About whether LLMs can be intelligent when they don't learn while in use.
Has this happened?
Yes 21 (19%)Not sure 30 (28%)No 58 (53%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether LLMs can be intelligent when they don't learn while in use.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
LLMs seem quite successful when considered something like a natural langiage interface, but expecting intelligence seems a step too far. For one they do not learn, at least not online, and that is a somewhat important requirement for truly intelligent behaviour.
Arguably programming is as much learning as it is writing code. This is part of the reason some people copy an entire API and don't realise they're not so much building useful code as building an understanding.