Thanks. I sped read and hope its okay if i raise some quick thoughts.
I thought it was interesting how it mentioned LLMs arent a mind that is formed in nature. I would offer a dumb conjecture that agi, while a mind, might still need an LLM as a component to actually handle the amount of data of a society. Like you said, LLMs are useful if you know the answer or at least suspect when to revisit a result. Maybe we are missing the biggest piece of agi, but handling data is really important and this still benefits us right? I think we will need more than a mind from our local nature to create god.
Im a pretty skeptical person. When i used chatgpt i was pretty blown away and wouldnt say i was leaning into the idea that it was sentient. I just saw an incredible new tool, and through using it, now understand the pitfalls and can get awesome results that would have never been achieved with googling in the amount of time i spent. Most all of the heavy lifting i have it do i immediately verify through testing and its correct often enough to realize huge gains over googling and my local library etc…
I think the criticisms of LLMs and their capability arent inaccurate but maybe short sighted? I think criticsms should currently focus on its performance for how we are using it… not how laymens might imagine using something they dont understand. Ultimately any use cases should be heavily tested and perform more accurately than human counterparts (where we are talking about replacement of humans anyway). If we dont find the gains from those applications to validate the power use… or whatever… then we are always capable of recognizing that.
But i think its 100% valid to push back against idealized predictions but i also think shits gonna get crazy. I think theres a lot to be gained, and i question why LLMs cant be a stepping stone to greater computing milestones even if LLMs themselves aren’t a component of agi in the end.
What im trying to be convinced of is the criticisms arent as overblown as the hype.