Last I checked (which was a while ago) "AI" still can't pass the most basic of tasks such as "show me a blank image"/"show me a pure white image". the LLM will output the most intense fever dream possible but never a simple rectangle filled with #fff coded pixels. I'm willing to debate the potentials of AI again once they manage to do that without those "benchmarks" getting special attention in the training data.

I generally agree with your comment, but not on this part:

parroting the responses to questions that already existed in their input.

They're quite capable of following instructions over data where neither the instruction nor the data was anywhere in the training data.

They're completely incapable of critical thought or even basic reasoning.

Critical thought, generally no. Basic reasoning, that they're somewhat capable of. And chain of thought amplifies what little is there.

Synthesis versus generation. Yes.

And I highly doubt that’ll ever be fixed because the brainrotten corporate middle-manager types that insist on implementing this shit won’t ever want their “state of the art AI chatbot” to answer a customer’s question with “sorry, I don’t know.”

It's a tower of Babel IRL.

The current AI discussion I’m reading online has eerie similarities to the debate about legalizing cannabis 15 years ago. One side praises it as a solution to all of society’s problems, while the other sees it as the devil’s lettuce. Unsurprisingly, both sides were wrong, and the same will probably apply to AI. It’ll likely turn out that the more dispassionate people in the middle, who are neither strongly for nor against it, will be the ones who had the most accurate view on it.

You don't have to get all philosophical, since the value art is almost by definition debatable.

These models can't do basic logic. They already fail at this. And that's actually relevant to corpos if you can suddenly convince a chatbot to reduce your bill by 60% because bears don't eat mangos or some other nonsensical statement.

I'm just thinking - 12 years ago there was a lot of talk of politicians and big corpo chiefs being replaceable with a shell script. As both a joke and an argument in favor of something requiring change.

One can say it was saying that these people are not needed - engineers can build their replacements.

In some sense AI is politicians and big bosses trying to build a replacement for engineers, using means available to these people.

Maybe they noticed, got pissed and are trying to enact revenge. Sort of a domain area war.

So... Just another Tuesday for consulting then?

AI in general is a shitty term. It's mostly PR. The Term "Intelligence" is very fuzzy and difficult to define - especially for people who are not in the field of machine learning.

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/chatgpt-gets-new-o1-model-first-to-have-reasoning-for-hard-problems/

LLMs keep getting better at imitating humans thus for those who don't know how the technology works, it'll seem just like it thinks for itself.

Errors from your links like this :
Unable to load conversation 670a...6ed2c

I wouldn't doubt that LLMs got some special input to deal with the specific examples of this paper, or similar enough.

Water isn’t wet, water wets things, and watered things are wet by the wet but the water ain’t wet as it simply causes wet and thus water isn’t truly wet as water is pure water and pure water isn’t wet and water is not wet and water isn’t wet it’s not wet it’s not wet it’s not dry it’s not wet and it’s not wet it is wet it’s wet and you can see it is wet but it doesn’t look like it it’s dry it’s just wet and it’s wet so I just need it and it’s wet it’s not like it’s dry it’s wet it’s wet so it’s not dry but it’s wet it’s not wet so it’s wet it’s not dry and it’s not dry it’s wet and I just want you know how it was just to be careful that I just don’t know what to say I don’t know what you can tell him I just don’t

i like your comment here, just one reflection :

Thinking is relational, it requires an internal self awareness.

i think it's like the chicken and the egg : they both come together ... one could try to argue that self-awareness comes from thinking in the fashion of : "i think so i am"