I'll use myself as example. ChatGPT can write better than me, it can summarize better than me, it can research quicker than I can, and it is more creative than I can ever be.
I don't care if it "understands" in a way that would satisfy Nabil Alouani, its ability to produce useful output is a game-changer.
Probably. But you still need to give some input about what to write and proof-read the output.
> it can research quicker than I can
I don't think so. AFAIK, it doesn't research at all right now. When google and bing add such models to their search engines, I doubt they will be able to research quicker than a human mind. Most research queries are not responded by plain text: Search for a hotel price in a specific room for a specific date, for instance, or check the weather in a specific place at a specific time. Language models will help you to ingest and query large volumes of text, but that's something we don't do that often.
All in all, Chat-GPT is a tool to work with text. It certainly can be useful in that context, but I don't see any world-changing properties.
I actually don't understand how someone thinks we understand understanding well enough to write this article.
Imagine being the 10000th person to give this uninspired take.
> Cats have a representation of the world that help them navigate it. They also have instincts programmed into their brains, allowing them to act with relative logic. In contrast, GPT and Co only have patterns of human-written text devoid of meaning.
This is wrong. To say chatgpt doesn't represent the world instead it only has patterns is distinction without difference. This is the new dualism. There is "real understanding" and AI can't do that by definition because "understanding" isn't anything except being a human and acting apparently.
The Loki thought experiment is laughable.
ChatGPT has allowed me to explore programming topics where there is, otherwise, very little useful information - it won't produce good code verbatim but it doesn't have to - it's my robotic rubber duck.
People get into a state of false confidence using ChatGPT for things they cannot easily fact check.