Comment on New study sheds light on ChatGPT’s alarming interactions with teens
Perspectivist@feddit.uk 2 weeks agoI’ve had this discussion countless times, and more often than not, people argue that an LLM isn’t intelligent because it hallucinates, confidently makes incorrect statements, or fails at basic logic. But that’s not a failure on the LLM’s part - it’s a mismatch between what the system is and what the user expects it to be.
An LLM isn’t an AGI. It’s a narrowly intelligent system, just like a chess engine. It can perform a task that typically requires human intelligence, but it can only do that one task, and its intelligence doesn’t generalize across multiple independent domains. A chess engine plays chess. An LLM generates natural-sounding language. Both are AI systems and both are intelligent - just not generally intelligent.
Strider@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sorry, no. It’s not intelligent at all. It just responds with statistical accuracy. There’s also no objective discussion about it because that’s how neural networks work.
I was hesitant to answer because we’re clearly both convinced. So out of respect let’s just close by saying we have different opinions.
Perspectivist@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I hear you - you’re reacting to how people throw around the word “intelligence” in ways that make these systems sound more capable or sentient than they are. If something just stitches words together without understanding, calling it intelligent seems misleading, especially when people treat its output as facts.
But here’s where I think we’re talking past each other: when I say it’s intelligent, I don’t mean it understands anything. I mean it performs a task that normally requires human cognition: generating coherent, human-like language. That’s what qualifies it as intelligent. Not generally so, like a human, but a narrow/weak intelligence. The fact that it often says true things is almost accidental. It’s a side effect of having been trained on a lot of correct information, not because it knows what’s true.
So yes, it just responds with statistical accuracy but that is intelligent in the technical sense. It’s not understanding. It’s not reasoning. It’s just really good at speaking.
Strider@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thank you for the nice answer!
We can definetly agree on that it can provide intelligent answers without itself being an intelligence 👍