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Comment by dsign | Hacker News Reader

Upvoted. I think that said humans should get used to the idea that their intellect is special only insofar as it was first, and if they want to adopt or invent a value system that keeps them at the center, that's actually fine and good for their survival. But said humans would do well to stop laboriously and curmudgeonly moving the posts that mark the goals, and get busy trying to coax the AI to do useful things for them and for the species as a whole.

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If human intelligence is so boring and non-special, how exactly did LLMs get this smart? Is it not from a) being developed by humans and b) being fed a very large portion of all human-generated text?

Without the human intellect to emulate, LLMs would be nothing.

There are many here who hate humans I think.

Prob because their life sucks.

LLMs learn from patterns in human-provided data (and soon each other and directly from nature). Humans learn(ed) from patterns in nature-provided data, and eventually each other (and, increasingly, LLMs).

"Boring": that's a straw man, it was never in my comment. I did say that people should stop grumbling and use the tool for good things. I'm not quite sure what was your point, but it sounded like you disagreed (one doesn't deploy the straw-man weapon otherwise), and this "Without the human intellect to emulate, LLMs would be nothing" sounds like an expression of grief, which admittedly is a very reasonable feeling for a number of reasons. What confuses me is that creating an intellect at the human level or above is indeed a great human achievement, but it's not a good thing because...? Maybe an emulation of the thing is not as good as the thing, was that your meaning?

Here, let me add my own little straw man: "if God didn't make us, how exactly did humans get so smart? Is not from a) being created in His image and b) being given His love? Without God, we would be mud from the ground (and a rib!)." If you agree with this statement, then, understandably, everything we have done since the Enlightenment has been to secure our place in hell, and LLMs are a particularly impertinent such device, but compared to a true human mind like a figurine of clay to a true person.

But, if of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not, and Man keeps measuring the thing and the thing indeed seems very smart, then Man should stop moping and deal with the consequences of their actions: either ban the thing or use it for their own benefit.

No idea what you're on about. It is provable that humans developed LLMs, there is no proof that God created humans. It's possible that a human creation will someday be more capable and intelligent than humans on all fronts, but it still stands that without the foundation of human intellect, there would be no LLMs. So I don't understand people who act like "AI" is a separate species that came to exist independently and proves human inferiority, that humans need to accept that they're not special, and that we should rush to submit to our new AI overlords. If anything, the existence and capabilities of AI proves that human intellect is still impressive and versatile, because it is a direct reflection of human knowledge.

>> proves human inferiority, that humans need to accept that they're not special, and that we should rush to submit to our new AI overlords

That's a lot of axes you're grinding simultaneously my friend

I have seen lots of comments to that effect on HN. "How do you know whether your brain is not just a next token predictor too?"

> Upvoted. I think that said humans should get used to the idea that their intellect is special only insofar as it was first

And used to build the LLMs of today. We'll see how that evolves once LLMs have to feed LLMs with their own "intellect".

What did humans build off of but themselves?

LLMs are not humans. It's good to remember that. They're also not God.

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