They are also very good at translating between natural and structured/"computer" language.
At a much higher rate than anything I've seen before in any algorithm, they "get" irony, sarcasm etc., when until a few years ago, I (as a non-linguist), assumed that any such solution to the "aboutness" problem would require solving AGI.
That alone is worth a lot in a world which spends considerable resources on people that effectively work as translators between human and structured language.
Besides that, I suspect that their existence is seen as a strong and remarkable hint that intelligence really might just be a quantitative phenomenon emergent from throwing a lot of compute at a lot of data, which at some point might become self-reinforcing.
Whether that's true or not, and for better or worse, that's what people now seem to be set on doing.
At a much higher rate than anything I've seen before in any algorithm, they "get" irony, sarcasm etc., when until a few years ago, I (as a non-linguist), assumed that any such solution to the "aboutness" problem would require solving AGI.
That alone is worth a lot in a world which spends considerable resources on people that effectively work as translators between human and structured language.
Besides that, I suspect that their existence is seen as a strong and remarkable hint that intelligence really might just be a quantitative phenomenon emergent from throwing a lot of compute at a lot of data, which at some point might become self-reinforcing.
Whether that's true or not, and for better or worse, that's what people now seem to be set on doing.