| > "we don't think it's operating intelligently to some internal model of the world" Okay, but you have to actually address why you think LLMs lack an "internal model of the world" You can train one on 1930s text, and then teach it Python in-context. They've produced multiple novel mathematical proofs now; Terrance Tao is impressed with them as research assistants. You can very clearly ask them questions about the world, and they'll produce answers that match what you'd get from a "model" of the world. What are weights, if not a model of the world? It's got a very skewed perspective, certainly, since it's terminally online and has never touched grass, but it still very clearly has a model of the world. I'd dare say it's probably a more accurate model than the average person has, too, thanks to having Wikipedia and such baked in. |
There's obviously a lot more of a case for suggesting LLMs are generally intelligent than a calculator, but for me, I think the key point is that understanding them as "next token generators" is a lot more helpful to explain things like hallucinations and some of the other issues/loops they get into.
For me, if understanding models as "generally intelligent agents operating with an internal model of the world" explained their behaviour better than "next token generators", I'd think calling them "smart" would have some justification[0]. I'm just a person on the internet though, and defining intelligence is pretty rarely clear, even without bringing LLMs into the mix.
[0] In case it's interesting to anyone, I'm basically given a half-baked version of how Daniel Dennet defined intention: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_stance