I think the shift of my intuition over the past year has looked something like: a) (a year ago) LLMs seem really smart and general (especially given all the stuff they unexpectedly learned like translation), but they lack goals and long-term memory, I bet if we give them that they’ll be really impressive. b) Oh, huh, if we add goals and long-term memory they don’t actually do that well. c) Oh, huh, they fail at stuff that seems pretty basic relative to how smart and general they seem. d) OK, probably we should question our initial impression of how smart and general they are. I realize that’s not really a coherent argument; just trying to give a sense of the overall shape of why I’ve personally gotten more skeptical.
I think the shift of my intuition over the past year has looked something like: a) (a year ago) LLMs seem really smart and general (especially given all the stuff they unexpectedly learned like translation), but they lack goals and long-term memory, I bet if we give them that they’ll be really impressive. b) Oh, huh, if we add goals and long-term memory they don’t actually do that well. c) Oh, huh, they fail at stuff that seems pretty basic relative to how smart and general they seem. d) OK, probably we should question our initial impression of how smart and general they are. I realize that’s not really a coherent argument; just trying to give a sense of the overall shape of why I’ve personally gotten more skeptical.