Close encounters of the AI kind - Imagining the Digital Future Center
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The increasingly human-like way people are engaging with language models Read the full report | Download this report (PDF) | Survey methdology and topline (PDF) March 12, 2025 Half of...

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.
  • bizarroland@fedia.io
    12·
    21 hours ago

    There is an etymology word joke that says something along the lines of, “if “pro” is the opposite of “con”, then is the opposite of “congress” “progress”?”

    And if you don’t know etymology, then that seems to make sense.

    When you break down the word Congress, you get the prefix con and the root word gress, con means with, and gress means step, so it means to step with or to walk with.

    The opposite of walking with someone is to walk apart from someone, so, the actual opposite of congress would be digress, and the opposite of progress would be regress.

    Etymology is great at ruining jokes, but it’s also great at helping you understand what words mean and why they mean them.

    • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      17 hours ago

      so, the actual opposite of congress would be digress

      How about transgress.

      • bizarroland@fedia.io
        1·
        17 hours ago

        The word trans means across, or on the other side, and gress once again would mean step, so to transgress is basically to cross the line, right?

        I did a quick search, but there isn’t really a word to describe the people that don’t cross the line.

        The opposite of the prefix trans is the prefix cis, which means “on the same side”

        • barsoap@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          16 hours ago

          con is with, di apart, both in the “is apart” and “drifts apart” way, also “between” and “not”, and trans is, well, also apart, but implying some sense of border, not just (conceptual) distance. I’d say that digress and transgress are comparatively synonym (if you squint in just the right way) and both antonym to congress.

          intragress might be an alternative to the missing cisgress, especially as ingress already exists. And then we could have extragress for being not on the inside but not beyond the pale, either.

          Or we could stop this silliness and cast out the Normans.