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The thing I don’t understand about disagreement on what is and isn’t intelligent, is that the conversation seems to be removed from what matters, which is: are these things competing with or enhancing humans in the economy. I think it’s definitely both, but if we are formulating the word “intelligent” in a way that assumes they won’t outcompete many/most/all humans in the economy, then I think we’re in for a surprise. It turns out that things don’t need to be intelligent in the way we are to mine copper, produce desired products, and create a gigantic problem for humans trying to eat.

Stephan Rinbaum 1y ago

The same could be said about calculators. Do (did) they both compete with and enhance human performance? Sure! Did the mechanical cash register people, slide rule manufacturers, et al, get buried by them? Yup.

My antipathy toward the use of the teerm"intelligent" has nothing to do with its worth. A drainpipe solves a problem, but we don't call them "intelligent". The use of "intelligence" is used, I feel intentionally so, to convey some sort of superiority over human intelligence, and I feel that those promoting it are planning to (if they haven't already) create some kind of "awe" around a computer program that will encourage the iditos amongst us to kneel in deference to it.

It's a tool. Created by humans. Can be used for good or evil. That's all it is.

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Discussion

mark tyler 1y ago

I agree on every point except the comparison to calculators. 🫂

Kinda funny but I wanted to say there is no path for calculators to be able to mine and sell copper and all products with no human involvement, where LLMs do have such a path, but then I realized GPUs can be thought of as just massively parallel calculators.