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.
  • @Telorand@reddthat.com
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    11721 days ago

    Think of a person with the most average intelligence and realize that 50% of people are dumber than that.

    These people vote. These people think billionaires are their friends and will save them. Gods help us.

    • @9point6@lemmy.world
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      1921 days ago

      I was about to remark how this data backs up the events we’ve been watching unfold in America recently

    • @Mac@mander.xyz
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      121 days ago

      This is why i don’t believe in democracy. Humans are too easy to manipulate into voting against their interests.
      Even the “intelligent” ones.

  • Owl
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    10521 days ago

    looking at americas voting results, theyre probably right

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍
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    5821 days ago

    Reminds me of that George Carlin joke: Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

    So half of people are dumb enough to think autocomplete with a PR team is smarter than they are… or they’re dumb enough to be correct.

  • Singletona082
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    3421 days ago

    Am American.

    …this is not the flex that the article writer seems to think it is.

  • @Arkouda@lemmy.ca
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    2821 days ago

    “Nearly half” of US citizens are right, because about 75% of the US population is functionally or clinically illiterate.

    • bizarroland
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      921 days ago

      I think the specific is that 40% of adult Americans can’t read at a seventh grade level.

      Probably because they stopped teaching etymology in schools, So now many Americans do not know how to break a word down into its subjugate parts.

        • @deur@feddit.nl
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          821 days ago

          Yes, English is absolutely full of words that can be deciphered from their roots.

          • @Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works
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            521 days ago

            I’d be curious, it seems more common in Latin based languages, whereas English seems to be a lot more… Free form?

            • bizarroland
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              1021 days ago

              There is an etymology word joke that says something along the lines of, “if “pro” is the opposite of “con”, then is the opposite of “congress” “progress”?”

              And if you don’t know etymology, then that seems to make sense.

              When you break down the word Congress, you get the prefix con and the root word gress, con means with, and gress means step, so it means to step with or to walk with.

              The opposite of walking with someone is to walk apart from someone, so, the actual opposite of congress would be digress, and the opposite of progress would be regress.

              Etymology is great at ruining jokes, but it’s also great at helping you understand what words mean and why they mean them.

                • bizarroland
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                  121 days ago

                  The word trans means across, or on the other side, and gress once again would mean step, so to transgress is basically to cross the line, right?

                  I did a quick search, but there isn’t really a word to describe the people that don’t cross the line.

                  The opposite of the prefix trans is the prefix cis, which means “on the same side”

            • skulblaka
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              421 days ago

              English is a mish-mash hodgepodge of two dozen other languages, many (most?) of which are Romantic/Latin-based.

  • Th4tGuyII
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    2621 days ago

    LLMs are made to mimic how we speak, and some can even pass the Turing test, so I’m not surprised that people who don’t know better think of these LLMs as conscious in some way or another.

    It’s not a necessarily a fault on those people, it’s a fault on how LLMs are purposefully misadvertised to the masses

  • @fubarx@lemmy.world
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    2421 days ago

    “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin

  • @notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world
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    2121 days ago

    I’m 100% certain that LLMs are smarter than half of Americans. What I’m not so sure about is that the people with the insight to admit being dumber than an LLM are the ones who really are.

  • Comtief
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    1021 days ago

    LLMs are smart in the way someone is smart who has read all the books and knows all of them but has never left the house. Basically all theory and no street smarts.

      • Comtief
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        121 days ago

        Well yes, they are glorified text autocomplete, but they still have their uses which could be considered “smart”. For example I was struggling with a programming thing today and an LLM helped me out, so in a way it is smarter than me in that specific thing. I think it’s less that they are dumb and more that they have no agency whatsoever, they have to be pushed into the direction you want. Pretty annoying…

  • I wouldn’t be surprised if that is true outside the US as well. People that actually (have to) work with the stuff usually quickly learn, that its only good at a few things, but if you just hear about it in the (pop-, non-techie-)media (including YT and such), you might be deceived into thinking Skynet is just a few years away.

    • Singletona082
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      221 days ago

      It’s a one trick pony.

      That trick also happens to be a really neat trick that can make people think it’s a swiss army knife instead of a shovel.

  • @kipo@lemm.ee
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    21 days ago

    No one has asked so I am going to ask:

    What is Elon University and why should I trust them?

    • @Patch@feddit.uk
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      1021 days ago

      Ironic coincidence of the name aside, it appears to be a legit bricks and mortar university in a town called Elon, North Carolina.

  • dindonmasker
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    921 days ago

    I don’t think a single human who knows as much as chatgpt does exists. Does that mean chatgpt is smarter then everyone? No. Obviously not based on what we’ve seen so far. But the amount of information available to these LLMs is incredible and can be very useful. Like a library contains a lot of useful information but isn’t intelligent itself.

    • @kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      321 days ago

      That’s pretty weak reasoning, by your own words, it isn’t intellignt, it doesnt know anything.

      By that logic wikipedia is also smarter than any human because it has lot of knowledge.