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Comment by _heimdall | Hacker News Reader

It has definitely come along way, though the goal posts moved too. I bet if we asked you 5 years ago to describe what AI is, you wouldn't describe a massive text prediction loop.

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Well, I don’t think of it as true AI, of course. But even LLMs can be extremely useful in their own way. I happily pay for them; there have been times (like today) I feel they paid for themselves in a single response!

They’re not culture level Minds, sure, but they can still help massively in the right situation.

If LLMs suddenly appeared right now and you didn’t have the benefit of hindsight into their internal workings you wouldn’t describe them that way today either, even if it is factual.

Sure, though vuild any blackbox and people wouldn't be able to describe how it works simply by the inputs and outputs. It will tend to look magical, especially if it appears suddenly. That doesn't mean it is magical though (or intelligent, in this case).

I am less surprised that it is a text prediction loop than I am surprised at how effective a text prediction loop is. This effectiveness has changed how I think about language on a fundamental level. Yes, the process by which it occurs is relatively simple, but the fact it works is ground breaking.

5 years ago I was running GPT-2 and generating D&D content with it. I expected much better text prediction loop and here we are.

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