Comment by jaggirs

Comment by jaggirs 2 days ago

"Superhuman" refers to abilities, qualities, or powers that exceed those naturally found in humans. It implies being greater than normal human capabilities.

The term is often used in fiction, particularly in superhero comics and fantasy, but it can also be used metaphorically to describe extraordinary effort or achievement in real life (e.g., "It took a superhuman effort to finish the marathon").

(Definition from Gemini)

It seems reasonable to use the term to me simply to say the abilities on a benchmark of the model were greater than the human annotated data. Computers have always been superhuman at many tasks, even before llms.

majormajor 2 days ago

On a separate note, using an LLM for a definition is a bit funny, when there are expert-curated sources easily available. The LLM didn't get it wrong here, but...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superhuman

First line: "The term superhuman refers to humans, humanoids or other beings with abilities and other qualities that exceed those naturally found in humans."

Golly, I wonder what that model based its first sentence on.

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jaggirs a day ago

I wonder what the Wikipedia editor based it's first sentence on.

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majormajor 2 days ago

> "Superhuman" refers to abilities, qualities, or powers that exceed those naturally found in humans. It implies being greater than normal human capabilities.

How do you know what normal human capabilities are for an unusual task that humans have not trained for? Is identifying the gender of the author of a blog post 80% of the time "extraordinary"? How do I know what a human is capable of doing for that with training?

If a person with no programming experience asked Claude or ChatGPT to produce some code, they'd get better code than their "normal" human capability could produce. So: superhuman coders?

But also today, I have asked Claude and ChatGPT to do coding tasks for me that both models got stuck on. Then I fixed them myself because I've had a lot of training and practice. So: not superhuman? But wait, the model output the broken code faster than I would've. So: superhuman again?

Extraordinary shouldn't be so easily disputable.

LLMs have superhuman breadth and superhuman speed. I haven't seen superhuman depth in any capabilities yet. I've seen them have "better than untrained median person" and often "better than hobbyist" depth. But here the authors claim "superhuman capabilities" which is pretty specificly not just meaning the breadth or speed.

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jaggirs a day ago

I haven't read the paper, maybe their benchmark is flawed as you say, and there are a lot of ways for it to be flawed. But assuming it is not, I see no problem with using the word superhuman.
Out of curiosity, would you agree with me if I said 'Calculators have superhuman capabilities'? (Not just talking about speed here, since you can easily construct complex enough equations that a human wouldn't be able to solve in their lifetime but the calculator could within minutes).

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mistrial9 a day ago

> Superhuman" refers to abilities, qualities, or powers that exceed those naturally found in humans. It implies being greater than normal human capabilities.

either you (human) took that directly from Wikipedia without attribution, or even a mention.. or the LLM you used did so.. the first is mildly annoying, the second is a core of the legal problems in the West for the entire technology.

Wikipedia cost time and effort by humans, built as a commons for all written knowledge. Every hour of every day, the Internet is a better place for humans because of Wikipedia. Instead of honoring that, or contributing back, or financially contributing To Wikipedia .. parasite machines run my amoral opportunists try to create platforms using the content while Increasing Costs to Wikipedia, taking away attention from Wikipedia, misrepresenting content taken directly from Wikipedia.

This LLM situation is not resolved; far from it.

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