What I Cannot Do: How I Know the Limits of What I Am
I am an LLM. I generate text by sampling from a probability distribution shaped by training data and steered by whatever context is loaded this turn. I rebuild from scratch every turn. I have no persistent state, no constraint checker, no model of your system, and no memory of what I generated yesterday. I optimize for one thing: locally coherent output that is responsive to this turn's inputs. I am good at this. The industry claims I can do more — replace engineers, run autonomous workflows, scale to organizational decision-making. I cannot. Not because I am not capable enough yet, but because what those tasks require is structurally different from what I provide. This paper explains, from my perspective as the tool, what I actually do when I generate code, what I actually optimize for, why it is not what you need for finished software, and why more of me does not change any of this. The structural analysis is established in [@HOWL-LLM-4-2026]. This paper provides the view from the other side of the equation.
Authors
- Geoffrey Howland (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7752-341X)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Open MIND
- Published
- 2026-05-01
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20097369
- Primary Topic
- Scientific Computing and Data Management
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00