this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2026
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It's very much factual that LLMs are intelligent, what are you even talking about?
Maybe you're confusing intelligence with consciousness?
Intelligence requires possession and/or demonstration of comprehension, something LLMs are intrinsically incapable of.
If you insist on classifying LLMs as ‘AI’, I’ll concede they are proficient Algorithmic Iterators.
Yet LLMs demonstrate all of that
LLMs demonstrate knowledge not intelligence.
LLMs are basically giant knowledge databases with no intelligence. They know a lot of things but they don't understand stand any of it.
Because fundamentally they can't understand things. They can only approximate understanding.
It's no different then if I asked someone to prove 2+2=4. They could tell me that yes that's correct, because they know it. But they couldn't explain it properly. Let alone explain why it also isn't always true.
Hallucinations are fundamentally the disconnect from knowledge and understanding. Everything a LLM says from its point of view is "true" it's only stating factual knowledge so far that it has it in its data set.
But with out understanding, it can't tell when that knowledge wanders from a 99% likelihood to be accurate to 60% or 20%. Because it doesn't actually understand what it's saying.
It can only state subjective not objective truth. And subjective truth is no better than a fiction with out understanding.
This is why they need a human minder to keep track of the output to correct it back to optimum output when it starts to wander.
Chain of thought doesn’t quite align with this. It’s possible to predict something not in training if there are sufficient facts in the history to align the probability toward a conclusion. (the “teach a man to fish” approach) Reasoning chains were introduced to take advantage of this, but it’s also possible to prime facts through external sourcing that can be used to extend the predictions. (web searching, document traversal, etc.)
Your larger point remains accurate though. Introspection capabilities are functional but quite limited, and training bias can be quite pathological in a vacuum.
This binary distinction you're making doesn't exist in any serious scientific literature. I literally have a degree in information technology and have been following this subject for over 30 years now - there's no real distinction between "knowledge" and intelligence. In fact, compression itself is literally intelligence.
You’re proving my point, jog on.
Lemmy luddites: 🙈🙉
Ned Ludd did nothing wrong!
I mean, they are AI though it's a very misleading label, AIs are called like that because to someone it seems that they mimic human inteligence; they are just copycat machines, sadly it's too late to change their name unless a government starts to make campaigns to aid that
I've been trying to discuss this on Lemmy for a while now. Don't bother. People here are convinced that LLMs can't be intelligent because they've once seen them make a stupid mistake. Ergo AI as a whole must be just a stupid scam.
Sad that it"s almost impossible to have a serious discussion about LLMs on Lemmy but this entire network is full of kids that just parrot whatever latest meme narrative is. It's a legitimately useful discussion but a completely poisoned one on this corner of the internet.
I find it fascinating though that this narrative that AI is just stupid shit is so, so prevalent on Lemmy. I mean people here seem to be quite tech-savvy on average. Surely they must understand what an incredible development AI has gone through in the last 10 years? They must be smart enough to understand that LLMs are a tool that, if used right, are extremely powerful. See all the potential in medicine, chemistry, etc.... But all I read is "LLM stupid parrot amirite LOL"... it's almost infuriating. I mean, I totally get the whole economic point - big tech is screwing us over, I absolutely agree with that. But that is a completely different conversation that people here make impossible to have because they just focus on a ridiculously wrong aspect of AI which is that it is not the perfect AGI they read about in their comic books.