1. LLMs are widely called "intelligent". Evidence for my claim: The term "artificial intelligence" that is used everywhere. It has its own TLD.
2. There is no evidence that this terminology is applicable. Questioning it faces some variant of "well do you have evidence to the contrary?". Evidence for my claim: This thread.
You are welcome to disprove my claims, as in the scientific spirit that you say you uphold.
the way it goes is that a device/program of some sort displays a broad number of behaviours that previously was believed to be a future sign of artificial intelligence (e.g. somewhat coherent text, Turing test, giving the impression of following instructions and arriving at the correct results, etc).
some people claim this is artificial intelligence of a lower quality than humans, and these people expect that such mechanisms will eventually match and then potentially surpass humans.
then there's another crowd coming along and claiming no, this isn't intelligence at all, for example it can't tie its shoelaces.
my point was that every time you try to say that no this can't be what intelligence means, it needs to do X, I can find a human who can't do X, no matter how many years you might try to coach them. (for example, I will never be a musician/composer. I simply lack the gene.)
The retort is always "oh but in principle a human could do this". well, maybe next year's LLM will do it in practice, not just in principle, for all I know.
As they say, person who says it can't be done should not stop person doing it.
Heavier than air flight was once thought to be impossible. As long as you don't have a solid mathematical theorem that says only carbon replicators born from sexual intercourse can be intelligent, I expect some day silicon devices will do everything carbon creatures can do and more.
> my point was that every time you try to say that no this can't be what intelligence means, it needs to do X, I can find a human who can't do X,
Indeed, the point you are making is reasonable. But I'm trying to say that the premise is wrong. Nobody should be expected to come up with a reason why it is not intelligence. We should expect to be presented with evidence that it is intelligence. Absent that, the null hypothesis is that it isn't, just like any other computer program before isn't, uncontroversially.
I'm sure you already got my point, apologies for repeating it, but some clarification to clearly carve out our points may not hurt.
>Nobody should be expected to come up with a reason why it is not intelligence.
I'm not asking anybody to come up with a reason why it's not intelligence. I'm telling people they're wrong when they do try to justify calling it not intelligent. if you want to gatekeep a word, you should at least try to define it and then stick to the definition.
It is intelligence in the sense that if somebody had described it in 2010, we would have said yes, that's intelligence and it's hundreds of years away. It isn't intelligence in the sense that it's now here and we've found holes in the story.
Intelligence is so poorly defined that it's an ever receding finish line that somehow we're supposed to cross before we can call the device intelligent.
As Dennett said, it's like magic. Magic that is possible is just tricks. Real magic is that which is impossible.
1. LLMs are widely called "intelligent". Evidence for my claim: The term "artificial intelligence" that is used everywhere. It has its own TLD.
2. There is no evidence that this terminology is applicable. Questioning it faces some variant of "well do you have evidence to the contrary?". Evidence for my claim: This thread.
You are welcome to disprove my claims, as in the scientific spirit that you say you uphold.