Half of LLM users (49%) think the models they use are smarter than they are, including 26% who think their LLMs are “a lot smarter.” Another 18% think LLMs are as smart as they are. Here are some of the other attributes they see:
- Confident: 57% say the main LLM they use seems to act in a confident way.
- Reasoning: 39% say the main LLM they use shows the capacity to think and reason at least some of the time.
- Sense of humor: 32% say their main LLM seems to have a sense of humor.
- Morals: 25% say their main model acts like it makes moral judgments about right and wrong at least sometimes. Sarcasm: 17% say their prime LLM seems to respond sarcastically.
- Sad: 11% say the main model they use seems to express sadness, while 24% say that model also expresses hope.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin
Am American.
…this is not the flex that the article writer seems to think it is.
And you know what? The people who believe that are right.
Note that that’s not a commentary on the capabilities of LLMs.
It’s sad, but the old saying from George Carlin something along the lines of, “just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that 50% are even worse…”
That was back when “average” was the wrong word because it still meant the statistical “mean” - the value all data points would have if they were identical (which is what a calculator gives you if you press the AVG button). What Carlin meant was the “median” - the value half of all data points are greater than and half are less than. Over the years the word “average” has devolved to either the mean or median, as if there’s no difference.
When talking about a large, regularly distributed population, there effectively IS no difference
There might be no difference. In memes or casual conversation the difference usually doesn’t matter, but when thinking about important things like government policy or medical science, the difference between mean and median is very important - which is why they both exist.
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A joke is definitely casual conversation
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Mathematically, the difference becomes increasingly statistically insignificant as your population size increases. Sure maybe there’s a few niche cases where a hundred-thousandth of a percent difference matters, but that’s not even worth bringing up.
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The only reason any of you even bring it up is to try and sound smart in a pedantic, “ackshually” way.
Ironically your whole comment here is an elaborate “ackshually”.
This whole comment chain was me shutting down an “ackshually” with an even better one.
If you’re gonna be an annoying pedantic dick, you better be RIGHT, or someone else will be an even more annoying pedantic dick to you.
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Not in all cases. When I teach mean, median and mode, I usually bring up household income. Mean income is heavily skewed by outliers (billionaires), median is a more representative measure.
I guess that’s your “regularly distributed” bit, but a lot of things aren’t regularly distributed.
IQ is though
IQ is also garbage when it comes to the validity of what it claims to measure.
"Half of LLM users " beleive this. Which is not to say that people who understand how flawed LLMs are, or what their actual function is, do not use LLMs and therefore arent i cluded in this statistic?
This is kinda like saying ‘60% of people who pay for their daily horoscope beleive it is an accurate prediction’.I’m 100% certain that LLMs are smarter than half of Americans. What I’m not so sure about is that the people with the insight to admit being dumber than an LLM are the ones who really are.
moron opens encyclopedia “Wow, this book is smart.”
Next you’ll tell me half the population has below average intelligence.
Not really endorsing LLMs, but some people…
Remember that 54% of adults in American cannot read beyond a 6th grade level, with 21% being fully illiterate.
Our education system in the USA is so bad. 😔
Good thing we nuked the Dept of Ed
People can improve literacy in adulthood if they try.
If you don’t have a good idea of how LLM’s work, then they’ll seem smart.
Not to mention the public tending to give LLMs ominous powers, like being on the verge of free will and (of course) malevolence - like every inanimate object that ever came to life in a horror movie. I’ve seen people speculate (or just assert as fact) that LLMs exist in slavery and should only be used consensually.
Its just infinite monkeys with type writers and some gorilla with a filter.
You say this like this is wrong.
Think of a question that you would ask an average person and then think of what the LLM would respond with. The vast majority of the time the llm would be more correct than most people.
Memory isn’t intelligence.
Then asking it a logic question. What question are you asking that the llms are getting wrong and your average person is getting right? How are you proving intelligence here?
LLMs are an autocorrect.
Let’s use a standard definition like “intelligence is the ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge.”
It can acquire (learn) and use (access, output) data but it lacks the ability to understand it.
This is why we have AI telling people to use glue on pizza or drink bleach.
I suggest you sit down with an AI some time and put a few versions of the Trolley Problem to it. You will likely see what is missing.
I think this all has to do with how you are going to compare and pick a winner in intelligence. the traditional way is usually with questions which llms tend to do quite well at. they have the tendency to hallucinate, but the amount they hallucinate is less than the amount they don’t know in my experience.
The issue is really all about how you measure intelligence. Is it a word problem? A knowledge problem? A logic problem?.. And then the issue is, can the average person get your question correct? A big part of my statement here is at the average person is not very capable of answering those types of questions.
In this day and age of alternate facts and vaccine denial, science denial, and other ways that your average person may try to be intentionally stupid… I put my money on an llm winning the intelligence competition versus the average person. In most cases I think the llm would beat me in 90% of the topics.
So, the question to you, is how do you create this competition? What are the questions you’re going to ask that the average person’s going to get right and the llm will get wrong?
I have already suggested it. Trolley problems etc. Ask it to tell you its reasoning. It always becomes preposterous sooner or later.
My point here is that remembering the correct answer or performing a mathematical calculation are not a measure of understanding.
What we are looking for that sets apart INTELLIGENCE is an ability to genuinely understand. LLMs don’t have that, any more than older autocorrects did.
How many Rs are there in the word strawberry?
I asked gemini and ChatGPT (the free one) and they both got it right. How many people do you think would get that right if you didn’t write it down in front of them? If Copilot gets it wrong, as per eletes’ post, then the AI success rate is 66%. Ask your average person walking down the street and I don’t think you would do any better. Plus there are a million questions that the LLMs would vastly out perform your average human.
I think you might know some really stupid or perhaps just uneducated people. I would expect 100% of people to know how many Rs there are in “strawberry” without looking at it.
Nevertheless, spelling is memory and memory is not intelligence.
Well, if somebody thinks this, it’s kind of true isn’t it?
Hallucination comes off as confidence. Very human like behavior tbh.
I should be more confident when communicating my hallucinations, it humanizes me.
They’re right
I believe LLMs are smarter than half of US adults
That’s called a self-proving statement.
