Comment by brookst

Definitely a definition / semantics thing. If I ask an LLM to sketch the requirements for life support for 46 people, mixed ages, for a 28 month space journey… it does pretty good, “simulated” or not.

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.