I was looking at my prompt histories.<p>I think a lot of hand-wringing about AI (/ LLMs) could be mitigated if one were to call it what it really is (so far): a really good summarization and research tool. Not artificial intelligence per se.<p>Or at least that's what I'm calling it from now on. In my mind. To reduce the guilt induced by the hand-wringers.<p>Discuss.
There is a matter of perspective.<p>Abstract intrigues symbolized, iconified, codified, correlated.<p>Am I describing what you are doing or what the LLM is doing?<p>LLM is an “intelligent” tool, generated from “intelligence” as both information and design by intelligent others.<p>Are you intelligent for using it?<p>Are you intelligent for relying upon it?<p>Does it reduce your uncertainty? Empower your capacity for resolve?<p>As far as “intelligence” is concerned you are referring to a process and an applicable actor of that process. You are not for instance referring to a natural language search card catalog.
I view it as a sophisticated retrieval tool performing lookups in history's largest encyclopedia and returns the information nicely collated.<p>It has no independent 'understanding' of the information it retrieved. LLM's are incapable of thinking of something new... of something that has never existed or been imagined before (eg something not known or implied in its data).
It seems to me that to be able to usefully summarize natural language is a clear sign of intellect. It is how we test natural students after all. Describing it with another phrase doesn't change that.