[ninetyninenine]

Nobody thinks this.

The controversy is on whether or not LLMs think.

We all know LLMs hallucinate and get things wrong all the time but it also gets things right on prompts with answers where neither prompt nor answer is in the training set.

When it gets such an answer correct and we know the answer has a low probability of being just right by random chance, we actually don’t know if the llm is thinking or not.

All I see are a bunch of people writing qualitative claims using convenient examples and ignoring counter examples.

[leereeves]

> The controversy is on whether or not LLMs think.

It's impossible to answer that question, because we don't really know what "thinking" is and can't define it precisely.

[hnthrowaway6543]

> The controversy is on whether or not LLMs think.

They do not. There is no controversy except by people with a poor understanding of the underlying technology. Whether or not LLMs think is a "debate" in the same sense that whether the earth is flat or a sphere is a debate. Certain people will strongly argue a silly theory, and their arguments can't be refuted because they refuse to, or are incapable of, understanding slightly advanced scientific concepts.

[ninetyninenine]

Not true. There’s huge debates among academics. We understand the technology only from a low level of abstraction. At higher levels of abstraction we don’t completely understand what’s going on and there is evidence of higher order intelligent mechanisms at play here.

[hnthrowaway6543]

> we don’t completely understand what’s going on

No, you don't completely understand what's going on. I suggest reading up on LLM architecture. It's not that complicated.

[ninetyninenine]

I have. The failure is with you and your extracting only the mechanical functionality of LLMs as all an LLM is.

The high level macro structure of what ends up being trained is something nobody understands.

Regardless of WHAT I say, the general consensus among academia and professionals is extremely different from what you characterize. I can cite dozens of research papers contrary to your point in a simple google search:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...

https://www.topbots.com/llm-reasoning-research-papers/

https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.10601

https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.10625

https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.15241

The fact that these research papers exist is testament against your delusional claim that you completely understand how LLMs work just by reading Attention is all you need.

[hnthrowaway6543]

Unfortunately your reading comprehension capability is quite low (which explains why you see LLMs as being potentially intelligent). The usage of the word "thought" in those papers does not actually indicate they believe the LLM is thinking.

[ninetyninenine]

Makes sense why you’d be so angry as to turn to insults. I never said LLMs think. I said it’s controversial so these papers only present controversy as well.

Nuance is key here and people like you in defense of their pride like to get rid of nuance and launch into simplistic false accusations. I never said LLMs think.

Suck it up kiddo. You’re wrong and you’re incapable of facing it.

We are done.