For searching answers? ChatGPT has pretty much replaced Google as a C++ helper to me. It can correctly decipher and explain deep, weird stack traces of C++ and succinctly and correctly explain semantics of the language that would take me hours of Googling.
> I definitely see some applications but "incredibly useful" seems like a bit of an oversell.
Define "incredible useful" first.
If all the possible text in the world is a tree starting from the empty set, it's far easier to have a tool show you a chunk of text down a branch, and then backtrack, than it is to generate it from scratch by oneself.
ChatGPT is a bullshit artist with no real understanding of what it's writing about, but so are an awful lot of white-collar workers. It reliably emulates the shibboleths that indicate membership of the professional middle class. It isn't particularly creative or interesting, but it wasn't trained to do that - it was trained to produce maximally safe, inoffensive output. If people don't see ChatGPT as being massively disruptive, then I think they have failed to recognise the sheer proportion of working hours that are spent writing quite mundane letters and reports. Anyone who spends most of their working day in Outlook and Word should be extremely nervous about the medium-term implications of LLMs.
The article is not claiming a lack of usefulness, but the fact that this is not a human-like intelligence as it's been claimed "in hyperbolic headlines"
> ...artificial general intelligence — that long-prophesied moment when mechanical minds surpass human brains not only quantitatively in terms of processing speed and memory size but also qualitatively in terms of intellectual insight, artistic creativity and every other distinctively human faculty.
> ...the most critical capacity of any intelligence: to say not only what is the case, what was the case and what will be the case — that’s description and prediction — but also what is not the case and what could and could not be the case. Those are the ingredients of explanation, the mark of true intelligence.
> Intelligence consists not only of creative conjectures but also of creative criticism
> True intelligence is demonstrated in the ability to think and express improbable but insightful things.
> True intelligence is also capable of moral thinking.
When examined together, these quotes seem devoid of any concise, comprehensive, or useful definition of intelligence (whether artificial or artificial-and-general).
> Given the amorality, faux science and linguistic incompetence of these systems, we can only laugh or cry at their popularity.
ChatGPT and Co. are popular because they are incredibly useful tools (among other reasons).
Morality, scientific reasoning, and linguistic competence are not prerequisites for usefulness.