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Comment by nicklecompte | Hacker News Reader

I am quite critical of LLMs but I really don't see the point of asking Michio Kaku what he thinks, other than cynically leveraging his status as a physicist so he can be a "thoughtfluencer" in areas he probably doesn't know very much about.

Becoming a celebrity seems to be the worst thing that can happen to a thinker.

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>other than cynically leveraging his status as a physicist so he can be a "thoughtfluencer"

So should we only be listening to the people with a financial stake in the outcomes, in either direction?

Not saying he's correct, or even that I agree. But it seems like we should listen to random, smart people.

I'd listen to Kaku on this if it were clear he had actually spent significant time using, developing, and understanding LLMs, but it's apparent that he hasn't and is just parroting other takes he's seen online ;)

That he's calling it a glorified tape recorder suggests he'd have been smarter if he'd answer he doesn't know the field and so doesn't have anything to say about it, and is a strong argument for why listening to random smart people is not necessarily going to be very useful.

But then he'd never have made it to Hacker News.

Is he actually smart though? This statement is profoundly stupid, now is he intentionally saying something stupid because as an academic he feels threatened by AI or is he actually just kinda dumb outside his field

What does it mean to be critical of LLMs? In that they are overhyped or that they are not intelligence?

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