But it's not simulated intelligence. It's literally just word association on steroids. There are no thoughts it brings to the table, just words that mathematically fit following the prompts.
this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Where do you draw the line for intelligence? Why would the capacity to auto complete tokens based on learned probabilities not qualify as intelligence?
This capacity may be part of human intelligence too.
Part of, but it's not the higher functions nor is it logic. It's a tiny, tiny fraction of what makes a human.
This.
I have taught highschool teens about AI between 2018 and 2020.
The issue is we are somewhere between getting better at gambling (statistics, Markov chains, etc.) and human brain simulation (deep neural networks, genetic algorithms).
For many people it's important how we frame it. Is it random word generator with a good hit rate or is it a very stupid child?
Of course the brain is more advanced - it has way more neurons than an AI model has nodes, it works faster and we have years of "training data". Also, we can use specific parts of our brains to think, and some things are so innate we don't even have to think about it, we call them reflexes and they bypass the normal thinking process.
BUT: we're at the stage where we could technically emulate chunks of a human brain through AI models however primitive they are currently. And in it's basic function, brains are not really much more advanced than what our AI models already do. Although we do have a specific part for our brain just for languages, which means we get a little cheat code for writing text in comparison to AI, and similar other parts for creative tasks and so on.
So where do you draw the line? Do you need all different parts of a brain perfectly emulated to satisfy the definition of intelligence? Is artificial intelligence a word awarded to less intelligent models or constructs, or is it just as intelligent as human intelligence?
Imo AI sufficiently passes the vibe check on intelligence. Sure it's not nearly on the scale of a human brain and is missing it's biological arrangements and some clever evolutionary tricks, but it's similar enough.
However, I think that's neither scary nor awesome. It's just a different potential tool that should help everyone of us. Every time big new discoveries shape our understanding of the world and become a core part of our lives, there's so much drama. But it's just a bigger change, nothing more nothing less. A pile of new laws, some cultural shifts and some upgrades for our everyday life. It's neither heaven nor hell, just the same chunk of rock floating in space soup for another century.
I dunno, the power requirements would seem to be an ecological catastrophe in the making, except it's already happening.
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when it can come up with a solution it hasn't seen before.
that's the threshold.
that's the threshold for creative problem solving, which isn't all there is to intelligence, but i think it's fair to say it's the most crucial part for a machine intelligence.
It can come up with a brand new sentence that hasn't been written before. Does that count?
Maybe you mean a solution to a textbook math/physics problem, it most likely would be able to solve that too with tool use.
Or maybe you mean solving something like the Riemann Hypothesis?
no, none of those are what i mean, that's way too specific to be useful.
a system exhibits intelligence when it can use existing insights to build entirely new insights.
a popular example is that no current "AI" can extrapolate from basic mathematical stipulations to more advanced ones.
(there's tons of example you could put here, but this is the one i like)
here's the example:
teach an LLM/DNN/etc. basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
give it some arbitrary, but large, number of problems to solve.
it will eventually encounter a division that isn't possible, but is not a divide-by-zero (which should be covered by the rules it was given).
then it will either:
- throw an error
- have an aneurysm
- admit it can't do that (proving the point)
- or lie through it's teeth, giving wrong answers (also proving the point)
...but what it will definitely NEVER do, is simply create a placeholder for that operation and give it a name: square root (or whatever ot calls it, that part isn't important).
it simply can't, because that would be a new insight, and that's something these systems aren't capable of.
a human (or a lot of them) would encounter these impossible divisions and eventually see a pattern in them and draw the proper conclusion: that this is a new bit of math that was just discovered! with new rules, and new applications!
even if it takes a hundred years and scores of them, humans will always, eventually, figure it out.
...but what we currently call "artificial intelligence" will simply never understand that. the machine won't do that, no matter how many machines you throw at the problem.
because it's not a matter of quantity, but of quality.
and that qualitative difference is intelligence!
(note: solving this particular math problem is a first step. it's unlikely that it will immediately lead to an AGI, but it is an excellent proof-of-concept)
this is also why LLMs aren't really getting any better; it's a structural problem that can't be solved with bigger data sets.
it's a fundamental design flaw we haven't yet solved.
current "AI"s are probably a part of the solution, but they are, definitely, not THE solution.
we've come closer to an AI, but we're not there.
It's not just statistics. To produce a somewhat coherent sentence in English you need a model of the English language AND a world model.
If you ask a question like "an apple is on a glass, what happens if I remove the glass", the correct answer ("the apple will fall") is not a statistical property of the English language, but an emergent property of the world model.
I mean to friends and family – people who have accepted it as smart.
I don’t know about you, but when I try to explain the concept of LLMs to people not in the tech field, their eyes glaze over. I’ve gotten several family members into VR, though. It’s an easier concept to understand.
words that mathematically fit following the prompts
if only we had a word for applying math to data to give the appearance of a complex process we don't really understand.
A simulation doesn't have to be the actual thing. It implies it literally isn't the true thing, which is kind of what you're saying.
Simulated Intelligence is certainly more accurate and honest than Artificial Intelligence. If you have a better term, what is it?
No, it's not simulating the intelligence part. It's a mimicry at best that idiots anthropomorphise and misunderstand as a simulation.
Mimicry is what simulation is.
Definition 3a from Merriam-Webster: the imitative representation of the functioning of one system or process by means of the functioning of another a computer simulation of an industrial process
Immitation and simulation are not the same thing as they're being used in this discussion. You're literally arguing semantics to try and win, which means you have no logical point on which to stand.
I'm not trying to "win" anything, don't try to dismiss me because you perceive you're "losing" and you don't understand word definitions.
Do you even know what semantics is? Do you want me to give you the definition of that, too? If you're going to use it as a pejorative, you better learn the meaning of the word.
I'm telling you what the definition of simulation is so you understand why some of us are saying why Simulated Intelligence is the correct term, literally, since you seem focused on the literal. You're the one who started arguing semantics (in your first comment), but got it wrong, by implying a simulation had to be the actual thing ("literally") . Then I showed you that the definition of simulation is that it is an imitation, not the actual thing and you say I'm arguing "semantics". Well yeah, that's what we're doing here, we're both arguing the semantics of what it means to be Simulated Intelligence. If that's not what you're doing, then why did you comment at all?
The whole point of creating a simulation is that it doesn't take the same amount of work as the actual thing, but it can - and it doesn't have to be perfect - make you think it is the real thing. If it was perfect, then you're done, you don't have to make the real thing, and it's no longer a simulation.
A flight simulator doesn't actually fly. If it did, it would be an airplane.
Simulated Intelligence doesn't actually have to be intelligent. If it was, it would be (Artificial) Intelligence.
You can say what we have is a bad simulation, but it's still a simulation, and it's a much better simulation than it is real intelligence. So Simulated Intelligence is the correct term.
Professor Hotpants' Astounding Rhetorical Thingamajig
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Why? We already have a specific subcategory for it: Large Language Model. Artificial Intelligence and Artificial General Intelligence aren’t synonymous. Just because LLMs aren’t generally intelligent doesn’t mean they’re not AI. That’s like saying we should stop calling strawberries “plants” and start calling them “fake candy” instead. Call them whatever you want, they're still plants.
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The term "Artificial Intelligence" is actually a perfectly cromulent word to be using for stuff like LLMs. This is one of those rare situations where a technical term of art is being used in pop culture in the correct way.
The term "Artificial Intelligence" is an umbrella term for a wide range of algorithms and techniques that has been in use by the scientific and engineering communities for over half a century. The term was brought into use by the Dartmouth workshop in 1956.
A tic tac toe opponent algorithm is also considered Artificial Intelligence. People never had a problem with it.
The biggest issue with AI as it currently exists with LLMs and such as I see it is that there is a pretty big gulf between what AI is today and what the average person has been taught AI is by TV/Movies/Books/Games their entire lives.
And OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, et al are heavily marking the former as if it is the latter.
The big players are marketing the expectations creating by science fiction, not the reality of their products/services.
This is perfect. I'm definitely going to shoehorn this into any discussion that even tangentially applies to SI.
I prefer simulated human intelligence type or SHIT for the people who like acronyms
high five
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I have been referring to LLMs and image generators as "Plagiarism Engines" for some time. Even SI seems too generous.
In Mass Effect, it's VI (Virtual Intelligence), while actual AI is banned in the galaxy.
The information kiosk VIs on The Citadel are literally LLMs and explain themselves as such. Unlike AI/AGI they aren't able to plan, make decisions, or self-improve, they're just a simple protocol on a large foundational model. They just algorithmic.
Simulated Intelligence is okay, but virtual implies it mimics intelligence, while simulated implies it is a substitute and actually does intelligence.
AI is a parent category and AGI and LLM are subcategories of it. Just because AGI and LLM couldn't be more different, it doesn't mean they're not AI.
I don't at all agree with this graph, and I think you're sort of missing the point of the original post.
What do you not agree with the graph?
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It's not even simulating intelligence.
I prefer VI (virtual intelligence) from Mass Effect
That solid but I prefer to call it a “synthetic text extruding machine” or better yet call it "a racist pile of linear algebra"
To be fair, 'artificial' literally just means 'made through skill,' in opposition to natural, meaning 'occurs as-is.' I agree with you that there is a better word out there than 'artificial' for these spicy autocorrects.
I believe that OP's point is that "artificial" and "natural" are about how the thing is made. However neither reject that it is actual intelligence. "Simulated" means that it is not that thing. It is like intelligence, and resembles it in some ways, but it isn't intelligence.
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LLMS are fancy autocomplete
It's not even that. It is just a PwaD (Parrot with a Dictionary).
Parrots are way smarter than LLMs.
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