Comment by kadushka
9 months ago
How many people do you know who are capable of doing something truly novel? Definitely not me, I'm just an average phd doing average research.
9 months ago
How many people do you know who are capable of doing something truly novel? Definitely not me, I'm just an average phd doing average research.
Literally every single person I know that is capable of holding a pen or typing on a keyboard can create something new.
Something new != truly novel. ChatGPT creates something new every time I ask it a question.
adjective: novel
definition: new or unusual in an interesting way.
ChatGPT can create new things, sure, but it does so at your directive. It doesn't do that because it wants to which gets back to the other part of my answer.
When an LLM can create something without human prompting or directive, then we can call that intelligence.
4 replies →
I'm a lowly high school diploma holder. I thought the point of getting a PhD meant you had done something novel (your thesis).
Is that wrong?
My phd thesis, just like 99% of other phd theses, does not have any “truly novel” ideas.
Just because it's something that no one has done yet, doesn't mean that it's not the obvious-to-everyone next step in a long, slow march.
AI manufacturers aren't comparing their models against most people; they now say its "smarter than 99% of people" or "performs tasks at a PhD level".
Look, your argument ultimately reduces down to goalpost-moving what "novel" means, and you can position those goalposts anywhere you want depending on whether you want to push a pro-AI or anti-AI narrative. Is writing a paragraph that no one has ever written before "truly novel"? I can do that. AI can do that. Is inventing a new atomic element "truly novel"? I can't do that. Humans have done that. AI can't do that. See?