> This results in the somewhat unintuitive combination of a technology that can be very useful and impressive, while simultaneously being fundamentally unsatisfying and disappointing
Useful = great. We've made incredible progress in the past 3-5 years.
The people who are disappointed have their standards and expectations set at "science fiction".
I think many people are now learning that their definition of intelligence was actually not very precise.
From what I've seen, in response to that, goalposts are then often moved in the way that requires least updating of somebody's political, societal, metaphysical etc. worldview. (This also includes updates in favor of "this will definitely achieve AGI soon", fwiw.)
The goal posts were never set at the "Turing test"
It's not a real thing. You do not remember the goal posts ever being there.
Turing put forth a thought experiment in the early days of some discussions about "artificial" thinking machines on a very philisophical level.
Add to that, nobody who claims to have "passed" the turing test has ever done an actual example of that thought experiment, which is about taking two respondents and finding out which is human. It is NOT talking to a single respondent and deciding whether they are an LLM or not.
It also has never been considered a valid "test" of "intelligence" as it was obvious from the very very beginning that tricking a person wasn't really meaningful, as most people can be tricked by even simple systems.
ELIZA was the end of any thought around "The turing test", as it was able to "trick" tons of people and show how useless the turing thought experience was. Anyone who claims ELIZA is intelligent would be very silly.
Or the people who are disappointed were listening to the AI hype men like Sam Altman, who have, in fact, been promising AGI or something very like it for years now.
I don't think it's fair to deride people who are disappointed in LLMs for not being AGI when many very prominent proponents have been claiming they are or soon will be exactly that.
This was the solid book to get into data science and ML scene. Covers everything. Jake is a fantastic teacher. I really wish he comes up with updated second edition.
Useful = great. We've made incredible progress in the past 3-5 years.
The people who are disappointed have their standards and expectations set at "science fiction".
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