leads to unpredictable failures in novel scenarios. Smith posits that the solution is a transition to Synthetic Intelligence (SI), a new paradigm designed for genuine, non-imitative cognition based on three pillars: Material-Based Intelligence (integrating memory and processing), Nested Learning architectures (allowing continuous learning), and the integration of causal reasoning to enable true adaptability and understanding. This shift is presented as necessary to overcome the scaling wall, economic costs, and reliability issues inherent in current, simulation-based AI systems.