Comment by varjag
3 days ago
IDK the models definitely do write qualitatively better prose (and better code) than the majority of people. If your definition of "human intelligence" is baseline performance of 0.2% of humanity it's certainly something else.
Better code and better prose are not great indicators of intelligence. Can it help you survive in the middle of the jungle? Can it grow rice? Can it give you first aid? Intelligence is the ability to learn skills and adapt them to the situation. The importance of skills is contextual. Better prose and code is just education, not intelligence.
Imagine it's 2006, there's no LLM in sight and you're arguing on an Internet forum that growing rice is a better highlight of intelligence than computer programming or writing.
Also it absolutely is not education, as repeated failure to educate programmers without aptitude or drill essay-writing into general population has shown.
Then you'll also says that a printer is more intelligent than most of humanity because it can replicate a drawing better than any painter. Or that the ipod is a better musician, etc,...
I can't be amazed at tools. I only applaud the minds that create them. Someone that find a way to grow rice where everyone thought was impossible is way more worthy than whatever opus produced. Just like someone winning the Tour de France is more remarkable than the latest AI benchmark or whatever.
3 replies →
they don't, cite one example of well written LLM prose? they can definitely infer a lot more slop than people have patience to, and anyone writing or reading slop prose has realised this and replaced sitting around writing and reading slop wiith llm's writing and reading slop and then grug-brains paste 10k words of slop say "grok, pls summarize, no mistakes" and grok tells them "What a brilliantly written article! ... "
Have you ever received an email from trades folk, in the days before LLMs? I'm not saying it's a better writer than Hemingway but very likely better than most your classmates.