In my view, one big learning from LLMs is that yes, more often than not we are just stochastic parrots. And more often than not that's enough!
But sometimes we're more than that: Some types of deep understanding aren't verbal or language-based, and I suspect that these are the ones that LLMs will have the hardest time getting good at. That's not to say that no AI will get there at all, but I think it'll need something fundamentally different from LLMs.
For what it's worth, I've personally changed my mind here: I used to think that the level of language proficiency that LLMs demonstrate easily would only be possible using an AGI. Apparently that's not the case.
We use languages to express ideas. Sentences are always subordinate to the ideas. It's very obvious when you try to communicate in another language you're not fluent in. You have the thought, but you can't find the words. The same thing happens when writing code, taking ideas from the business domain and translating it into code.
But sometimes we're more than that: Some types of deep understanding aren't verbal or language-based, and I suspect that these are the ones that LLMs will have the hardest time getting good at. That's not to say that no AI will get there at all, but I think it'll need something fundamentally different from LLMs.
For what it's worth, I've personally changed my mind here: I used to think that the level of language proficiency that LLMs demonstrate easily would only be possible using an AGI. Apparently that's not the case.