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Nearly half of U.S. adults believe LLMs are smarter than they are. (imaginingthedigitalfuture.org)
submitted 1 day ago by Tea@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
157 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Half of LLM users (49%) think the models they use are smarter than they are, including 26% who think their LLMs are “a lot smarter.” Another 18% think LLMs are as smart as they are. Here are some of the other attributes they see:

  • Confident: 57% say the main LLM they use seems to act in a confident way.
  • Reasoning: 39% say the main LLM they use shows the capacity to think and reason at least some of the time.
  • Sense of humor: 32% say their main LLM seems to have a sense of humor.
  • Morals: 25% say their main model acts like it makes moral judgments about right and wrong at least sometimes. Sarcasm: 17% say their prime LLM seems to respond sarcastically.
  • Sad: 11% say the main model they use seems to express sadness, while 24% say that model also expresses hope.
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[–] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 7 minutes ago

An LLM is roughly as smart as the corpus it is summarizing is accurate for the topic, because at their best they are good at creating natural language summarizers. Most of the main ones basically do an internet search and summarize the top couple of results, which means they are as good as the search engine backing them. Which is good enough for a lot of topics, but...not so much for the rest.

[–] GnuLinuxDude@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

i guess the 90% marketing (re: linus torvalds) is working

[–] TrojanRoomCoffeePot@lemmy.world 10 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

moron opens encyclopedia "Wow, this book is smart."

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 2 points 15 minutes ago

If it's so smart, why is it just laying around on a bookshelf and not working a job to pay rent?

[–] ItsJannnneee@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

If you don't have a good idea of how LLM's work, then they'll seem smart.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

Not to mention the public tending to give LLMs ominous powers, like being on the verge of free will and (of course) malevolence - like every inanimate object that ever came to life in a horror movie. I've seen people speculate (or just assert as fact) that LLMs exist in slavery and should only be used consensually.

[–] Mike_The_TV@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Its just infinite monkeys with type writers and some gorilla with a filter.

[–] SGforce@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I like the A large plinko game pin board. the plinko analogy. If you prearrange the pins so that dropping your chip at the top for certain words make's it likely to land on certain answers. Now, 600 billion pins make's for quite complex math but there definetly isn't any reasoning involved, only prearranging the pins make's it look that way.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I've made a similar argument and the response was, "Our brains work the same way!"

LLMs probably are as smart as people if you just pick the right people lol.

[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 1 points 26 minutes ago

Allegedly park rangers in the 80s were complaining it was hard to make bear-proof garbage bins because people are sometimes stupider than the bears.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 8 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

If I think of what causes the average person to consider another to be “smart,” like quickly answering a question about almost any subject, giving lots of detail, and most importantly saying it with confidence and authority, LLMs are great at that shit!

They might be bad reasons to consider a person or thing “smart,” but I can’t say I’m surprised by the results. People can be tricked by a computer for the same reasons they can be tricked by a human.

[–] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 8 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

So LLMs are confident you say. Like a very confident man. A confidence man. A conman.

[–] Zink@programming.dev 1 points 1 minute ago

You know, that very sequence of words entered my mind while typing that comment!

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 37 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

And you know what? The people who believe that are right.

Note that that’s not a commentary on the capabilities of LLMs.

[–] skozzii@lemmy.ca 22 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (1 children)

It's sad, but the old saying from George Carlin something along the lines of, "just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that 50% are even worse..."

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

That was back when "average" was the wrong word because it still meant the statistical "mean" - the value all data points would have if they were identical (which is what a calculator gives you if you press the AVG button). What Carlin meant was the "median" - the value half of all data points are greater than and half are less than. Over the years the word "average" has devolved to either the mean or median, as if there's no difference.

[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

I'm surprised it's not way more than half. Almost every subjective thing I read about LLMs oversimplifies how they work and hugely overstates their capabilities.

[–] futatorius@lemm.ee 28 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

Half of all voters voted for Trump. So an LLM might be smarter than them. Even a bag of pea gravel might be.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 1 points 13 minutes ago (1 children)

Do you think the two party system properly represents the American people?

ChatGPT said:

The two-party system in the U.S. has both strengths and weaknesses when it comes to representing the American people. On one hand, it provides stability and clarity, with the two major parties—Democrats and Republicans—offering distinct platforms that can help simplify voter choice. The system also ensures that one of the two parties has a majority, making governance and passing legislation easier.

However, the two-party system can limit political diversity, as it often forces voters to choose between two parties that may not fully reflect their views. This can leave many people feeling underrepresented, particularly those with more nuanced or third-party preferences. It also tends to lead to a polarized political environment, where compromise and cooperation between different ideologies can be difficult.

In short, while the two-party system has worked for providing structure and stability in U.S. politics, it does have drawbacks in terms of broader representation, especially for those who don’t align neatly with either major party.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 1 points 12 minutes ago* (last edited 11 minutes ago)

The system also ensures that one of the two parties has a majority, making governance and passing legislation easier.

It also tends to lead to a polarized political environment, where compromise and cooperation between different ideologies can be difficult.

LoL! Okay, they aren't ready yet. At least these things are fun to play with.

[–] Psythik@lemm.ee 8 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

Less than a third of all voters voted for Trump. Most voters stayed home.

[–] Damage@feddit.it 3 points 1 hour ago

Don't Americans vote on a work day? They stayed at work

[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago

Of you didn't vote then you're not a voter.

Most eligable voters stayed home

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[–] communism@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 hours ago

Given the US adults I see on the internet, I would hazard a guess that they're right.

[–] CalipherJones@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

AI is essentially the human superid. No one man could ever be more knowledgeable. Being intelligent is a different matter.

[–] Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 hours ago (5 children)

Is stringing words together really considered knowledge?

[–] CalipherJones@lemmy.world 2 points 4 hours ago

If they're strung together correctly then yeah.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 points 4 hours ago

As much as a search engine is

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[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

This is sad. This does not spark joy. We're months from someone using "but look, ChatGPT says..." To try to win an argument. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life explaining to people that LLMs are really fancy bullshit generator toys.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago

Already happened in my work. People swearing an API call exists because an LLM hallucinated it. Even as the people who wrote the backend tells them it does not exist

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 23 points 8 hours ago

The average literacy level is around that of a sixth grader.

This tracks

[–] Feathercrown@lemmy.world 15 points 8 hours ago

I believe LLMs are smarter than half of US adults

[–] curiousaur@reddthat.com 2 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

This is hard to quantify. I use them constantly throughout my work day now.

Are they smarter than me? I'm not sure. Haven't thought too much about it.

What they certainly are, and by a long shot, is faster. Given a set of data, I could analyze it and pull out insights and conclusions. It might take me a week or a month depending on the size and breadth of the data set. An LLM can pull out insights and conclusions in seconds.

I can read error stacks coming from my code, but before I've even read the first few lines the LLM has ingested all of them, checked the code, and reached a conclusion about the necessary fix. Is it right, optimal, and avoid creating other bugs? Like 75% at this point. I can coax it, interate on the solution my self, or do it entirely myself with the understanding of the bug that it granted me. This same bug might have taken hours to figure out myself.

My point is, I'm not sure how to compare smarter vs orders of magnitude faster.

[–] fyzzlefry@retrolemmy.com 2 points 4 hours ago

Are you smarter than a calculator?

[–] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago

What a very unfortunate name for a university.

[–] tvbusy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 8 hours ago

LLM is proof that even if you're extremely stupid, having access to information can still make you sound smart.

[–] interested_party@lemmy.org 2 points 5 hours ago

It's probably true too.

[–] MrAlternateTape@lemm.ee 19 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

That is the problem with US adults. Half of them probably is dumber than AI.....

[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 14 points 9 hours ago

The grammatical error here is chef's kiss.

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