Chess, Chatbots And Intelligence: I Make A Big Claim!

[towforce]

A total of nine "I, me, myself and I" in the starting post plus the title, takes it right through the limit for narcissism index and indicate it's not really about chess or chatbots but the OP. KIndergarden for flagrant insertion of self, since you ask.

I am not a narcissist (note: in order to say that, I used the word "I": I could, of course, have used the expression "the author of this post" in order to avoid totting up points on your N word index).

The model presented for the ongoing progress of chatbots based on what happened in computer chess is worthy of discussion, but it is obviously not hard science: they are the thoughts of the author, so it shouldn't be surprising that it contains references to that person.

[towforce]

Is there any intelligence in chatbots at all? I thought these are just search machines that efficiently find existing solutions or answers on the internet

Not even that. What they actually are is stochastic parrots. They just predict, depending on the context as captured in large NNs, what next word would probably follow after this word without understanding anything or verifying it. That's also why they "hallucinate". They mimic the form while not having any understanding of the content. There is no "intelligence" in this so-called "AI".

1. Roughly speaking (there may be the odd exception in the animal kingdom), the only known entity that builds and uses sophisticated mental models for understanding is the human brain: in general, non-human animals act without thinking things through using language. By your definition, anything that doesn't behave like a human brain is not intelligent: it's just a Chinese Room: in a Chinese Room, you don't speak any Chinese - but questions in Chinese are shoved under the door: you go through your reference materials, find the correct answer, and pass that back under the door. You've correctly answered the question, but you don't have the slightest idea what was asked, and what you answered - link.

2. LLMs actually do generate models of the world - link. If you visit social media discussions about chatbots, you'll see that older people tend to be strongly vocal in their dislike of them for what are very clearly emotional reasons: are you in this category?

3. Using the same link as used in point (2) above, you'll also notice that in general, when some behaviour that looks intelligent was actually generated by a reasoning shortcut, humans are very willing to give the process behind the behaviour the benefit of the doubt and hence to label that behaviour as intelligent (I can give you personal examples if you wish). It's close to 100% certain that at times in your life you have marvelled at some "intelligent" behaviour that was actually generated by a reasoning shortcut.

[towforce]

While there are obviously big differences between chatbots and chess engines, going forward from where we are now, the similarities might increase: it turns out that building a data tree greatly enhances a chatbot's intelligence - and, at heart, a chess engine's game tree is a data tree. This makes it even more appropriate for people who have experienced the progress of chess engines to use this experience to intelligently speculate how chatbots will progress.

Here's where these similarities were discussed in the Gemini thread - link.

[towforce]

Another similarity between chess engines and chatbots: there are now league tables of how intelligent chatbots are (though your probably shouldn't choose which chatbot to use just on this basis right now: some people who use them a lot advocate using several of them, since different chatbots are strong in different areas in which you might want help):

https://lmarena.ai/ (accept conditions, then select the "Leaderboard" tab, then scroll down).

Edit: the above league table seems to be based on user preference rather than intelligence - so not quite SSDF.

[towforce]

...That's also why they "hallucinate".

1. Hallucination is still there - but it is improving as the chatbots become more intelligent.

2. Humans hallucinate as well: they often misunderstand things.

3. Hallucination can be seen as a metric by which chatbots can be measured - in the same way that blunders can in chess engines.