The issue is that prediction is "part" of the human thought process, it's not the full story...
The near-religious fervor which people insist that "its just prediction" makes me want to respond with some religious allusions of my own:
> Who is this that wrappeth up sentences in unskillful words? Gird up thy loins like a man: I will ask thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth? tell me if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
The point is that (as far as I know) we simply don't know the necessary or sufficient conditions for "thinking" in the first place, let alone "human thinking." Eventually we will most likely arrive at a scientific consensus, but as of right now we don't have the terms nailed down well enough to claim the kind of certainty I see from AI-detractors.
The harms engendered by underestimating LLM capabilities are largely that people won't use the LLMs.
The harms engendered by overestimating their capabilities can be as severe as psychological delusion, of which we have an increasing number of cases.
Given we don't actually have a good definition of "thinking" what tack do you consider more responsible?
Speculative fiction about superintelligences aside, an obvious harm to underestimating the LLM's capabilities is that we could effectively be enslaving moral agents if we fail to correctly classify them as such.
Much worse, when insufficiently skeptical humans link the LLM to real-world decisions to make their own lives easier.
Consider the Brazil-movie-esque bureaucratic violence of someone using it to recommend fines or sentencing.
I’m downplaying because I have honestly been burned by these tools when I’ve put trust in their ability to understand anything, provide a novel suggestion or even solve some basic bugs without causing other issues.?
I use all of the things you talk about extremely frequently and again, there is no “thinking” or consideration on display that suggests these things work like us, else why would we be having this conversation if they were ?
I've had that experience plenty of times with actual people... LLMs don't "think" like people do, that much is pretty obvious. But I'm not at all sure whether what they do can be called "thinking" or not.
Do you have a proof for this?
Surely such a profound claim about human thought process must have a solid proof somewhere? Otherwise who's to say all of human thought process is not just a derivative of "predicting the next thing"?
What would change your mind? It's an exercise in feasibility.
For example, I don't believe in time travel. If someone made me time travel, and made it undeniable that I was transported back to 1508, then I would not be able to argue against it. In fact, no one in such position would.
What is that equivalent for your conviction? There must be something, otherwise, it's just an opinion that can't be changed.
You don't need to present some actual proof or something. Just lay out some ideas that demonstrate that you are being rational about this and not just sucking up to LLM marketing.
That's not a proof. Think harder about the questions people are asking you here.