6 ms·

> a lot of people seem to see LLMs as smarter than themselves Well, in many cases they might be right..

by Marha01 10mo ago

roenxi 10mo ago
As far as I can tell from poking people on HN about what "AGI" means, there might be a general belief that the median human is not intelligent. Given that the current batch of models apparently isn't AGI I'm struggling to see a clean test of what AGI might be that a human can pass.
- verisimi 10mo ago
  > there might be a general belief that the median human is not intelligent This is to deconstruct the question. I don't think it's even wrong - a lot of people are doing things, making decisions, living life perfectly normally, successfully even, without applying intelligence in a personal way. Those with socially accredited 'intelligence' would be the worst offenders imo - they do not apply their intelligence personally but simply massage themselves and others towards consensus. Which is ultimately materially beneficial to them - so why not? For me 'intelligence' would be knowing why you are doing what you are doing without dismissing the question with reference to 'convention', 'consensus', someone/something else. Computers can only do an imitation of this sort of answer. People stand a chance of answering it.
  - Dilettante_ 10mo ago
    >knowing why you are doing what you are doing[...] Computers can only do an imitation of this sort of answer. People stand a chance of answering it. I'm not following. A computer's "why" is a written program, surely that is the most clear expression of its intent you could ask for?
    - verisimi 10mo ago
      A computer doesn't determine the why, it is programmed to do so. It doesn't determine meaning or value from whatever-it-is.
      - Dilettante_ 10mo ago
        Did you mean it doesn't set its own goals? Or what did you mean by "determine the why" if not a stack trace of its motivations(which is to say, its programming)? Could you give an example of determinimg meaning or value?
        verisimi 10mo ago
        Yes, set its own goals. Here's an example - say you wanted to track your spending, you might create a spreadsheet to do so. The spreadsheet won't write itself. If you want, you could perhaps task an ai to monitor and track spending - but it doesn't care. It is the human that cares/feels/values whatever-it-is. Computers are not that type. Is your position that humans are pretty mechanistic, and simply playing out their programming, like computers? And that they can provide a stacktrace for what they do? If so, this is what I was getting at with my initial comment. Most people do not apply their intelligence personally - they are simply playing out the goals that we inserted into them (by parents, society). There are alternative possibilities, but it seems that most people's operational procedures and actions are not something they have considered or actively sought.
        Dilettante_ 10mo ago
        >Is your position that humans are [...] simply playing out their programming? Yes, at least it's what I wanted to drill further into. Boiled down, I'm interested in hearing where "intelligent" people derive their motivations(I'm in agreement that most people are on ["non-intelligent" if you will] auto-pilot most of the time) if not from outside themselves, in your framework. When does a goal start being my intelligent own goal? Any impetus for something can be traced back to not-yourself: I might decide to start tracking my spending, but that decision doesn't form out of the void. Maybe I value frugality, but I did not create that value in myself. It was instilled in me by experience, or my peers, etc. I see no way for one to "spontaneously" form a motivation, or if I wanted to take it one step further(into the Buddha's territory), I would have to question who, and where, and what this "self" even is.
- figassis 10mo ago
  Being an intelligent being is not the same as being considered intelligent relative to the rest of your species. I think we’re just looking to create an intelligence, meaning, having the attributes that make a being intelligent, which mostly are the ability to reason and learn. I think the being might take over from there no? With humans, the speed and ease with which we learn and reason is capped. I think a very dumb intelligence with stay dumb for not very long because every resource will be spent in making it smarter.
  - Timwi 10mo ago
    Why would the dumb intelligence be less constrained than a human in making itself smarter?
    - lazide 10mo ago
      I have yet to see an LLM with hands, feet, or eyeballs. Currently, LLMs require hooks and active engagement with humans to ‘do’ anything. Including learn.
  - gilrain 10mo ago
    > every resource will be spent in making it smarter The root motivation on which every resource will be spent is simply and very obviously to make a profit.
- impossiblefork 10mo ago
  LLMs may appear to do well on certain programming tasks on which they are trained intensively, but they are incredibly weak. If you try to use an LLM to generate, for example, a story, you will find that it will make unimaginable mistakes. If you ask an LLM to analyze a conversation from the internet it will misrepresent the positions of the participants, often restating things so that they mean something different or making mistakes about who said what in a way that humans never do. The longer the exchange the more these problems are exacerbated. We are incredibly far from AGI.
  - closewith 10mo ago
    This seems distant from my experience. Modern LLMs are superb at summarisation, far better than most people.
  - roenxi 10mo ago
    We do have AI systems that write stories [0]. They work. The quality might not be spectacular but if you've ever gone out and spent time reading fanfiction you'd have to agree there are a lot of rather terrible human writers too (bless them). It still hits this issue that if we want LLMs to compete with the best of humanity then they aren't there yet, but that means defining human intelligence as something that most people don't have access to. > If you ask an LLM to analyze a conversation from the internet it will misrepresent the positions of the participants, often restating things so that they mean something different or making mistakes about who said what in a way that humans never do. AI transcription & summary seems to be a strong point of the models so I don't know what exactly you're trying to get to with this one. If you have evidence for that I'd actually be quite interested because humans are so bad at representing what other people said on the internet it seems like it should be an easy win for an AI. Humans typically have some wild interpretations of what other people write that cannot be supported from what was written. [0] https://github.com/google-deepmind/dramatron https://github.com/google-deepmind/dramatron
    - impossiblefork 10mo ago
      I haven't tried Dramatron, but my experience is that it isn't possible to do sensibly. With regard to the second part >AI transcription & summary seems to be a strong point of the models so I don't know what exactly you're trying to get to with this one. If you have evidence for that I'd actually be quite interested because humans are so bad at representing what other people said on the internet it seems like it should be an easy win for an AI. Humans typically have some wild interpretations of what other people write that cannot be supported from what was written. Transcription and summarization is indeed fine, but try posting a longer reddit or HN discussion you've been part of into any model of your choice and ask it to analyze it, and you will see severe errors very soon. It will consistently misrepresent the views expressed and it doesn't really matter what model you go for. They can't do it.
chrz 10mo ago
So tired of this argument.
computerthings 10mo ago
[dead]
cortic 10mo ago
> ChatGPT (o3): Scored 136 on the Mensa Norway test in April 2025 So yes, most people are right in that assumption, at least by the metric of how we generally measure intelligence.
- vid 10mo ago
  Court reports should as much be about human sensibility. I have met plenty of high IQ people who were insensitive.
  - cortic 10mo ago
    Having listened to some the new AI generated songs on utube, looks like they might be better at being sensitive humans than we are as well..
    - gilrain 10mo ago
      Where do you imagine they copied those human sensitivities from? The weather?
      - cortic 10mo ago
        The same place as humans do, other humans.
- ehnto 10mo ago
  Does an LLM scoring well on the Mensa test translate to it doing excellent and factual police reporting? It is probably not true of humans doing well on the Mensa, why would it be true of an LLM? We should probably rigorously verify that, for a role that itself is about rigorous verification without reasonable doubt. I can immediately, and reasonably, doubt the output of an LLM, pending verification.
- turtlesdown11 10mo ago
  Yeah I certainly associate LLMs with high intelligence when they provide fake links to fake information, I think, man this thing is SMART

> a lot of people seem to see LLMs as smarter than themselves Well, in many cases they might be right..

by Marha01 10mo ago

> a lot of people seem to see LLMs as smarter than themselves Well, in many cases they might be right..

roenxi 10mo ago

As far as I can tell from poking people on HN about what "AGI" means, there might be a general belief that the median human is not intelligent. Given that the current batch of models apparently isn't AGI I'm struggling to see a clean test of what AGI might be that a human can pass.

verisimi 10mo ago
> there might be a general belief that the median human is not intelligent This is to deconstruct the question. I don't think it's even wrong - a lot of people are doing things, making decisions, living life perfectly normally, successfully even, without applying intelligence in a personal way. Those with socially accredited 'intelligence' would be the worst offenders imo - they do not apply their intelligence personally but simply massage themselves and others towards consensus. Which is ultimately materially beneficial to them - so why not? For me 'intelligence' would be knowing why you are doing what you are doing without dismissing the question with reference to 'convention', 'consensus', someone/something else. Computers can only do an imitation of this sort of answer. People stand a chance of answering it.
- Dilettante_ 10mo ago
  >knowing why you are doing what you are doing[...] Computers can only do an imitation of this sort of answer. People stand a chance of answering it. I'm not following. A computer's "why" is a written program, surely that is the most clear expression of its intent you could ask for?
  - verisimi 10mo ago
    A computer doesn't determine the why, it is programmed to do so. It doesn't determine meaning or value from whatever-it-is.
    - Dilettante_ 10mo ago
      Did you mean it doesn't set its own goals? Or what did you mean by "determine the why" if not a stack trace of its motivations(which is to say, its programming)? Could you give an example of determinimg meaning or value?
      - verisimi 10mo ago
        Yes, set its own goals. Here's an example - say you wanted to track your spending, you might create a spreadsheet to do so. The spreadsheet won't write itself. If you want, you could perhaps task an ai to monitor and track spending - but it doesn't care. It is the human that cares/feels/values whatever-it-is. Computers are not that type. Is your position that humans are pretty mechanistic, and simply playing out their programming, like computers? And that they can provide a stacktrace for what they do? If so, this is what I was getting at with my initial comment. Most people do not apply their intelligence personally - they are simply playing out the goals that we inserted into them (by parents, society). There are alternative possibilities, but it seems that most people's operational procedures and actions are not something they have considered or actively sought.
        Dilettante_ 10mo ago
        >Is your position that humans are [...] simply playing out their programming? Yes, at least it's what I wanted to drill further into. Boiled down, I'm interested in hearing where "intelligent" people derive their motivations(I'm in agreement that most people are on ["non-intelligent" if you will] auto-pilot most of the time) if not from outside themselves, in your framework. When does a goal start being my intelligent own goal? Any impetus for something can be traced back to not-yourself: I might decide to start tracking my spending, but that decision doesn't form out of the void. Maybe I value frugality, but I did not create that value in myself. It was instilled in me by experience, or my peers, etc. I see no way for one to "spontaneously" form a motivation, or if I wanted to take it one step further(into the Buddha's territory), I would have to question who, and where, and what this "self" even is.
figassis 10mo ago
Being an intelligent being is not the same as being considered intelligent relative to the rest of your species. I think we’re just looking to create an intelligence, meaning, having the attributes that make a being intelligent, which mostly are the ability to reason and learn. I think the being might take over from there no? With humans, the speed and ease with which we learn and reason is capped. I think a very dumb intelligence with stay dumb for not very long because every resource will be spent in making it smarter.
- Timwi 10mo ago
  Why would the dumb intelligence be less constrained than a human in making itself smarter?
  - lazide 10mo ago
    I have yet to see an LLM with hands, feet, or eyeballs. Currently, LLMs require hooks and active engagement with humans to ‘do’ anything. Including learn.
- gilrain 10mo ago
  > every resource will be spent in making it smarter The root motivation on which every resource will be spent is simply and very obviously to make a profit.
impossiblefork 10mo ago
LLMs may appear to do well on certain programming tasks on which they are trained intensively, but they are incredibly weak. If you try to use an LLM to generate, for example, a story, you will find that it will make unimaginable mistakes. If you ask an LLM to analyze a conversation from the internet it will misrepresent the positions of the participants, often restating things so that they mean something different or making mistakes about who said what in a way that humans never do. The longer the exchange the more these problems are exacerbated. We are incredibly far from AGI.
- closewith 10mo ago
  This seems distant from my experience. Modern LLMs are superb at summarisation, far better than most people.
- roenxi 10mo ago
  We do have AI systems that write stories [0]. They work. The quality might not be spectacular but if you've ever gone out and spent time reading fanfiction you'd have to agree there are a lot of rather terrible human writers too (bless them). It still hits this issue that if we want LLMs to compete with the best of humanity then they aren't there yet, but that means defining human intelligence as something that most people don't have access to. > If you ask an LLM to analyze a conversation from the internet it will misrepresent the positions of the participants, often restating things so that they mean something different or making mistakes about who said what in a way that humans never do. AI transcription & summary seems to be a strong point of the models so I don't know what exactly you're trying to get to with this one. If you have evidence for that I'd actually be quite interested because humans are so bad at representing what other people said on the internet it seems like it should be an easy win for an AI. Humans typically have some wild interpretations of what other people write that cannot be supported from what was written. [0] https://github.com/google-deepmind/dramatron https://github.com/google-deepmind/dramatron
  - impossiblefork 10mo ago
    I haven't tried Dramatron, but my experience is that it isn't possible to do sensibly. With regard to the second part >AI transcription & summary seems to be a strong point of the models so I don't know what exactly you're trying to get to with this one. If you have evidence for that I'd actually be quite interested because humans are so bad at representing what other people said on the internet it seems like it should be an easy win for an AI. Humans typically have some wild interpretations of what other people write that cannot be supported from what was written. Transcription and summarization is indeed fine, but try posting a longer reddit or HN discussion you've been part of into any model of your choice and ask it to analyze it, and you will see severe errors very soon. It will consistently misrepresent the views expressed and it doesn't really matter what model you go for. They can't do it.

chrz 10mo ago

So tired of this argument.

computerthings 10mo ago

[dead]

cortic 10mo ago

> ChatGPT (o3): Scored 136 on the Mensa Norway test in April 2025 So yes, most people are right in that assumption, at least by the metric of how we generally measure intelligence.

vid 10mo ago
Court reports should as much be about human sensibility. I have met plenty of high IQ people who were insensitive.
- cortic 10mo ago
  Having listened to some the new AI generated songs on utube, looks like they might be better at being sensitive humans than we are as well..
  - gilrain 10mo ago
    Where do you imagine they copied those human sensitivities from? The weather?
    - cortic 10mo ago
      The same place as humans do, other humans.
ehnto 10mo ago
Does an LLM scoring well on the Mensa test translate to it doing excellent and factual police reporting? It is probably not true of humans doing well on the Mensa, why would it be true of an LLM? We should probably rigorously verify that, for a role that itself is about rigorous verification without reasonable doubt. I can immediately, and reasonably, doubt the output of an LLM, pending verification.
turtlesdown11 10mo ago
Yeah I certainly associate LLMs with high intelligence when they provide fake links to fake information, I think, man this thing is SMART