Seriously Doubting AGI or ASI are near

I just had an experience that made me seriously doubt we are anywhere near AGI/ASI. I tried to get Claude, ChatGPT 4o, 1o, and Gemini to write a program, solely in python, that cleanly converts pdf tables to Excel. Not only could none of them do it – even after about 20 troubleshooting prompts – they all made the same mistakes (repeatedly). I kept trying to get them to produce novel code, but they were all clearly recycling the same posts from github.

I’ve been using all four of the above chatbots extensively for various language-based problems (although 1o less than the others). They are excellent at dissecting, refining, and constructing language. However, I have not seen anything that makes me think they are remotely close to logical, or that they can construct anything novel. I have also noticed their interpretations of technical documentation (eg, specs from CMS) lose the thread once I press them to make conclusions that aren’t thoroughly discussed elsewhere on the internet.

This exercise makes me suspect that these systems have cracked the code of language – but nothing more. And while it’s wildly impressive they can decode language better than humans, I think we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking these systems are smart because they speak so eloquently – when in reality, language was easy to decipher relative to humans’ more complex systems. Maybe we should shift our attention away from LLMs.