If I ask a human to do that and they produce a similar response, does it mean the human is merely simulating intelligence? Or that their reasoning and outputs were similar but the human was aware of their surroundings and worrying about going to the dentist at the same time, so genuinely intelligent?
There is no formal definition to snap to, but I’d argue “intelligence” is the ability to synthesize information to draw valid conclusions. So, to me, LLMs can be intelligent. Though they certainly aren’t sentient.
Look at human technology history...it is all people doing minor tweaks on what other people did. Innovation isn't the result of individual humans so much as it is the result of the collective of humanity over history.
If humans were truly innovative, should we not have invented for instance at least a way of society and economics that was stable, by now? If anything surprise me about humans it is how "stuck" we are in the mold of what others humans do.
Circulate all the knowledge we have over and over, throw in some chance, some reasoning skills of the kind LLMs demonstrate every day in coding, have millions of instances most of whom never innovate anything but some do, and a feedback mechanism -- that seems like human innovation history to me, and does not seem like demonstrating anything LLMs clearly do not possess. Except of course not being plugged into history and the world the way humans are.
