This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/singularity by /u/obvithrowaway34434 on 2024-10-13 05:44:13+00:00.
Seeing this annoying thing on social media with everyone saying LLMs cannot do this or that. Most common being vague sh*t like "reasoning", "agents", "consciousness" and so on. This is absolutely pointless. It sort of reminds one about quantum mechanics in the 1930s when everyone and their dog tried to come up with some philosophical interpretations. It's only when physicists decided to "shut up and calculate" that we made progress and developed the most accurate and predictive physical theory humans ever created. I am not saying philosophical interpretations and/or a deeper understanding are not important, but they crucially rely on data and metrics and properly controlled tests. These give us measurable outcomes and how to improve on something and they also inspire better theories and interpretation. Without these you get pseudo-scientific theories like ether, soul and phlogiston etc. LLMs and in general deep neural networks are the most complex and impenetrable objects ever created. If we are to understand how they work and what they can do, there is no alternative to extensive and rigorous testing. Everything else is distraction.