I do agree bigly. Calling what is basically a superhuman brain inside a computer just a "token predictor" is peak thinkslop.
int n_tokens = 0;
while (n_tokens < TOKENS_MAX) {
int next_token = decode(context, ++position);
print(token_to_text(next_token));
++n_tokens;
}
Now, take that for loop, and replace the implementation of decode(context, ++position) and pass it to a human who was bored enough to play along and use a notebook to organize their thoughts and translate them to/from this encoding (you might write a helper function to do this for the human in the front-end of the new decode() impl, but the data flow in and out of decode() will remain the same):
decode(context, position)
{
cached string_answer = ask_human_question_via_context(context);
return decode_human_answer_to_tokens(cached string_answer, position);
Is the output you get not thinking anymore because it passed through this harness? Did the human's mind somehow get reduced to mere interpolation?
The human mind is still a human mind. Putting a simple harness in front of a mind does not affect its fundamental properties.
In an LLM, decode() is calling into a trillion parameter connectome.
Deal with it.
"If this is flight, it's really boring. We can't even build a mechanical sparrow that can lay eggs and catch flies. You're telling me we can't run sparrow.exe but we've created flight?"
We didn't build something that flies by flapping its wings until 2010. We'd been building functional airplanes for more than 100 years before we were able to build something that worked in a (more primitive, but) similar way to how a sparrow flies.
I'm sorry that modern machine intelligence is so boring to you.
It isn't boring to me, I'm fascinated both by the ways I'm still far more capable than trillion parameter LLMs, and also by the ways they are already far more capable than I am.
FWIW, while I am not bored by nascent machine intelligence, I am bored by predictable human reactions to it: greed, exploitation, hubris, etc.