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by matheusd 437 days ago
Attempting to summarize your argument (please let me know if I succeeded):

Because we can't compare human and LLM architectural substrates, LLMs will never surpass human-level performance on _all_ tasks that require applying intelligence?

If my summary is correct, then is there any hypothetical replacement for LLM (for example, LLM+robotics, LLMs with CoT, multi-modal LLMs, multi-modal generative AI systems, etc) which would cause you to then consider this argument invalid (i.e. for the replacement, it could, sometime replace humans for all tasks)?

1 comments

Well, my argument is more-so directed at the people who say "well, the human brain is just a statistical model with training data". If I say: Both birds and airplanes are just a fuselage with wings, then proceed to dump billions of dollars into developing better wings; we're missing the bigger picture on how birds and airplanes are different.

LLM luddites often call LLMs stochastic parrots or advanced text prediction engines. They're right, in my view, and I feel that LLM evangelists often don't understand why. Because LLMs have a vastly different statistical model, even when they showcase signs of human-like intelligence, what we're seeing cannot possibly be human-like intelligence, because human intelligence is inseparable from its statistical model.

But, it might still be intelligence. It might still be economically productive and useful and cool. It might also be scarier than most give it credit for being; we're building something that clearly has some kind of intelligence, crudely forcing a mask of human skin over it, oblivious to what's underneath.