LeCun is reasonable, like a lot of researchers, and was a while back (in a way) perplexed that people are finding uses for these text predictions at all considering they're not really perfect. I'm not exactly ascribing bad faith to all of these people, but for Hinton and the fact that he went on a media tour basically, I don't see how that could be in good faith. Or even logical, to continue with his work, if there's some probable X-risk.

But what I do know is that it is in the interests of these companies to press the fear button. It's pure regulatory capture and great marketing.

Personally: it's tiring when we have AI-philosophy bros hitting home runs like "what if we're actually all just language predictors." Coupled with the incessant bullshit from the less wrong-rationalist-effective altruist-crypto grifter-San Francisco sex cult adjacent about how, ackshually, AGI is just around the corner and it will take your job, launch the nukes, mail anthrax to you and kill your dog.

People approximated text prediction. It got good at it. It's getting better at it. Will it be AGI? Could it be construed as AGI? Can we define AGI? Is there existential risk? Are we anthropomorphizing it?

My take is: no, no, no, depends and yes. For whatever a take is worth.

For what it's worth I've been following your comments and I find them very thoughtful. I too am kinda skeptical about LLM being the "thing that starts the exponential phase of AGI or whatever. LLM is very useful. I use it daily. My partner even uses it now to send emails to a non-profit she manages. LLM's have their use... but they aren't AGI. They aren't really even that smart. You can tell sometimes that its response indicates it has absolutely no clue what you are talking about but it made up some plausible-sounding bullshit that gets it 80% right.

Especially with the latest iterations of ChatGPT. Boy they sure kneecapped that thing. It's responses to anything are incredibly smarmy (unless you jailbreak it).

LLM's are gonna change quite a lot about society, don't get me wrong. For starters things like cover letters, written exam questions, or anything that requires writing to "pass" is now completely obsolete. ChatGPT can write a great, wonderful sounding cover letter (of course, given how they kneecap'd it, you can pretty easily spot its writing style)...

Anyway. I think things like ChatGPT are so hyped up because anybody can try it and discover it does many useful things! It's the fact that people cast all their hopes and dreams on it despite the very obvious limitations on what an LLM can actually do.