alt Hacker News> The OP is still in the "denial" phase.
This was written in July 2023. ChatGPT was released November 2022. No matter your views on AI, surely you can't blame the OP for writing this after a few months ChatGPT was released.
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Scott Alexander predicted LLMs will write math proofs in 2019:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-g...
Of course people were skeptical:
https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/aslze7/gpt2...
> surely you can't blame the OP for writing this after a few months ChatGPT
Bad takes are bad takes. The author was perplexed by the "many people" convinced that models are intelligent and is argued against opinions/arguments he's been exposed to. Called proposed use-cases "borderline fraudulent pseudoscience."
He also published a second edition of "The Intelligence Illusion" in Sep 2025, so seemingly still stands by (some variant of) this belief.
It's an interesting reminder of how much general discourse has shifted since 2023 (I haven't heard of stochastic parrots in months!) but being wrong early doesn't change that.
Apologies. The title should be amended with (2023). In this case it is an interesting snapshot of the zeitgeist back then and we can see how well it panned out and whether anyone involved has updated on new info.