Turing Award winner Leslie Valiant has cautioned that AI-powered large language models (LLMs), while appearing intelligent, are a far cry from possessing human-like thinking capabilities.
Valiant, a celebrated British computer scientist, earned the Association for Computing Machinery's 2010 A.M. Turing Award for his work that helped lay the foundation for machine learning.
In an interview with China Media Group (CMG), Valiant acknowledged that breakthroughs in AI have produced fascinating results, but warned that observers should be objective in their analysis of what the technology is capable of.
"I think the big difference of these large language models is the fact that they can produce very smooth language in English or Chinese. Humans find it stunning. Intuitively, without thinking, you think anything which can produce such smooth sentences must be human. But, of course, that's not true," said the computer scientist.
Despite some impressive achievements made by today's LLMs, Valiant pointed to key limitations when compared to human thinking and knowledge.
"Whether these things pass the Turing test isn't so clear. The Turing test would be, like you interviewing a machine and really trying to find out whether it's a machine or not. And you're allowed to ask very careful questions. So, I suspect that you could figure out whether it's a machine or a human," he said. "Generally, I think my view of these large language models is that, for things which I have little expertise, like doing some home repairs, so I go to a large language model because it knows much more than I do. But in anything where you have some expertise, it's not as accurate. I mean, in passing tests, it's very hard to judge because many questions in many tests are all standardized, repeated on the web a million times. So, it's just doing a search. So, for any story like that, I believe, one doesn't have to take that seriously," Valiant added.
Intelligence of LLMs should not be overstated: Turing Award laureate
Artists have reimagined ancient themes through a modern lens at the 60th Venice Biennale China National Pavilion Exhibition, now underway in Shanghai.
The main feature of the exhibition is a fully immersive project by artist Che Jianquan, who has placed consecutive screens placed side by side to present his two-decade-long documentation of the same pavilion since 2003.
Through his lens, the artist captures the pavilion, as it emerges and disappears amidst mist and clouds, evoking the aesthetic of misty landscapes in traditional Chinese ink paintings.
"At the beginning, I wanted to use painting to document my feeling, but later I realized that painting was somewhat powerless. So, starting in 2003, I began using the earliest video equipment to start recording. What I care about more is a place—a very small location—and the unique connection it has within that field to history and to the culture of that region. I think this is something I hope to achieve: through a seemingly ordinary scene, to uncover the stories behind it, as well as its possible influence on both the past era and the present," said Chen.
Established in 1895, the Venice Biennale is one of the premier events in the global art world. This year, the China National Pavilion Exhibition, under the theme "Atlas: Harmony in Diversity," presents not only the documentary archives of 100 Chinese paintings held overseas, but also seven contemporary artworks created by seven Chinese artists exploring themes, such as architecture, landscapes, figures, flora and fauna.
"The core of the Venice Biennale is contemporary art, reflecting the spirit of the present era—yet the present and history cannot be separated. This exhibition is rooted in the tradition of Chinese painting across dynasties, drawing from over 20,000 individual works that took us twenty years to collect globally," said Wang Xiaosong, an artist and the curator of the exhibition.
"Notably, we discovered that more than 3,000 of these paintings had been lost overseas, which we spent two decades retrieving through digital tools. This is how we engage with traditional art: through each artist's reflection and a new understanding of the relationship between the ancients, the present, and the future," he added.
Wang drew special attention to a piece by the modern artist Qiu Zhenzhong, who he said merges the art of Chinese gardens with calligraphy using traditional methods to showcase contemporary issues such as environmental and ecological change.
"It's like a dialogue with nature," Wang said.
The exhibition in Shanghai is the final stop of the national tour, following the legs in the southwest Chinese city of Chongqing and the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, and will run until May 31.
Exhibition in Shanghai bridges contemporary art with centuries of Chinese artistic tradition
