alt Hacker News> We can argue and do, about what agents "are" and whether they are parrots (no) or people (not yet).
It's more helpful to argue about when people are parrots and when people are not.
For a good portion of the day humans behave indistinguishably from continuation machines.
As moltbook can emulate reddit, continuation machines can emulate a uni cafeteria. What's been said before will certainly be said again, most differentiation is in the degree of variation and can be measured as unexpectedness while retaining salience. Either case is aiming at the perfect blend of congeniality and perplexity to keep your lunch mates at the table not just today but again in future days.
Seems likely we're less clever than we parrot.
People like to, ahem, parrot this view, that we are not much more than parrots ourselves. But it's nonsense. There is something it is like to be me. I might be doing some things "on autopilot" but while I'm doing that I'm having dreams, nostalgia, dealing with suffering, and so on.