Is AI Truly Intelligent?

🏝 TheTechOasis 🏝

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In AI, learning is winning.

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You will also find this deep-dive in TheWhiteBox ‘Key Future Trends in AI’, for future reference if necessary and to ask me any questions you consider.

Over the last year, I’ve grown tired of all this hyperbole, moonshot takes, and unrealized promises around AI, so I’ve decided it’s time to call bullshit.

After we studied the markets a few weeks ago, we realized that the hype around AI was largely unmet with proper demand, which is confusing considering how smart AI allegedly is.

So, it got me thinking: Is the ‘I’ in ‘AI’ actually real? Is AI actually ‘intelligent’?

To answer, for weeks, I’ve feasted on the opinions of both sides, from the LLM enthusiasts to those who think current AI is everything but ‘intelligent’ and that the entire world is wrong, very wrong.

So, what should you expect? This article will:

Give you a reality check of current state-of-the-art AI so that you don’t take for granted what many do: That AI may not be what it seems; "known knowns” can be deceiving… or a straight lie.

A clear idea of what’s to come in AI to breach the next frontier of intelligence, reasoning, and the most likely form the next generation of models will have based on the latest research.

Finally, we will reflect on the question that could send our markets into the abyss and shatter the hype around AI for years:

What if LLMs aren’t the way to intelligence?

Let’s dive in.

When AI Became a Religion

If you follow the AI industry, you will realize that its fellowship is strongly influenced by faith rather than proof, making it similar to religions.

AI is tremendously inductive, meaning that most of the ‘breakthroughs’ we see in the industry are not discovered by humans, but discovered by AIs.

As researchers stumble upon breakthroughs instead of actively deducing them, all those claims of ‘x or y will lead to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)’ are as good as yours, even when coming from people at the forefront of research.

Bluntly put, while the world—and markets—take these statements from experts as facts, they are, in fact, beliefs.

Nonetheless, when was the last time you heard an undeniable fact from any incumbents? However, you’ve probably grown tired of hearing unsubstantiated claims that ‘AI is already as smart as high schoolers’ or even ‘as smart as undergraduates’ multiple times.

The markets, extremely high on ‘AI cope,’ instantly buy these statements, but what are these based on? What does it mean to be ‘as smart as x’?

This leads to one of humanity's greatest unanswered questions: What is intelligence in a non-esoteric way?

General Statements and an Unknown Known

While I’ve read countless definitions of intelligence, the one that stuck is by far the most intuitive and simple:

Intelligence…

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