Comparing the intelligence of machine learning models that are designed to emulate human cognition and logical, to a well understood stage of human cognition and logic, is completely logical, and completely aligned with the purpose of the ML model's existence.
LLMs aren't designed to emulate human cognition, they are a statistical model designed to predict the next word in a sentence. It happens that they seem to exhibit some similarities to human cognition as a side effect, but that does not mean they are on some developmental path to a "full human" like a child. Again it is silly to try and compare the two.
I'm not sure that's fair, or correct. The behavior of an LLM is set by the design of the combination of loss function and training data. Achieving it is the desired result of the selection of those.
> It happens that they seem to exhibit some similarities to human cognition as a side effect
Yes, the desired behavior of nearly all LLM projects is to emulate the capabilities of human cognition, and that stated goal is the justification that organizations are using for spending millions to train them.
> but that does not mean they are on some developmental path to a "full human" like a child.
You are the first to suggest any such thing, in this comment chain. But, the field of AI is objectively on that development path, since that is the stated goal of many of the orgs, with LLM existing on that path. If that path actually leads anywhere is anyone's guess.
I feel like you are being deliberately obtuse here. They said "Give it a few years" and linked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_development_stages. How is this not strongly implying that in a "few years" LLMs will be at a later "level of development" as described in the article they linked.
What exactly makes you think those two are different in nature, not just in scale and training data? It seems like a lot of these discussions are walking in circles trying to compare ill-defined things (human cognition) with well-defined ones (prediction).
Don't you think the onus should be on the people making the fantastical claims to prove it? If human cognition is ill-defined, then define it before making grand claims like ML models being on some path of childhood development and is a few steps from being an adult.
I think that neither side has a convincing argument in these discussions, actually, I'm pointing out that both extremes - anthropomorphism and stochastic parrot - lack any foundation, so I wouldn't be so confident. The behavior of neither statistical models nor biological systems is well understood. It's entirely possible that every trait you consider human can naturally emerge from a dumb statistical model, and indeed certain processes are remarkably similar as the models get bigger, smarter, and have better training data. It's possible that it can't, however.
The stochastic parrot is much more grounded in the physical reality of how the models are structured, trained, and produce outputs than the "it's like people" argument. Statistical models are much better understood than biological systems. That said, your penultimate statement is true:
> It's entirely possible that every trait you consider human can naturally emerge from a dumb statistical model, and indeed certain processes are remarkably similar as the models get bigger, smarter, and have better training data.
I just don't think it's likely given the biological complexity we are washing over with the statistical model.
LLMs don't talk like children, and they don't seem to be taking that development path. They are trained on adult language. They don't make the kinds of mistakes children make and it doesn't look like we could use children as a model for improvement.
It's entirely possible that LLMs will one day emulate adult speech without ever passing through the child development stages. The stages it takes to get there will be distinct.
> They don't make the kinds of mistakes children make and it doesn't look like we could use children as a model for improvement.
I'm not sure how familiar with LLM or children you are, but in my experience, they absolutely make the same types of logic/"critical thinking" mistakes that children do, as this article you're replying under demonstrates.