Horseless intelligence | Ned Batchelder

I’m not sure we have a consensus understanding of what “think” means in this context. Airplanes don’t fly in the same way that birds do. Automobiles don’t run in the same way that horses do. The important thing is that they accomplish many of the same tasks.

OK, so AI doesn’t think the same way that people do. I’m fine with that. What’s important to me is that it can do some work for me, work that could also be done by people thinking. Cars (“horseless carriages”) do work that used to be done by horses running. No one now complains that cars work differently than horses.

If “just predict the next word” is an accurate description of what LLMs are doing, it’s a demonstration of how surprisingly powerful predicting the next word can be.
— Read on nedbatchelder.com/blog/202503/horseless_intelligence.html