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0 pointsBoppreH13d ago0 comments

It's not a value judgement, I'm no misanthrope. But it's a fact or life that we humans must specialize, while LLMs can afford to have "studied" a staggering variety of topics. It's no different than being slower than a car, or weaker than a hydraulic press.

On a different note, LLMs are still not very wise, as displayed by all the prompt attacks and occasional inane responses like walking to the car wash.

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globular-toast13d ago

On the contrary, it's the machines that have the luxury of specialisation.

I'm faster than a car when scrambling up a mountain. It's easy to be fast when all you do is drive on smooth roads.

I'm stronger than a hydraulic press when carrying a load over a distance. It's easy to be strong when you're limited to a few centimetres of movement.

Intelligence of LLMs is a trick; they are literally trained to sound intelligent. But it's easy to sound intelligent when all you have to do is sound intelligent. A person has to live in the real world, deal with the weather, with feelings, stress, health and, above all, consequences. We don't have the luxury of just being able to sound intelligent, or have wheels that only work on smooth roads. We have to actually be intelligent in our actions. We have to traverse difficult ground, deal with obstacles we've never encountered before. When we make mistakes, people get hurt.

BoppreHOP13d ago

We're probably thinking about this at very different levels. Here's what I meant: I can ask Claude for "a bilingual German-Russian poem about the side effects of the most common drugs used in anesthesia". I would bet my left shoe that if I asked people on the street, no one will do a better job than Claude. And to me, answering questions correctly is a very good metric for intelligence.

We can debate whether that's real intelligence, and whether the question is fair, but this is still a real, measurable capability, that just eight years ago was a pipe dream. This capability is what OP is tracking, and what I believe is impressive but hamstrung by harnesses.

jplusequalt13d ago

>I would bet my left shoe that if I asked people on the street, no one will do a better job than Claude.

Because it's unrealistic to expect such a niche population to be out and wandering around. What it sounds like you want is something that masquerades at intelligence, but is really alien.

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