This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The scoring doesn't tell you how many levels the models completed, but how efficiently they completed them compared to humans. It uses squared efficiency, meaning if a human took 10 steps to solve it and the model 100 steps then the model gets a score of 1% ((10/100)^2).
Edit: Also, "humans" means at least 6 out of 10 volunteers must have been able to solve some puzzle for it to be included, not 10 out of 10. Thus the test, even ignoring the previous caveat, is comparing the AI not against humans but against 40th percentile of humans. bottom of page 15
Indeed, there's almost nothing scientific about the scoring system of ARC-AGI-3; the test itself is kinda neat, and still highlights something that smart humans do (somewhat) better than the best LLMs, but it's dropped any pretense at being an actual measure of "general intelligence", and frankly they deserve to be ridiculed for the sensationalist scores.
Why is completion speed the main factor? Why is the difference squared? Speedruns are not how we define intelligence. If the squirrel in your backyard can solve sudokus, but a top-10th-percentile-of-self-selected-sudoku-solvers human can do it faster, you don't laugh and say "ha ha, this squirrel is so dumb". Also note that the test cuts the model off if it takes 5x longer than the smart human, and later questions build on earlier ones, so if a model goes slowly once it's handicapped for the rest of the test. (Again, this is probably completely intentional, to help deflate scores further.) They used a majority-of-self-selected-humans-can-solve-this metric for puzzle inclusion but not for the scoring. Why? Pure showmanship.
I suspect that average humans who take the test would probably also get a very low score! The old tests and metrics (including ARC-AGI-2) were useful because they showed something that humans genuinely find easy, but LLMs fail at. Those metrics have almost reached saturation, so I guess now we're switching to puzzles that some humans can solve but LLMs ... uh ... solve a bit slower. Ok?
But hey, the "0.5%" number does help low-information AI skeptics like OP point and laugh, so it's another "win" for AI journalism.
More options
Context Copy link
Note the "human baseline" isn't based on the human average, it's based on the "second-best first-run human playthrough" among the 10 people tested for each individual puzzle.
More options
Context Copy link
Many of the puzzles have a limited amount of steps in which they can be completed. The puzzle it loads by default, for example, has an energy bar that is depleted with each move you make. You have to be able to actually reason about the rules of the game and the objects within the levels to be able to complete them at all, you only have maybe a 10% buffer of energy for mistakes and/or choosing a less efficient route/method to solve them.
Correct, that's why I suggested people in the 100-110 iq range (roughly) or higher would likely be able to solve them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link