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Mimicry and Understanding: Debating AI’s Language Capabilities
In the dynamic field of artificial intelligence (AI), it’s often challenging to separate the actual capabilities of the technology from future projections or wishful thinking. An important question at the center of this debate is: if an AI system can mimic human language understanding convincingly enough to surpass the average human, can we assert that it is superior to humans in its own way, regarding natural language understanding and prediction?
This question forms the basis of the ongoing dialogue about Large Language Models (LLMs). Advocates for these models suggest that LLMs comprehend language “better than most humans”, attributing this mainly to their sophisticated mimicry abilities.
The current state of the employment sector contradicts the belief that LLMs would make human involvement in non-technical desk jobs obsolete. Despite the widespread predictions about significant job displacement due to AI, there’s no significant shift in the job market to back up these claims.
AI has indeed demonstrated remarkable capability in specific tasks. From interpreting explicit written instructions to crafting contextually appropriate responses, AI systems, including LLMs, have shown substantial progress. It’s important to bear in mind, however, that these accomplishments are primarily due…
