Comment by hackyhacky

10 hours ago

> people still do not understand in big 2026 that's it's just a probabilistic database,

We understand that AI responses are generated through probabilistic means. We also understand that human responses are generated through probabilistic means. Neither is inherently more representative of true understanding than the other.

Yeah, the human ones are because we're talking finding a human answer to a human question.

It's possible has been trained to match a human level of assessment (though imo it's still a ways off) but the AI response is never going to be more representative of true understanding than a human response when it comes to a human question expecting a human answer.

It's quite likely that a given AI will have a more representative response than a given human - but we haven't ever tried to pump so many resources into the training of a single human scholar.

Human responses are not generated through probabilistic means

  • That is a statement that may be true but we've spent a whole lot of time thinking about it and there's still significant disagreement at an academic level, though, with our better understanding of quantum mechanics it has been much more difficult to justify the point that we live in a fully deterministic universe, lately.

    And if we reject determinism then definitionally there's arbitrary probability somewhere in the heart of our decision making (though probably in a very minor role compared to established biases).

  • Yes. And no person would have suggested this before they were trying to bend over backwards to prove LLMs are just like people.