[julvo]

Not saying that LLMs are particularly data efficient, but in their defence, they don't only learn what a human learns in a lifetime but throughout the whole evolution. There may be information encoded in our genes that LLMs need to learn from the training data

[foldr]

For sure a human baby has lots of initial structure that ChatGPT is lacking. Skinner made the point that operant conditioning and evolution are abstractly very similar processes. If this were the case then it would make sense to think of learning as a process that takes place both within individual human lifespans and over the course of evolutionary history. In fact, on almost anyone's account these days (including that of proponents of LLMs), learning is not very much like operant conditioning. Thus the analogy breaks down, and one can't excuse the amount of data that ChatGPT requires by hand waving about how this is just the equivalent of the 'learning' that a human baby got indirectly via evolution.