I don’t really like the attempts to convince me that chatGPT is impressive by telling me how dumb people are. You should aspire to tell me how smart chatGPT is, not how dumb people are.
The argumentative move “well, I could solve the problem, but the problem is still bad because the average person can’t” is grating. It is grating even if you end up being right (I’m not sure). It’s grating because you have such a low esteem for humanity, but at the same time you try to impress me with how chatGPT can match those humans you think so little of. You are trying to convince me of BOTH “most humans are idiots” AND “it is super impressive and scary that chatGPT can match those idiots” at the same time.
Anyway, perhaps we are soon nearing the point where no simple 1-prompt IQ-type question can distinguish an average human from an AI. Even then, an interactive 5-minute conversation will still do so. The AI failed even the cow question, remember? The one your kids succeeded at? Now, perhaps that was a fluke, but if you give me 5 minutes of conversation time I’ll be able to generate more such flukes.
Also, in specific subject matters, it once again becomes easy to distinguish chatGPT from a human expert (or even an undergraduate student, usually). It’s harder in the humanities, granted, but it’s trivial in the sciences, and even in the humanities, the arguments of LLMs have this not-quite-making-sense property I observed when I asked Charlotte if she’s sentient.
I don’t really like the attempts to convince me that chatGPT is impressive by telling me how dumb people are.
Thanks for flagging this! I’m not trying to convince you that chatGPT is impressive, I’m only trying to convince you that you’re overestimating how smart people are.
OK, fair enough. I think LWers underestimate how smart average people are (that is, they overestimate their own relative intelligence), and I try to be mindful of that cognitive bias, but it’s possible I’m overcorrecting for this.
I don’t really like the attempts to convince me that chatGPT is impressive by telling me how dumb people are. You should aspire to tell me how smart chatGPT is, not how dumb people are.
The argumentative move “well, I could solve the problem, but the problem is still bad because the average person can’t” is grating. It is grating even if you end up being right (I’m not sure). It’s grating because you have such a low esteem for humanity, but at the same time you try to impress me with how chatGPT can match those humans you think so little of. You are trying to convince me of BOTH “most humans are idiots” AND “it is super impressive and scary that chatGPT can match those idiots” at the same time.
Anyway, perhaps we are soon nearing the point where no simple 1-prompt IQ-type question can distinguish an average human from an AI. Even then, an interactive 5-minute conversation will still do so. The AI failed even the cow question, remember? The one your kids succeeded at? Now, perhaps that was a fluke, but if you give me 5 minutes of conversation time I’ll be able to generate more such flukes.
Also, in specific subject matters, it once again becomes easy to distinguish chatGPT from a human expert (or even an undergraduate student, usually). It’s harder in the humanities, granted, but it’s trivial in the sciences, and even in the humanities, the arguments of LLMs have this not-quite-making-sense property I observed when I asked Charlotte if she’s sentient.
Thanks for flagging this! I’m not trying to convince you that chatGPT is impressive, I’m only trying to convince you that you’re overestimating how smart people are.
OK, fair enough. I think LWers underestimate how smart average people are (that is, they overestimate their own relative intelligence), and I try to be mindful of that cognitive bias, but it’s possible I’m overcorrecting for this.