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.
These people vote. These people think billionaires are their friends and will save them. Gods help us.
I’m of the opinion that most people aren’t dumb, but rather most don’t put in the requisite intellectual effort to actually reach accurate or precise or nuanced positions and opinions. Like they have the capacity to do so! They’re humans after all, and us humans can be pretty smart. But a brain accustomed to simply taking the path of least resistance is gonna continue to do so until it is forced(hopefully through their own action) to actually do something harder.
Put succinctly: They can think, yet they don’t.
Then the question is: what is being smart or dumb? If acting dumb in 90% of life while having the capability of being smart isn’t “being dumb” then what is?
If someone who has the capability of being 50/100 intelligent and is always acting 50/100, I would argue they are smarter than someone capable of 80/100 intelligence but acts 20/100 intelligence for 90% of their life.
Broadly speaking, I’d classify “being dumb” as being incurious, uncritical, and unskeptical as a general rule. Put another way: intellectual laziness - more specifically, insisting on intellectual laziness, and particularly, being proud of it.
A person with a lower than normal IQ can be curious, and a person with a higher than normal IQ can be incurious. It’s not so much about raw intelligence as it is about the mindset one holds around knowledge itself, and the eagerness (or lack thereof) with which a person seeks to find the fundamental truth on topics that they’re presented with.
Basically, although base intelligence/smartness perhaps has two parameters that make it? Effort and speed. Everyone can put in a bit more effort, but base speed may be baked in, unless one trains it, and max reachable base speed will depend from person to person. Hell if I know, we haven’t really created a definitive definition for intelligence yet.
Edit Addendum: As for what can be considered dumb or smart? I agree, lack of effort can be considered “dumb”. Though the word dumb is a bit broad. I guess we can say many people are, out of habit, “intellectually heedless”
For generations many relied on the nightly news to keep them informed. It was always a bad idea. Though the local media wasn’t as bad as it is today. Today for many of these people, propaganda outlets like Sinclair own their local media. And demand fawning of trump/demonizing Democrats. Even if they avoid all media. Their beliefs are formed from those around them that don’t.
I was about to remark how this data backs up the events we’ve been watching unfold in America recently
The average person doesn’t know what a median is.
Take it up with George Carlin’s ghost 😉
This is why i don’t believe in democracy. Humans are too easy to manipulate into voting against their interests.
Even the “intelligent” ones.
What’s your preferred system?