“Chatting”. LLMs don’t have any idea what words mean, they are kinda like really fancy autocorrect, creating output based on what’s most likely to occur next in the current context.
I mean plain old autocorrect does a surprisingly good job. Here’s a quick example, I’ll only be tapping the middle suggested word.
I will be there for you to grasp since you think your instance is screwy. I think everybody can agree that sentence is a bit weird but an LLM has a comparable understanding of its output as the autocorrect/word suggestion did.
A conversation by definition is at least two sided. You can’t have a conversation with a tree or a brick but you could have one with another person. A LLM is not capable of thought. It “converses” by a more advanced version of what your phones autocorrect does when it gives you a suggested word. If you think of that as conversation I find that an extremely lonely definition of the word.
I think you’re kind of underselling how good current LLMs are at mimicking human speech. I can foresee them being fairly hard to detect in the near future.
That wasn’t my intention with the wonky autocorrect sentence. The point of that was to point out LLMs and my auto correct equally have no idea what words mean.
What does it mean to “have an idea what words mean”?
LLMs clearly have some associations between words - they are able to use synonyms, they are able to explain words, they are able to use words correctly. How do you determine from the outside whether they “understand” something?
We understand a tree to be a growing living thing, an LLM understands a tree as a collection of symbols. When they create output they don’t decide that one synonym is more appropriate than another, it’s chosen by which collection of symbols is more statistically likely.
Take for example attempting to correct GPT, it will often admit fault yet not “learn” from it. Why not? If it understands words it should be able to, at least in that context, no longer output the incorrect information yet it still does. It doesn’t learn from it because it can’t. It doesn’t know what words mean. It knows that when it sees the symbols representing “You got {thing} wrong” the most likely symbols to follow represent “You are right I apologize”.
That’s all LLMs like GPT do currently. They analyze a collection of symbols (not actual text) and then output what they determine to be most likely to follow. That causes very interesting behavior, you can talk to it and it will respond as if you are having a conversation.
We understand a tree to be a growing living thing, an LLM understands a tree as a collection of symbols.
No, LLMs understand a tree to be a complex relationship of many, many individual numbers. Can you clearly define how our understanding is based on something different?
When they create output they don’t decide that one synonym is more appropriate than another, it’s chosen by which collection of symbols is more statistically likely.
What is the difference between “appropriate” and “likely”? I know people who use words to sound smart without understanding them - do they decide which words are appropriate, or which ones are likely? Where is the border?
Take for example attempting to correct GPT, it will often admit fault yet not “learn” from it. Why not? If it understands words it should be able to, at least in that context, no longer output the incorrect information yet it still does. It doesn’t learn from it because it can’t.
This is wrong. If you ask it something, it replies and you correct it, it will absolutely “learn” from it for this session. That’s due to the architecture, but it refutes your point.
It doesn’t know what words mean. It knows that when it sees the symbols representing “You got {thing} wrong” the most likely symbols to follow represent “You are right I apologize”.
So why can it often output correct information after it has been corrected? This should be impossible according to you.
That’s all LLMs like GPT do currently. They analyze a collection of symbols (not actual text) and then output what they determine to be most likely to follow. That causes very interesting behavior, you can talk to it and it will respond as if you are having a conversation.
Aaah, the old “stochastic parrot” argument. Can you clearly show that humans don’t analyse inputs and then output what they determine to be most likely to follow?
If you’d like, we can move away from the purely philosophical questions and go to a simple practical one: given some system (LLMs, animals, humans) how do I figure out whether the system understands? Can you give me concrete steps I can take to figure out if it’s “true understanding” or “LLM level understanding”? Your earlier approach (tell it when it’s incorrect) was wrong. Do you have an alternative? If not, how is this not a “god of the gaps” argument?
So why can it often output correct information after it has been corrected? This should be impossible according to you.
It generally doesn’t. It apologizes then will output exactly, very nearly the same thing as before, or something else that’s wrong in a brand new way. Have you used GPT before? This is a common problem, it’s part of why you cannot trust anything it outputs unless you already know enough about the topic to determine it’s accuracy.
No, LLMs understand a tree to be a complex relationship of many, many individual numbers. Can you clearly define how our understanding is based on something different?
And did you really just go “nuh huh its actually in binary”? I used the collection of symbols explanation as that’s how OpenAI describes it so I thought it was a safe to just skip all the detail. Since it’s apparently needed and you’re unlikely to listen to me there’s a good explanation in video form created by Kyle Hill. I’m sure many other people have gone and explained it much better than I can so instead of trying to prove me wrong which we can keep doing all day go learn about them. LLMs are super interesting and yet ultimately extremely primative.
“Chatting”. LLMs don’t have any idea what words mean, they are kinda like really fancy autocorrect, creating output based on what’s most likely to occur next in the current context.
If they put together the right words, does it matter if they know what they’re saying?
I mean plain old autocorrect does a surprisingly good job. Here’s a quick example, I’ll only be tapping the middle suggested word.
I will be there for you to grasp since you think your instance is screwy.I think everybody can agree that sentence is a bit weird but an LLM has a comparable understanding of its output as the autocorrect/word suggestion did.A conversation by definition is at least two sided. You can’t have a conversation with a tree or a brick but you could have one with another person. A LLM is not capable of thought. It “converses” by a more advanced version of what your phones autocorrect does when it gives you a suggested word. If you think of that as conversation I find that an extremely lonely definition of the word.
So to me yes, it does matter
I think you’re kind of underselling how good current LLMs are at mimicking human speech. I can foresee them being fairly hard to detect in the near future.
That wasn’t my intention with the wonky autocorrect sentence. The point of that was to point out LLMs and my auto correct equally have no idea what words mean.
Yes and my point is that it doesn’t matter if they know what they mean, just that it has the appearance that they know what they mean.
What does it mean to “have an idea what words mean”?
LLMs clearly have some associations between words - they are able to use synonyms, they are able to explain words, they are able to use words correctly. How do you determine from the outside whether they “understand” something?
We understand a tree to be a growing living thing, an LLM understands a tree as a collection of symbols. When they create output they don’t decide that one synonym is more appropriate than another, it’s chosen by which collection of symbols is more statistically likely.
Take for example attempting to correct GPT, it will often admit fault yet not “learn” from it. Why not? If it understands words it should be able to, at least in that context, no longer output the incorrect information yet it still does. It doesn’t learn from it because it can’t. It doesn’t know what words mean. It knows that when it sees the symbols representing “You got {thing} wrong” the most likely symbols to follow represent “You are right I apologize”.
That’s all LLMs like GPT do currently. They analyze a collection of symbols (not actual text) and then output what they determine to be most likely to follow. That causes very interesting behavior, you can talk to it and it will respond as if you are having a conversation.
No, LLMs understand a tree to be a complex relationship of many, many individual numbers. Can you clearly define how our understanding is based on something different?
What is the difference between “appropriate” and “likely”? I know people who use words to sound smart without understanding them - do they decide which words are appropriate, or which ones are likely? Where is the border?
This is wrong. If you ask it something, it replies and you correct it, it will absolutely “learn” from it for this session. That’s due to the architecture, but it refutes your point.
So why can it often output correct information after it has been corrected? This should be impossible according to you.
Aaah, the old “stochastic parrot” argument. Can you clearly show that humans don’t analyse inputs and then output what they determine to be most likely to follow?
If you’d like, we can move away from the purely philosophical questions and go to a simple practical one: given some system (LLMs, animals, humans) how do I figure out whether the system understands? Can you give me concrete steps I can take to figure out if it’s “true understanding” or “LLM level understanding”? Your earlier approach (tell it when it’s incorrect) was wrong. Do you have an alternative? If not, how is this not a “god of the gaps” argument?
It generally doesn’t. It apologizes then will output exactly, very nearly the same thing as before, or something else that’s wrong in a brand new way. Have you used GPT before? This is a common problem, it’s part of why you cannot trust anything it outputs unless you already know enough about the topic to determine it’s accuracy.
And did you really just go “nuh huh its actually in binary”? I used the collection of symbols explanation as that’s how OpenAI describes it so I thought it was a safe to just skip all the detail. Since it’s apparently needed and you’re unlikely to listen to me there’s a good explanation in video form created by Kyle Hill. I’m sure many other people have gone and explained it much better than I can so instead of trying to prove me wrong which we can keep doing all day go learn about them. LLMs are super interesting and yet ultimately extremely primative.