[billziss]

I have been a user of ChatGPT4 from the very beginning and like others I have found it extremely useful in multiple subjects. It is particularly good on topics that there is a lot of prior art and it can sometimes provide surprising insights.

OTOH I have found that it not as good on topics that there is not a lot of prior art in the public domain or in topics like advanced mathematics which often have a formal and unintuitive presentation.

For example, I have acquired recently an interest in probabilistic logic and when discussing results with it, I have found that although it has knowledge of the subject, it cannot really apply that knowledge in a creative way. It will often make logical mistakes and when these are pointed out, it will first apologize and then continue to make the same mistake.

So as far as I am concerned I am unconvinced that it can reason yet.

[Hugsun]

In the article, I make the case that they can reason but it is in many ways distinct from the way we do it. It is also learned from very different fundamentals. Our reasoning fundamentals come from sensing, and experiencing. LLMs reasoning fundamentals are pieces of words.

We roughly go from sensing, to object permanence, to algebra.

They go from tokens, to grammar, to abstract ideas.

Human senses, inertia, gravity, and other things that are elementary to us, are complex abstract phenomena to them. They can only think of them in very hypothetical terms.

There are some clear examples of reasoning mentioned in the article, but I believe that a large part of the perception of them lacking it, stems from them having unnaturally good writing skills in relation to their reasoning skills. That is, no human that can write this well is this bad at reasoning.