For the record, I changed my mind. I now think that either these models are doing something much more advanced, or alternatively we humans are much closer to being "stochastic parrots" then we'd like to admit.

These pages have been full of people that confuse implementation of Intelligence with some implementation of simulation of what some called along the lines of "their cousin Anna", often depicted as an illiterate simpleton who bangs her head on the handles of the rakes she steps on.

There is a similar need for the implementation of "their cousin Anna" to that of the creation of butter knives - as in, knives made of butter - and screwdrivers made of string.

We will still ask primarily whether they are actually intelligent.

But if I wanted to deal with sentient beings with a world model, cats are already available and there is little need for artificial ones.

When we develop artificial intelligences, that is to have reliable problem solvers. The distinction between an effective intelligence and a simulator is critical in practice.

What makes them so “amazing” is just the truly massive body of human language they are trained on, which gives them the _appearance_ of intelligence or awareness. Humans communicate through language, so anything that can produce realistic-looking responses to a series of prompts in human language will appear to be “aware” to a human observer. It’s speaking our language, but don’t let yourself get sucked into the illusion.

We know how the underlying tech works, sure. But we don't really know why, past a certain level of complexity, the "just predict the next token" trick stops feeling like a trick when you actually, you know, sit down and talk to the damn thing.