Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by otabdeveloper4 408 days ago
Incorrect. LLM's have no self-reflection capability. That's a key prerequisite for "thinking". ("I think, therefore I am.")

They are simple calculators that answer with whatever tokens are most likely given the context. If you want reasonable or correct answers (rather than the most likely) then you're out of luck.
1 comments
IshKebab 408 days ago
It is not a key prerequisite for "thinking". It's "I think therefore I am" not "I am self-aware therefore I think".

In the 90s if your cursor turned into an hourglass and someone said "it's thinking" would you have pedantically said "NO! It is merely calculating!"

Maybe you would... but normal people with normal English would not.

link
otabdeveloper4 407 days ago
Self-reflection is not the same thing as self-awareness.

Computers have self-reflection to a degree - e.g., they react to malfunctions and can evaluate their own behavior. LLMs can't do this, in this respect they are even less of a thinking machine than plain old dumb software.

link