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rep_lodsb • today at 7:40 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

Really?

LLMs aren't some next step in the evolution of intelligence, they are even explicitly designed not to be. That a word-calculator which has no emotions, goals or continuity of consciousness can, by brute-force-throwing-things-at-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks, solve some problems that were presumed to require intelligence isn't "liberating" at all.

It could be comical, if there weren't so many deluded cultists worshipping that word calculator and wanting to turn control of all society over to it, and insisting that anyone who rejects them will be "left behind" in the capitalistic rat race to the bottom, which is the only thing that can ever matter.

In 1000 years, I am sure that the descendants of humanity will be either

a) non-existent

b) actually intelligent machines, that will preserve in themselves all that is great about our culture, while discarding some of the more ugly parts, free to explore the universe without need for things like gravity or oxygen, able to sleep for centuries as they travel at relativistic speeds between the stars

c) Shoggoths mindlessly babbling to themselves as they code the eleventy-trillionth new mobile app so that somewhere a number can go up

Which do you prefer?


Replies

ChickeNES • today at 8:27 PM

I don’t see how one can live in a world where machines are solving and making headway on Millennium Prize problems and say the above with a straight face.