alt Hacker NewsI don't have any opinion about "real intelligence" or not. I'm not a P(doom)er, I don't think we're on the bring of ascending as a species. But I'm also allergic to arguments like "they're just statistical text generators", because that truly does not capture what these things do or what their capabilities are.
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"But I'm also allergic to arguments like "they're just statistical text generators", because that truly does not capture what these things do or what their capabilities are."
Umm, why doesn't it capture it? Why can't a statistical text generator do amazing things without _actually_ being intelligent (I'm thinking agency here)? I think it's important to remind ourselves, these things do not reflect or understand what they're outputting. That is 100% evident with the continuing issues with them outputting nonsense along with their apparently insightful output. The article itself said the output was poor but the student noticed something about it that sparked an idea and he followed that lead.
Just to clarify because I’m not sure I understand:
So you agree that LLMs are in fact statistical text generators but you don’t like people use that fact in arguments about the capabilities of the things?
(The clearer way for me to have said this is that I don't care whether they're According-to-Hoyle "intelligent", and that controversy isn't what motivated me to comment).