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AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton: ‘We’re creating alien beings. I’m willing to be selfish and choose humans’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2026
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It’s so demoralising to perpetually witness apparently intelligent people be convinced that Algorithmic Iterators can in any way be mistaken as a form of intelligence. I’ve struggled for decades to relate to the world; but this recent, collective debasement of rationality has nearly obliterated the few remaining foundations suitable to build hope upon.
Why does the result of algorithmic iteration seem unintelligent to you?
Sounds like ELIZA's turn.
AI is about making machines that mimic human level intelligence. Whether they possess actual intelligence doesn’t matter. They just need to act intelligently.
You can disagree with the terminology, but it has been an active field of study since the 1950s.
Remember the Turing test? Damn goal posts move faster than the ball. I’m not sure how one could fail to be impressed by the technological advancements in the last 3 years in the field
Sort of.
I think Turing thought, "well something that could do this would surely HAVE to be intelligent", but I seriously doubt that he would have waved the white flag for an intelligence that can convincingly mimic human communication but can't count letters in a word.
Well the Test now includes casual tasks like counting letters, doesn’t it? You have to move your head in a certain way to spot the leopard in the shaded forest.
An important variable of the Turing Test that is never spoken about is the intelligence (or gullibility) of the user.
Then define intelligence.
You can't just say a thing is intelligent or not intelligent without coming up with a good definition. We are ugly meatbags of mostly water that are constantly driven by chemical processes. How the hell do you call that intelligent? Prove that we are intelligent, and then prove that the "algorithmic iterator", that uses weighted metrics with an eerie similarity to neurons, isn't actually intelligent.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/intelligence
I know you’re not a fan of the dictionary, but they are the authority on words and their meanings.
Before you get too excited about definition 3 I suggest you familiarize yourself with what it means to “compute” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compute you’ll notice repeated use of the word “determine”. LLMs are by nature “non-deterministic” or in other words “incapable of determining / incapable of making a determination”.
A computer is deterministic
An LLM is a probabilistic next-word-guessing machine / software as a service
Your analysis of definition 3 also precludes the human mind as being capable of computation since biological systems contain inherent randomness that makes their output non deterministic.
You are assigning a magical meaning to the word intelligence. Your objection is superficial semantics. You are effectively being a science denier proudly displaying your ignorance as evidence. This anti-vax tier anti-ai circlejerk of ignorance as evidence is just the opposite side of the same ignorant coin. You are going to get pissed on by researchers and the actual smart people when are you are anti-ai like this you are not changing minds you are ignored. Seriously move off semantics it's just fucking embarrassing.
Your bulk discount tokens must have just hit your account, I’m honoured you chose to spend them replying to my post.
It’s always fascinating when an entity exhibits such a strong reaction to a critique of associating LLMs as intelligence, what was the prompt you engineered to conjure it?
I’ll concede my perspective of LLMs is limited, and skewed by agnostic ignorance as I’ve never actively, willingly, or consciously used one on purpose, but to accuse me of wilful ignorance smells more like Lynx Admission.
I’m not interested in the opinion or approval of anyone whose fallen for this grift, too much of my time and energy has been exhausted appeasing them. I’ll reengage with them once they wake up, or are excreted from the ‘AI’ logo sphincters, until then I need to relegate them as dark matter.
I like the way you have no ability to assert your opinions and just send insults it really highlights your character and my heart is moved. You can be a better person who intelligently argues their point or you can be a MAGAt tier anti-vaxx tier science denier and fight with your feelings. Guess which one I want for you? Move off semantics it's fucking embarrassing.
Define intelligence.
Comprehension, something LLMs are intrinsically incapable of demonstrating, let alone possessing.
pretty sure it comes from latin "inter-lego" (collect or pick out information, like you would pick out the good fruit from a bush with good and bad fruit).
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/intelligent
so it's about filtering what you want to have from what you don't want to have. i.e. a mathematical function f : X -> R which maps an object x to a real number to figure out how desirable that object is, i.e. assign value to it.
technically you don't even need neural networks for it, sorting algorithms employ this kind of function all the time to sort objects according to some criteria.