Just wondering... What is Intellgience?
I see students obsess every day over their SAT scores, which to some is a measure of individual intelligence. But what SAT score would a pair of students working together on a single test get? Or a dozen students working together? Would it be higher or lower? What sort of strategies would maximize their ability to collaborate? What would be the effect of giving/removing access to a calculator on a student's score? Access to scratch paper? Access to textbooks? Access to a dictionary? Access to unlimited time?
If we want to claim to understand intelligence, these are the sort of questions we should be able to answer. Can we?
Statistically, an LLM finds a better optimal solution than one individual. But LLM solutions are more similar to each other than individuals’, so among many individuals, a few find a better optimal solution than the LLMs.
Hence why I think we need AI that responds more uniquely. Whether that be fine-tuned local models, one LLM that’s more influenced by its prompt and well-supports extremely long prompts, AI tools for humans, or something else. I’d love to see a local AI with continuous learning that generates complex UX to better interact with the user (more than prompts), but that may be far-fetched…
At that point, we can only define it as something that causes this observation. And that is not very useful.
Where as the other answer is simply "I can't say, but it's not [this]" and that isn't useful at all. It's simply opinion, which is literally the worst definition around. Personally, I don't define intelligence as "whatever qsera acknowledges as intelligence with no qualifying context"...
But here you go, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47918103
Same for my dog.
Same for entire cultures, including adult humans (anumeric cultures).
Arguably, they're constantly doing calculus, because they can walk, throw, catch, etc - but none of them can count.
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That said, to the point of my original comment - forcing a definition was absolutely useful, because it allows a more detailed and interesting conversation than "qsera doesn't believe an LLM is intelligent".
I agree that one is a poor definition, though. I also don't really think it rules out LLMs.
Is a robot that can walk, throw and catch is intelligent?
Last day there was a robot that can play ping pong? Is that intelligent?
We also see robots excel at chess and go, is that not intelligent? Why not? Given that's the mental opposite of the physical examples you're happy to discard (side note: I've done real world robotics development, I'd call walking/catching/throwing considerably more difficult activities than chess/go, and much closer to intelligence).
We see LLMs absolutely blow through the turing test, and that was literally the philosophical "gold standard" for machines that exhibit human-like intelligence for like 70 years.
So I really don't think I'm "getting it all very wrong" - I think this is a fundamental question that you're basically failing to honestly engage with because you've already made up your mind.
So again - define intelligence?
huh? In the comment above you said you would argue that it is. So is that not your argument?
>I'd call walking/catching/throwing considerably more difficult activities than chess/go, and much closer to intelligence
This is an even bizarre idea. I get that those things are harder to implement in a robot since it requires extremely fine sensors and motor control. But that making it closer to intelligence? That does not make a lot of sense..
Just because we cannot exactly define intelligence does not mean that you can call any arbitrary thing intelligent!
Why? It requires understanding a complex sense of self: where am I? How can I move? how do I fit within the environment? How can I change the environment?
Understanding, reasoning, self-awareness, and planning are all considered core aspects of intelligence, and those are all on display during navigation and locomotion.
I'd suggest those are all much closer to intelligence than the rules of chess. More complicated, too.
> Just because we cannot exactly define intelligence does not mean that you can call any arbitrary thing intelligent!
And just because intelligence appears alien in nature to you, doesn't mean it's not there... An ant only has ~250,000 neurons (far less than an LLM) are ants not intelligent? Not at all?
So if you define intelligence simply as "human", then sure - LLMs aren't that. But I also think that's an uninteresting and banal conclusion.
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So my core point remains - define intelligent. I think it's surprisingly hard to do in a way that rules out LLMs, but doesn't also rule out large categories of things we do probably agree are intelligent.
These does not require any general intelligence or understanding and can be expressed as a bunch of fixed rules.
>I think it's surprisingly hard to do in a way that rules out LLMs,
May be. But we sure can say that LLMs are not "reasoning". Which is what I have done in the linked comment.
Wait, I meant light, yeah, photons! It's photons all the way down! And what are photons you ask? shit, no more questions. Got to go.
I didn't mind that there was a typo.
Very "intelligent" people can use those smarts to justify or rationalize all kinds of crazy stupid decisions.
Or were you looking for a different definition?
~ intelligence