zlacker

>>mef+(OP)
The level of intellectual engagement with Chomsky's ideas in the comments here is shockingly low. Surely, we are capable of holding these two thoughts: one, that the facility of LLMs is fantastic and useful, and two, that the major breakthroughs of AI this decade have not, at least so far, substantially deepened our understanding of our own intelligence and its constitution.

That may change, particularly if the intelligence of LLMs proves to be analogous to our own in some deep way—a point that is still very much undecided. However, if the similarities are there, so is the potential for knowledge. We have a complete mechanical understanding of LLMs and can pry apart their structure, which we cannot yet do with the brain. And some of the smartest people in the world are engaged in making LLMs smaller and more efficient; it seems possible that the push for miniaturization will rediscover some tricks also discovered by the blind watchmaker. But these things are not a given.

>>atdt+SZ
It indeed baffles me how academics overall seem so dismissive of recent breakthroughs in sub-symbolic approaches as models from which we can learn about 'intelligence'?

It is as if a biochemist looks at a human brain, and concludes there is no 'intelligence' there at all, just a whole lot of electro-chemical reactions. It fully ignores the potential for emergence.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying 'AGI has arrived', but I'd say even current LLM's do most certainly have interesting lessons for Human Language development and evolution in science. What can the success in transfer learning in these models contribute to the debates on universal language faculties? How do invariants correlated across LLM systems and humans?