Comment by rootusrootus
4 days ago
> LLMs are actually smarter than the majority of humans right now
I consider myself a bit of a misanthrope but this makes me an optimist by comparison.
Even stupid people are waaaaaay smarter than any LLM.
The problem is the continued habit humans have of anthropomorphizing computers that spit out pretty words. It’s like Eliza only prettier. More useful for sure. Still just a computer.
I really feel like we have not encountered the same stupid people. Most stupid people I know respond to every question with some form of will-not-attempt. What's 74 times 2? Use a calculator! Should I drive or walk to the car wash? Not my problem! How many R's in strawberry? Who cares! They'll lose to the LLM 100%.
The cheapest Aliexpress calculator can multiply much bigger numbers than I can in my head, and it can do it instantly. Does that mean that the calculator is “smarter” than me?
That's actually proving that they indeed are smarter than LLMs - by choosing to not deal and waste time, water and energy on useless benchmarks.
> Still just a computer.
I don't believe in a separation of mind and spirit. So I do think fundamentally, outside of a reliance on quantum effects in cognition (some of theorized but it isn't proven), its processes can be replicated in a fashion in computers. So I think that intelligence likely can be "just a computer" in theory and I think we are in the era where this is now true.
I don't believe in "spirits" from the get go. I think it's certainly theoretically possible that we could mimic human thought with a computer (quantum or otherwise) but I do not think that the LLMs we have now are doing that. I'd say that what we have right now is "just a computer".
This doesn't mean they aren't useful, I like Claude a lot, but I don't buy that it's AGI.