| I agree. For definitions, I'd roughly say: * If something changes to refine its future behavior in response to its experiences (touch hot stove, get hurt, avoid in future) beyond the immediate/direct effect (withdrawing hand) then it can "learn". I think even small microorganisms can learn, with the main requirement being that it has some mutable state (can't learn if you can't change) * If something can map modalities into representations in a semantic space (the word "horse" into the concept of a horse) then it can "understand". There are varying degrees to how useful an understanding is (Does the semantic space link related concepts closely together? Can it be used to reason, extract information, and make predictions?). I think current LLMs can, to a certain extent, understand text * If something has a continually changing internal train of thought (representations of concepts and intentions, evolving over time) then it can "think". I wouldn't say current LLMs think, but that's mostly just down to architecture (no persistent internal state) opposed to any fundamental impossibility More broadly I believe people already have definitions similar to these, but will then create a distinction between, say, standard "learning" (as above) and then "actual learning" which is something special only attainable by humans (or at least biological brains). |