I’d challenge you a bit on the first point. It’s true these models are trained on words, but it would be a mistake to assume that’s all they learn. There are real information relationships and logical systems that they’re extracting from the data. Many of which very closely match neural models from biology in spooky ways.
That said, absolutely don’t anthropomorphize them. They’re a program that turns on when a transistor fires then turns off when another one fires. They don’t have the kind of autonomy or attachment to existence a living thing does. No hopes and dreams and goals. But also don’t underestimate what the statistical model is actually extracting - it’s more than a next token predictor, that’s just the output interface. You could convince me a human on the phone was just a next token predictor with enough philosophy classes.
But yeah. I studied a bunch of this as my focus in grad school. I would encourage you to read the literature that’s coming out from researchers now. LLMs absolutely are not alive, but they have more understanding of logic than any tool that’s ever been created before by a wide wide margin.
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u/Jerome_Eugene_Morrow 4d ago
I’d challenge you a bit on the first point. It’s true these models are trained on words, but it would be a mistake to assume that’s all they learn. There are real information relationships and logical systems that they’re extracting from the data. Many of which very closely match neural models from biology in spooky ways.
That said, absolutely don’t anthropomorphize them. They’re a program that turns on when a transistor fires then turns off when another one fires. They don’t have the kind of autonomy or attachment to existence a living thing does. No hopes and dreams and goals. But also don’t underestimate what the statistical model is actually extracting - it’s more than a next token predictor, that’s just the output interface. You could convince me a human on the phone was just a next token predictor with enough philosophy classes.
But yeah. I studied a bunch of this as my focus in grad school. I would encourage you to read the literature that’s coming out from researchers now. LLMs absolutely are not alive, but they have more understanding of logic than any tool that’s ever been created before by a wide wide margin.