| You might be onto something (or not, I'm not sure), but its extremely well-documented that both dogs and monkeys can speak. They can't speak English like a human, but they both can understand a good deal of English, and they both can speak in their own ways (and understand the speaking of others). I think the key thing about these LLMs is that they upend the notion that speaking requires thinking/understanding/intelligence. They can "speak", if you mean emit coherent sentences and paragraphs, really well. But there is no understanding of anything, nor thinking, nor what most people would understand as intelligence behind that speaking. I think that is probably new. I can't think of anything that could speak on this level, and yet be completely and obviously (if you give it like, an hour of back and forth conversation) devoid of intelligence or thinking. I think that's what makes people have fantastical notions about how intelligent or useful LLMs are. We're conditioned by the entirety of human history to equate such high-quality "speech" with intelligence. Now we've developed a slime mold that can write novels. But I think human society will adapt quickly, and recalibrate that association. |
It's not devoid of intelligence or thinking. You're just using "what I'm doing right now" as the definition of intelligence and thinking. It isn't alive so it can't be the same. You are noticing that its intelligence is not centralized in the same way as your own mind.
But that's not the same as saying it's dumb. Try an operational definition that involves language and avoid vague criteria that try to judge internal states. Your dog might understand some words, associate them to the current situation and react, but can't understand a phrase.
These things can analyze the syntax of a phrase, can follow complex instructions, can do what you tell them to do. How is that not "understanding"?
If that isn't intelligence for you, I don't know what else to say.