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A prevailing sentiment online is that GPT-4 still does not understand what it talks about. We can argue semantics over what “understanding” truly means. I think it’s useful, at least today, to draw the line at whether GPT-4 has succesfully modeled parts of the world. Is it just picking words and connecting them with correct grammar? Or does the token selection actually reflect parts of the physical world?
One of the most remarkable things I’ve heard about GPT-4 comes from an episode of This American Life titled “Greetings, People of Earth”.
Adam Something uploaded a video starting with the definition of intelligence itself, and then explains how something that “acts” intelligent doesn’t mean it “is” intelligent.
I think even “intelligence” here is a stretch. In a very narrow sense, it is intelligent: it creates text, simulates conversations, answers questions. But that is not what intelligence is (and it is all LLMs can do).