Taming the Centaur(s) with LAPITHS: A Framework for a Theoretically Grounded Interpretation of AI Performances

We introduce LAPITHS (Language-model Analysis through Paradigm-grounded Interpretations of Theses about Human-likenesS) and use it to show that several major claims advanced by models such as CENTAUR—proposed as an artificial Unified Model of Cognition—are not theoretically or empirically justified. LAPITHS provides a methodology for counteracting the current behaviouristic tendency in AI research to interpret human-level performances of transformer-based language models as evidence of human-like computation and, by extension, as signs of cognitive abilities. The novelty of LAPITHS lies in two quantitative assessments: (i) the Minimal Cognitive Grid, a theoretically motivated method for estimating the cognitive plausibility of artificial systems, and (ii) a behavioural comparison showing that results similar to those reported for CENTAUR-like models can be reproduced by other systems that do not satisfy the structural constraints typically associated with cognitive plausibility, and whose outputs do not provide independent explanatory insight into human cognition.