this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Half of LLM users (49%) think the models they use are smarter than they are, including 26% who think their LLMs are “a lot smarter.” Another 18% think LLMs are as smart as they are. Here are some of the other attributes they see:

  • Confident: 57% say the main LLM they use seems to act in a confident way.
  • Reasoning: 39% say the main LLM they use shows the capacity to think and reason at least some of the time.
  • Sense of humor: 32% say their main LLM seems to have a sense of humor.
  • Morals: 25% say their main model acts like it makes moral judgments about right and wrong at least sometimes. Sarcasm: 17% say their prime LLM seems to respond sarcastically.
  • Sad: 11% say the main model they use seems to express sadness, while 24% say that model also expresses hope.
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[–] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

What a very unfortunate name for a university.

[–] MrAlternateTape@lemm.ee 19 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

That is the problem with US adults. Half of them probably is dumber than AI.....

[–] Flocklesscrow@lemm.ee 14 points 10 hours ago

The grammatical error here is chef's kiss.

[–] interested_party@lemmy.org 2 points 7 hours ago

It's probably true too.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 15 points 12 hours ago

That's called a self-proving statement.

[–] tad_lispy@lemm.ee 16 points 12 hours ago

If we are talking about American adults, I guess they might be right.

[–] Grizzlyboy@lemm.ee 36 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

It’s like asking if you think a calculator is smarter than you.

[–] Dayroom7485@lemmy.world 19 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

„It‘s totally a lot smarter than I am, no way could I deliver (234 * 534)^21 as confidently!“

[–] stochastic_parrot@sh.itjust.works 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Are you suggesting my 90's calculator is smarter than LLM's?

[–] Dayroom7485@lemmy.world 10 points 14 hours ago

Hard to compete with that 90s confidence 😎

[–] Naevermix@lemmy.world 14 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Hallucination comes off as confidence. Very human like behavior tbh.

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[–] DarrinBrunner@lemmy.world 3 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Intelligence and knowledge are two different things. Or, rather, the difference between smart and stupid people is how they interpret the knowledge they acquire. Both can acquire knowledge, but stupid people come to wrong conclusions by misinterpreting the knowledge. Like LLMs, 40% of the time, apparently.

[–] ZephyrXero@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

My new mental model for LLMs is that they're like genius 4 year olds. They have huge amounts of information, and yet have little to no wisdom as to what to do with it or how to interpret it.

[–] JackFrostNCola@lemmy.world 32 points 16 hours ago

"Half of LLM users " beleive this. Which is not to say that people who understand how flawed LLMs are, or what their actual function is, do not use LLMs and therefore arent i cluded in this statistic?
This is kinda like saying '60% of people who pay for their daily horoscope beleive it is an accurate prediction'.

[–] cmhe@lemmy.world 1 points 7 hours ago

I suppose some of that comes down to the personal understanding of what "smart" is.

I guess you could call some person, that doesn't understand a topic, but still manages to sound reasonable when talking about it, and might even convince people that they actually have a deep understanding of that topic, "smart", in a kind of "smart imposter".

[–] jh29a@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 13 hours ago

Do the other half believe it is dumber than it actually is?

[–] Retropunk64@lemmy.world 0 points 6 hours ago (1 children)
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[–] blady_blah@lemmy.world 14 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

You say this like this is wrong.

Think of a question that you would ask an average person and then think of what the LLM would respond with. The vast majority of the time the llm would be more correct than most people.

[–] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 8 points 13 hours ago (5 children)

Memory isn't intelligence.

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[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

A good example is the post on here about tax brackets. Far more Republicans didn't know how tax brackets worked than Democrats. But every mainstream language model would have gotten the answer right.

[–] smeenz@lemmy.nz 6 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

I bet the LLMs also know who pays tarrifs

[–] Akuchimoya@startrek.website 26 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (3 children)

I had to tell a bunch of librarians that LLMs are literally language models made to mimic language patterns, and are not made to be factually correct. They understood it when I put it that way, but librarians are supposed to be "information professionals". If they, as a slightly better trained subset of the general public, don't know that, the general public has no hope of knowing that.

[–] Arkouda@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 hours ago

Librarians went to school to learn how to keep order in a library. That does not inherently make them have more information in their heads than the average person, especially regarding things that aren't books and book organization.

[–] WagyuSneakers@lemm.ee 23 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It's so weird watching the masses ignore industry experts and jump on weird media hype trains. This must be how doctors felt in Covid.

[–] Llewellyn@lemm.ee 4 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

It's so weird watching the masses ignore industry experts and jump on weird media hype trains.

Is it though?

[–] WagyuSneakers@lemm.ee 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I'm the expert in this situation and I'm getting tired explaining to Jr Engineers and laymen that it is a media hype train.

I worked on ML projects before they got rebranded as AI. I get to sit in the room when these discussion happen with architects and actual leaders. This is Hype. Anyone who tells you other wise is lying or selling you something.

[–] BlushedPotatoPlayers@sopuli.xyz 0 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I see how that is a hype train, and I also work with machine learning (though I'm far from an expert), but I'm not convinced these things are not getting intelligent. I know what their problems are, but I'm not sure whether the human brain works the same way, just (yet) more effective.

That is, we have visual information, and some evolutionary BIOS, while LLMs have to read the whole internet and use a power plant to function - but what if our brains are just the same bullshit generators, we are just unaware of it?

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[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 50 points 22 hours ago

“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” ― George Carlin

[–] notsoshaihulud@lemmy.world 38 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I'm 100% certain that LLMs are smarter than half of Americans. What I'm not so sure about is that the people with the insight to admit being dumber than an LLM are the ones who really are.

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[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 13 points 19 hours ago

They're right

[–] MITM0@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago

Why are you even surprised at this point, when it comes to Americans ?

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