> A machine does not understand language

You can't prove humans do either. You can see how many times actual people with understanding something that's written for them. In many ways, you can actually prove that LLMs are superior to humans right now when it comes to understanding text.

> In many ways, you can actually prove that LLMs are superior to humans right now when it comes to understanding text

Emphasis mine.

No, I don't think you can, without making "understanding" a term so broad as to be useless.

"You can't prove humans do either." Yes you can via results and cross examination. Humans are cybernetic systems(the science not the sci-fi). But you are missing the point. LLMs are code written by engineers. Saying LLMs understand text is the same as saying a chair understands text. LLMs' 'understanding' is nothing more than the engineers synthesizing linguistics. When I ask an A'I' the Capital of Ireland, it answers Dublin. It does not 'understand' the question. It recognizes the grammar according to an algorithm, and matches it against a probabilistic model given to it by an engineer based on training data. There is no understanding in any philosophical nor scientific sense.

> When I ask an A'I' the Capital of Ireland, it answers Dublin. It does not 'understand' the question.

You can do this trick as well. Haven't you ever been to a class that you didn't really understand, but you can give correct answers?

I've had this somewhat unsettling experience several times. Someone asks you a question, words come out of your mouth, the other person accepts your answer.

But you don't know why.

Here's a question you probably know the answer to, but don't know why:

- I'm having steak. What type of red wine should I have?

I don't know shit about Malbec, I don't know where it's from, I don't know why it's good for steak, I don't know who makes it, how it's made.

But if I'm sitting at a restaurant and someone asks me about wine, I know the answer.