[tuvix]

Even if you could understand human cognition to the level required to say, confidently, that it’s done one word at a time, it’s likely not! Natural language is not a prerequisite for human intelligence, as evidenced by the fact that we went from primates to commenting on HN.

Natural language is, however, a prerequisite for the existence of LLMs. It’s more similar to methods for storing and retrieving information, like the printing press or a database, than it is to a sentient being.

That’s not to say that LLMs can’t do crazy things, because they already have. Our language can encode a whole lot of information, and it’s incredible that we’ve found a way to distill that so effectively.

[iainmerrick]

Even if you could understand human cognition to the level required to say, confidently, that it’s done one word at a time, it’s likely not!

I think they’re not talking about cognition, but about output: regardless of what may be happening inside your brain, ultimately one word at a time comes out of your mouth, right? And you can’t then unsay it.

When you put it in those terms, LLMs are in exactly the same boat.

[skeptic_ai]

Deepseek zero didn’t mix up all languages in something very efficient?

[tuvix]

Interesting thought but I assume a lot of samples in the training corpus are examples of translation between languages and the same text in different languages.