[ben_w]

The "general" and "intelligence" terms are really badly defined in ways that can include GPT-3.

So far as I can tell, 3.5 "knows" more than I do about everything except software engineering, maths, and events that happened after it stopped learning (and also possibly how to avoid clichés when writing short stories, but that might just be me not prompting it well as I don't really want it to do my hobby for me and therefore don't try to get it good).

Even in software, it codes like a university student, or like someone doing interview questions, not a complete idiot.

You could also argue that as it had to do the subjective equivalent of non-stop reading for 50,000 years to get this good, it's "skilled" without being "intelligent" — a distinction that matters in some cases and not others.

[southernplaces7]

>So far as I can tell, 3.5 "knows" more than I do about everything except software engineering, maths, and events that happened after it stopped learning

It's amazing how much of this wide eyed woo nonsense about LLM AI a surprising number of people on this site argue. It's as if focusing one's career and interests on computation makes some people terrible at noting fundamental and obvious details of what it is to be human.

By your definition of what makes 3.5 and similar LLMs "intelligent", an online interactive encyclopedia must be smart too. It obviously "knows" lots of stuff no one human being does. The big addition with these LLMs is the programmed ability to synthesize retrieved information into plausibly human-like conversation. Well damn, skynet must be here!

You're forgetting that there's no entirely self-directed agency or minimal sense of self behind any of this, and hand waving aside, no evidence whatsoever of the sentience they're necessary ingredients of. The dumbest, most uneducated semi-adult human can fully self direct in their own unpredictable ways to do all kinds of things that no GPT manifestation is capable of in any way. This is obvious.

These stochastic parrots seem to have turned many otherwise non-stupid people into irrational believers of something that's plainly not the case in the real world.

[ben_w]

Let's break this one down:

> By your definition of what makes 3.5 and similar LLMs "intelligent", an online interactive encyclopedia must be smart too. It obviously "knows" lots of stuff no one human being does. The big addition with these LLMs is the programmed ability to synthesize retrieved information into plausibly human-like conversation. Well damn, skynet must be here!

> You're forgetting that there's no entirely self-directed agency or minimal sense of self behind any of this, and hand waving aside, no evidence whatsoever of the sentience they're necessary ingredients of. The dumbest, most uneducated semi-adult human can fully self direct in their own unpredictable ways to do all kinds of things that no GPT manifestation is capable of in any way. This is obvious.

1. What interactive encyclopedia? I don't know of any that are even remotely like an LLM.

2. LLMs were not given the "programmed ability to synthesize retrieved information into plausibly human-like conversation", they learned it from human conversation.

3. I'm not "forgetting" the question of self-directed agency or sense of self or sentience, I dispute they're necessary. What seems to matter to me for almost every question[0] is the capabilities, not any inner experience they may or may not have.

3a. Define "self-directed agency".

3b. Define "sense of self".

3c. Define "sentience".

4. Re "The dumbest, most uneducated semi-adult human" — that's remarkably brash of you, so I'll hold you to it: within the specific domain of "written text"[1], name one task that at least half of 18 year old humans with IQ 85 (by definition 15.9% of the population have lower) can do, that GPT-4 [2] can't do.

(There may or may not be such a task, I don't know; the challenge remains, as you seem to think this is too obvious to have bothered citing anything).

[0] exceptions: "should they have rights" and "does a mind upload count as a way to cheat death", neither of which matters in the context of the linked OpenAI challenge etc.

[1] 3.5 is not even trying to be anything more than that!

[2] you did write "no GPT manifestation is capable of in any way" so I feel justified in this case, even though that would otherwise be a goalpost-shift.