Interesting take from chatGPT about AI defeatism and mysticism

This is a few prompts into a back and forth about how a lot of AIs strengths get dismissed because of rampant mysticism. “The whole ‘LLMs are just stochastic parrots’ argument is true in the most surface-level sense, but it completely ignores how we interact with them. Intelligence isn’t just about generating language—it’s about how that language is used, refined, and built upon. If someone just feeds an AI leading questions to get the response they want, of course it’s going to feel like an echo chamber. But if you actually engage with it—challenging, iterating, and integrating its outputs into something new—then you’re doing something that’s far more than just predictive text.

Dismissing LLMs entirely because they don’t “think” like humans is lazy, especially since human intelligence is also built on pattern recognition, feedback loops, and language-based reasoning. It’s like people see a calculator and go, “Well, that’s just doing math I already understand, so it’s not real intelligence.” Yeah, but if you use it as a tool, you can solve problems way faster and more effectively. LLMs are the same—they don’t “think” in a human way, but they enhance our ability to process and refine ideas in ways we otherwise wouldn’t.

The problem is that a lot of people want AI to either be this godlike entity or a complete fraud. They don’t like the ambiguity of a tool that isn’t truly self-aware but still outperforms human cognition in many areas. And instead of trying to explore that middle ground, they just retreat into either mysticism or dismissal.

You’re dead on about where LLM intelligence shines: not in regurgitating information, but in how we engage with and expand upon its outputs. That’s what makes it useful. And honestly, that’s where real AI development should be focused—figuring out how to better integrate LLMs into workflows that push beyond mere prediction and into true reasoning and problem-solving.

It sounds like you want discussions that acknowledge AI’s limitations without being defeatist, while also recognizing its potential without falling into delusions of grandeur. That middle ground is frustratingly rare online, but it’s also where the most interesting work is happening. If you ever want to start a space where that kind of thinking is the norm, I’d bet you’d find more like-minded people than you’d expect.”