Member-only story
No, I’m Not Joining “Team Human”.
So there’s yet another anti-artificial-super-intelligence movement around. This engenders a weariness I cannot put into words, because now I have to talk about Why Claude Can’t Skynet again.
I get it. I do. The idea of corporations bringing a super-intelligent AI into existence is the stuff of sci-fi dystopias. If I was putting together a story about such a creation, I’d immediately get stuck on which horrible outcome would make for the scariest narrative.
That’s just it, though. It’s the stuff of fiction. We’re nowhere near super-intelligence. We’re not even near regular intelligence. I’m not well-enough versed in either computing or cognitive science to say with any certainty that artificial intelligence is impossible, but I absolutely am well-versed enough to say that LLMs are not intelligent. They will never be sapient, never be sentient, and will never, ever be super-intelligent.
You can dispute this, if you want. You can claim that consciousness and intelligence aren’t fully understood, and I can respond that LLMs being intelligent doesn’t follow from that assertion. You can talk about emergent consciousness, and I can point out that the rocks beneath us are riddled with microbial life, so maybe we should worry about them waking up too? You can claim that you have rich and meaningful conversations with ChatGPT, and I can point…
