“They don’t actually reason at all” honestly sounds like human level intelligence to me. https://t.co/FtRVfw47TG
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 8, 2025
For once I agree with Yglesias. And yes, I read the whole paper.
This is a big nothing. The highest-quality LLMs are now smarter than most humans. But so what? Progress is not made by the lumpen masses and neither it will be by LLMs who are near that level of mundanity. The gap between someone like Bill Atkinson or Nancy Cartwright and some regular clown is nearly as vast as the gulf between a slime mold and Goofus Tardbiscuit III (i.e., most people).
All most people have — probably 99.999% of humanity — is the illusion of thinking, the same as LLMs. The thoughtuful few are those who make any progress, who lift the rest of everyone up out of the muck.
LLMs are still in the muck. I don’t know their future but that’s where they are now. And so is nearly every human.