[greg_V]

> Another thing that I hear from time to time is an argument along the line of "it just predicts the next word, it doesn't actually understand it". Rather than an argument against AI being intelligent, isn't this also telling us what "understanding" is? Before we all had computers, how did people judge whether another person understood something? Well, they would ask the person something and the person would respond. One word at a time. If the words were satisfactory, the interviewer would conclude that you understood the topic and call you Doctor.

You call a Doctor 'Doctor' because they're wearing a white coat and are sitting in a doctor's office. The words they say might make vague sense to you, but since you are not a medical professional, you actually have no empirical grounds to judge whether or not they're bullshitting you, hence you have the option to get a second or third opinion. But otherwise, you're just trusting the process that produces doctors, which involves earlier generations of doctors asking this fellow a series of questions with the ability to discern right from wrong, and grading them accordingly.

When someone can't tell if something just sounds about right or is in fact bullshit, they're called a layman in the field at best or gullible at worst. And it's telling that the most hype around AI is to be found in middle management, where bullshit is the coin of the realm.

[lordnacho]

Hmm, I was actually thinking of a viva situation. You sit with a panel of experts, they talk to you, they decide whether you passed your PhD in philosophy/history/physics/etc.

That process is done purely by language, but we supposed that inside you there is something deeper than a token prediction machine.