Babies in ancient societies certainly had less exposure to written language, much lower vocabulary, less exposure to music, etc.

Sure the breadth is (maybe) smaller, but the question is volume. Babies get years of people talking around them, as well as data from their own muscles and vocalizations fed back to them. Is the volume they have consumed to the point the begin talking actually less than the volume consumed by an LLM?

If you’re taking about babies in ancient societies (which I am), the answer is absolutely yes. They were exposed to much less language, and much less sound, than we are.

Really? How much less? I'm far from convinced that if you sum up the sheer volume of noises heard, as well the other neurological inputs that goes into learning to speak (ex proprioception) you'd come out with a lesser number than what LLMs are trained on, but I'm open to any real data on this.

Ah yes. I should be more precise. Less data that is textual. Of course other data sources are plentiful. Including internal and external sensory.