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It seems to me that when people say things along the lines of "LLM's do not have intelligence" their definition of intelligence is something like "everything a human can do", and thus failing at something that can be done by a human proves a lack of intelligence, but in fact human intelligence is very jagged as well!
Should a chimp consider a human unintelligent because of our woefully inferior working memory?
Should a fly consider a human unintelligent because of our woefully inferior visual processing speed?
Should a squirrel consider a human unintelligent because of our woefully inferior spatial memory?
Sure, LLM's fail very basic things that can be done by humans, but humans also fail very basic things that can be done by LLM's; no human alive can write about the same breadth of abstract, novel topics in the same number of languages as even a very weak LLM, or write code as quickly as a LLM.
I fail to see how a LLM isn't intelligent in a way orthogonal to humans, in the same ways that animals are intelligent orthogonally to humans.
Yes, the bar here is "what humans can do". You're welcome to set the bar somewhere else if you like, but that is what I think is the appropriate bar to set. Humans are the apex of creatures in this world, and it just plain makes sense to me to compare our invention to us.
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