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Are modern LLMs closer to AGI or next word predictor? Where do they fall in this graph with 10 on x-axis being human intelligence.

Wondering if Modern LLMs like GPT4, Claude Sonnet and llama 3 are closer to human intelligence or next word predictor. Also not sure if this graph is right way to visualize it.

108 comments
  • i think the first question to ask of this graph is, if "human intelligence" is 10, what is 9? how you even begin to approach the problem of reducing the concept of intelligence to a one-dimensional line?

    the same applies to the y-axis here. how is something "more" or "less" of a word predictor? LLMs are word predictors. that is their entire point. so are markov chains. are LLMs better word predictors than markov chains? yes, undoubtedly. are they more of a word predictor? um...


    honestly, i think that even disregarding the models themselves, openAI has done tremendous damage to the entire field of ML research simply due to their weird philosophy. the e/acc stuff makes them look like a cult, but it matches with the normie understanding of what AI is "supposed" to be and so it makes it really hard to talk about the actual capabilities of ML systems. i prefer to use the term "applied statistics" when giving intros to AI now because the mind-well is already well and truly poisoned.

    • what is 9?

      exactly! trying to plot this is in 2D is hella confusing.

      plus the y-axis doesn't really make sense to me. are we only comparing humans and LLMs? where do turtles lie on this scale? what about parrots?

      the e/acc stuff makes them look like a cult

      unsure what that acronym means. in what sense are they like a cult?

      • Effective Accelerationism. an AI-focused offshoot from the already culty effective altruism movement.

        basically, it works from the assumption that AGI is real, inevitable, and will save the world, and argues that any action that slows the progress towards AGI is deeply immoral as it prolongs human suffering. this is the leading philosophy at openai.

        their main philosophical sparring partners are not, as you might think, people who disagree on the existence or usefulness of AGI. instead, they take on the other big philosophy at openai, the old-school effective altruists, or "ai doomers". these people believe that AGI is real, inevitable, and will save the world, but only if we're nice to it. they believe that any action that slows the progress toward AGI is deeply immoral because when the AGI comes online it will see that we were slow and therefore kill us all because we prolonged human suffering.

  • They're not incompatible, although I think it unlikely AGI will be an LLM. They are all next word predictors, incredibly complex ones, but that doesn't mean they're not intelligent. Just as your brain is just a bunch of neurons sending signals to each other, but it's still (presumably) intelligent.

  • Are you interested in this from a philosophical perspective or from a practical perspective?

    From a philosophical perspective:

    It depends on what you mean by "intelligent". People have been thinking about this for millennia and have come up with different answers. Pick your preference.

    From a practical perspective:

    This is where it gets interesting. I don't think we'll have a moment where we say "ok now the machine is intelligent". Instead, it will just slowly and slowly take over more and more jobs, by being good at more and more tasks. And just so, in the end, it will take over a lot of human jobs. I think people don't like to hear it due to the fear of unemployedness and such, but I think that's a realistic outcome.

  • Imo, which is backed a bit by some pretty new studies, not only do LLMs not have intelligence at all, they are incapable of it.

    Human intelligence and conciousness likely has a lot to do with nanotubes that trigger quantum wave function collapse, and allow for decision making. Computers simply do not function in this way. Computers are processing machines. They have logic gates with 2 states. 101101110011 binary logic.

    If new studies related to nanotubes are right biological brains are simply operating on an entirely diffetent level and playing by a different set of rules than computers. Its not a issue of getting the software right, or getting more processing power. Its an issue of physical capability of the machine to perform certain functions.

  • With GPT o1, I think there is a very small piece of intelligence at play, but it's basically (8.5, 1.5) on this in my mind

108 comments