"If you want to compare fairly, you'd have to do so with a human that's never spoken to anyone, never seen anything but 2D pictures on a screen in front of them and hasn't been told or shown anything about the world they live in since they were born"
And this is not what is happening with AIs. They get fed with data that sums up more than a single human lifespan.
", but still even more elaborate tests like ones for say, math or physics that have you write the entire procedure don't really test if you understand the underlying principles"
And this is not true, except for high school tests. You certainly can test for understanding, by not giving generic problems, but where you have to apply your knowlege. And sure those were the most hated tests, as they required actual understanding and you could nvot weasel through. But they also created more work for teachers, so mosts tests were just the generic have you learned the algorithm tests. And if testing in person, you can go deep.
https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/imag...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/21/The_dress_blu...
What do you classify it as, a rabbit or a duck? Is the dress blue and black or white and gold? :) Also you do know some people literally fall to the floor and start convulsing if you show them some flashing lights right? Every system has its "glitch tokens".
I mean is it really surprising that when you greatly simplify the principle that organic neurons work on, quantize it to the point where it's fast enough to use, have it learn no model of the world besides looking at photos and telling it what it's looking at, that it'd have weird corner cases? I really don't think so. If you want to compare fairly, you'd have to do so with a human that's never spoken to anyone, never seen anything but 2D pictures on a screen in front of them and hasn't been told or shown anything about the world they live in since they were born. And that's would be with the advantage of having six million years of base model training beforehand.
> And that is very strong hyperbole.
Well sure I guess it's mainly out of lack of care and practicality, but still even more elaborate tests like ones for say, math or physics that have you write the entire procedure don't really test if you understand the underlying principles, just that you've seen that type of problem before and can remember the equations correctly. The LLM bread and butter functionality basically.