---
title: "ML Is Still a Parlor Trick"
categories:
- blog
abstract: I am not the only one not believing in the new ML-powered God.
date: 2023-02-26T10:40:17+01:00
year: 2023
draft: false
tags: 
- AI
- ML
- Chat-GPT
---
[Nabil Alouani](https://nabilalouani.substack.com/p/chatgpt-hype-is-proof-nobody-really):

> Imagine you lock a newborn child alone inside a library. Let's call him Loki, and suppose he doesn't need food, water, sleep, and love. You have Loki watch thousands of books all day, every single day, for 20 years non-stop. You don't teach him anything about grammar, and you never explain what English words mean.
> 
> Now imagine you come back two decades later and, under the library's locked door, you slip a piece of paper that says, "Hello Loki, what's your favorite color?"
> 
> Do you expect Loki to understand your question?
>
> Loki may recall your question from one of the dialogues he'd previously seen. Remember, Loki doesn't read words; he sees them the same way you see Japanese/Arab/Hebrew characters without being able to tell what they mean.

I'm glad I am not the only one considering large language models to be nothing more than a parlor trick. When looking at the front page of Hacker News, it seems that we have reached the next level of evolution at the very least.