> That view of humans - and LLMs - ignores the fact that when you combine large numbers of simple building blocks, you can get completely novel behavior.

I can bang smooth rocks to get sharper rocks; that doesn't make sharper rocks more intelligent. Makes them sharper, though.

Which is to say, novel behavior != intelligence.

Yes, that seems to hold for rocks. But that doesn’t shut down the original post’s premise, unless you hold the answer to what can and cannot be banged together to create emergent intelligence.

We're not talking about sharp rocks.

We're talking about LLMs that you can talk to, and which for the most part respond more intelligently than perhaps 90% of HN users (or 90% of people anywhere).