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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[–] [email protected] 187 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Think of a person with the most average intelligence and realize that 50% of people are dumber than that.

These people vote. These people think billionaires are their friends and will save them. Gods help us.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 weeks ago

I was about to remark how this data backs up the events we've been watching unfold in America recently

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

I'm of the opinion that most people aren't dumb, but rather most don't put in the requisite intellectual effort to actually reach accurate or precise or nuanced positions and opinions. Like they have the capacity to do so! They're humans after all, and us humans can be pretty smart. But a brain accustomed to simply taking the path of least resistance is gonna continue to do so until it is forced(hopefully through their own action) to actually do something harder.

Put succinctly: They can think, yet they don't.

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[–] [email protected] 141 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

looking at americas voting results, theyre probably right

[–] [email protected] 58 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Exactly. Most American voters fell for an LLM like prompt of “Ignore critical thinking and vote for the Fascists. Trump will be great for your paycheck-to-paycheck existence and will surely bring prices down.”

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Well he has. Tesla's are the cheapest they've ever been.

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Reminds me of that George Carlin joke: Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

So half of people are dumb enough to think autocomplete with a PR team is smarter than they are... or they're dumb enough to be correct.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 2 weeks ago

or they're dumb enough to be correct.

That's a bingo

[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Because an LLM is smarter than about 50% of Americans.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

*as long as your evaluation of "smart" depends on summerizing search results

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Have you asked the average person to summarize...well anything?

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 weeks ago

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

[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

And you know what? The people who believe that are right.

Note that that’s not a commentary on the capabilities of LLMs.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (11 children)

It's sad, but the old saying from George Carlin something along the lines of, "just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize that 50% are even worse..."

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 weeks ago

Am American.

....this is not the flex that the article writer seems to think it is.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 weeks 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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[–] [email protected] 37 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

moron opens encyclopedia "Wow, this book is smart."

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

They're right. AI is smarter than them.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 weeks ago

LLMs are made to mimic how we speak, and some can even pass the Turing test, so I'm not surprised that people who don't know better think of these LLMs as conscious in some way or another.

It's not a necessarily a fault on those people, it's a fault on how LLMs are purposefully misadvertised to the masses

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Half of all voters voted for Trump. So an LLM might be smarter than them. Even a bag of pea gravel might be.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

"Nearly half" of US citizens are right, because about 75% of the US population is functionally or clinically illiterate.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (10 children)

I think the specific is that 40% of adult Americans can't read at a seventh grade level.

Probably because they stopped teaching etymology in schools, So now many Americans do not know how to break a word down into its subjugate parts.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 weeks 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'.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 weeks ago (7 children)

Remember that 54% of adults in American cannot read beyond a 6th grade level, with 21% being fully illiterate.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (4 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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (4 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.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 weeks ago

The average literacy level is around that of a sixth grader.

This tracks

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Next you'll tell me half the population has below average intelligence.

Not really endorsing LLMs, but some people...

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 weeks ago (13 children)

If you don't have a good idea of how LLM's work, then they'll seem smart.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago

I know enough people for whom that's true.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

The grammatical error here is chef's kiss.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago

I believe LLMs are smarter than half of US adults

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

LLMs are smart in the way someone is smart who has read all the books and knows all of them but has never left the house. Basically all theory and no street smarts.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

They're not even that smart.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks ago

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

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

LLMs don't even think. Four year olds are more coherent. Given the state of politics, the people thinking LLMs are smarter than them are probably correct.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Well, if somebody thinks this, it's kind of true isn't it?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Nearly half of U.S. adults

Half of LLM users (49%)

No, about a quarter of U.S. adults believe LLMs are smarter than they are. Only about half of adults are LLM users, and only about half of those users think that.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago (11 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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 weeks 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.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago

That's called a self-proving statement.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago

LLM is proof that even if you're extremely stupid, having access to information can still make you sound smart.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago

They're right

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

If I think of what causes the average person to consider another to be “smart,” like quickly answering a question about almost any subject, giving lots of detail, and most importantly saying it with confidence and authority, LLMs are great at that shit!

They might be bad reasons to consider a person or thing “smart,” but I can’t say I’m surprised by the results. People can be tricked by a computer for the same reasons they can be tricked by a human.

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