ChatGPT equalizes intelligence. And that is an attack on their identity. It also exposes their ACTUAL intelligence which is to say most of HN is not too smart.
Citation needed
How about I caveat it the way you want:
AI equalizes intelligence in the sense that it closes the gap. Not perfectly, not infinitely, but directionally. The distribution compresses. The floor rises faster than the ceiling, so people who used to be far apart end up operating much closer together.
You can already see it in the Erdős example. The person who wrote that prompt wasn’t some random idiot. It took real cleverness to even set it up that way. But the fact that they could get that far, with assistance, is exactly the point. The distance between “amateur” and “expert” shrinks when the tool fills in large parts of the path.
Now extend that forward. Today it’s one clever person, one problem, one careful interaction. As the tooling improves, that same pattern scales. Better reasoning, better search, better guidance. The amount of lift the tool provides increases, which means the gap continues to narrow.
All the supposed “counterpoints” people bring up are already implied in the claim. “Equalize” here obviously means moving closer to equality. Is it NOT obvious that LLMs don't actually equalize intelligence to a level of 100%? Do I actually need to spell that out? If there was nothing at stake, I wouldn't need to.
But instead people latch onto the most absurd version possible, knock that down, and act like they’ve said something meaningful. It’s the same mindset as that guy demanding a formal paper or citation for an observation you can see unfolding in real time. Not because it’s unclear, but because engaging with the actual claim is uncomfortable. It’s easier to distort it into something extreme and dismiss it than to admit the gap is closing.
More pointedly, I don’t think anyone who opposes AI does so because they want to remain the smart kid in the room.
> If there was nothing at stake, I wouldn't need to
You’re on HN buddy. If you measure stakes by how pedantically you’re challenged, everything will rise to existential terms.
It's more then being the smart kid in the room. The future is pointing to a place where programming is just a one hour tutorial on how to tell AI to do it for you. What happens to you if you're entire identity and career was built on being a programmer as many people are here? THAT is what is at stake.
These types of people need citations for the time of day. They don't know how to debate or discuss in abstract terms. Reality freezes over if no scientific papers exist on the topic.
I don't know man, maybe you got too equalized yet but the things you say are not very smart. Getting angry over that isn't a good argument either.
You probably need to look at your own reading comprehension skills before you comment on my intelligence.
Oh man you have captured the exact emotion I had. These people need randomised control trials to prove any inane thing lmaoo. Reddit brained I tell you
Yes, I love living in communism too. Imagine if you had to pay money for it or something. The wealthiest people would get unrestricted access to intelligence while the poor none. And the people in the middle would eventually find themselves unable to function without a product they can no longer afford. Chilling, huh? Good thing humans are known for sharing in the benefits of technological progress equally. /s
What was that about "spreading FUD about unaffordability"?
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-living-with-less-th...
Please show me the steps to get a $200 subscription for free that works 100% of the time regardless of who you are. I'm listening.
You are exaggerating the situation by essentially claiming since some people can’t afford 200 dollars this means ChatGPT is not democratising intelligence. It’s a bit strange to claim this because according to you it only becomes affordable when maximal number of people can afford it. It’s a bit childish.
Directionally it is democratising. Are more people able to afford higher level intelligence? Yes.
It flattened the difference between a top epsilon percentile mathematician and an amateur with money. It didn't flatten the difference between an amateur with a little money and an amateur with a lot of money. It widened it. That's the part I'm scared about.
You are shrugging this off because it currently isn't that expensive. But we're talking about the massively subsidized price here, which is bound to get orders of magnitude higher when the bubble pops. Models are also likely to get much better. If it gets to a point where the only way to obtain exceptionally high intelligence is with an exceptionally high net worth and vice versa, how is that going to democratize anything?
"All men are created equal" is obviously not literally saying all humans are 100% equal. Just like how "ChatGPT equalizes intelligence" is not saying ChatGPT equalizes the intelligence of all humans to a level of 100%.
I'm not going to spell out what I meant by: "ChatGPT equalizes intelligence". You can likely figure it out for yourself, because the problem doesn't have anything to do with your reading comprehension. The problem is more akin to self delusion, you don't want to face reality so you interpret the statement from the most absurdist angle possible.
The admins at HN actually noticed this tendency among people and encoded it into the rules: "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
You seem to be under the misconception that you somehow “own” ChatGPT or are entitled to the insight it provides. You don’t and you aren’t. You are at the mercy of trillion-dollar private companies that owe you nothing. Their products’ intelligence is not your intelligence. Whatever profits you’re seeing from it, it’s currently losing them money. And when that changes, so will your image of them as benefactors of humanity who make intelligence available to all.
> You seem to be under the misconception that you somehow “own” ChatGPT or are entitled to the insight it provides.
Right now for the price of a new car I can definitely get enough hardware to run a local LLM to the quality of ChatGPT at my home. And this is just the status quo. The demand for this technology and the projection of improvement in prices predicts a future where you can run one for the price of a new computer. Wake up.
But who the fuck cares? Point being is AI is equalizing intelligence and you’re just throwing in tangents and side branches to try to disentangle the obvious general truth which I will repeat: AI is fucking equalizing intelligence and if you don’t agree, you’re absurd.
Flagging because this kind of language has no place on HN.
> Then you lecture me about HN guidelines.
Not a lecture. An example of how it's a well known issue. I'm obviously not a rule follower myself; and your content is not really fit for HN either. Once you flag the entire conversation is over. I don't really care, but if I were you I'd rather end the argument by being right instead of running away and tattle tailing to the authorities. Up to you.
maybe the admins come in and block the convo, delete it, and/or ban me. Who knows. I don't care. The fact of the matter is... I'm right, and you know it. Everything I said here is true, and you're turning to this way to end it because you can't face it.
Maybe the models are closer to us than we're comfortable to admit.
I love the confidence that comes from this claim. You can run open models in your laptop today compare to the best models from 2 years ago. But sure spread your FUd about investor money running out
No matter how you spin it, we humans are now becoming thermodynamically less efficient versions of LLMs. We contribute nothing of value to the system, so economics dictates we have no place in it except as investors. Skill is nothing now, and ownership is everything. So yeah, I'm afraid of the future. Call it FUD or whatever, I don't care.
Before ChatGPT it costs ~$100,000 to aquire intelligence good enough to solve this Erdos problem, now it costs ~$200.
I'm really confused at what you are even taking an issue with.
More specific to HN is the archetype of: "I have spent years honing my craft as a expert programmer, my identity is predicated on being an expert programmer in which high intelligence is causal and associated positively with my identity" That's why ironically most of HN was completely wrong about AI. They were wrong about driverless cars, they claimed vibe coding was trash. It's the people who think (keyword) their stupid/average (aka general public) who got it right... because perceptually they stand to gain from the equalization.
Anyway.. this fear and jealousy is not something most humans can admit to themselves. Nobody will actually be able to realize that these emotions drive there thinking. They have to lie to themselves and rationalize a different reality. That's why you get absurdist takes like this.
To everyone reading. It is obviously that chatGPT does not equalize intelligence to the point of 100%. That statement is obviously not saying that. Everyone knows this. You want proof?:
Look at the declaration of independence... without getting to pedantic: "All Men are created equal" is not saying all Males are 100% equal. Everyone knows this. First off no one is 100% equal.. and second the statement in a modern context is obviously not referring to only men. It is referring to women&men and clearly men and women are nowhere near equal.
So if you all know this about the declaration of independence... how can you not see the same nuance for: "ChatGPT equalizes intelligence."? First ask yourself... do you think you're smart? If you do, then the self delusion I just described is likely happening with you.