Understanding how they work in the sense that permits people to invent and implement them, that provides the exact steps to compute every weight and output, is not "meaningful"?

There is a lot left to learn about the behaviour of LLMs, higher-level conceptual models to be formed to help us predict specific outcomes and design improved systems, but this meme that "nobody knows how LLMs work" is out of control.

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recursive 4 days ago | parent [-]

None of that is inherent, and vanishingly few of Anthropic's users invented LLMs.

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omnicognate 4 days ago | parent [-]

What is "inherent" supposed to mean here?

LLMs are understood to the extent that they can be built from the ground up. Literally every single aspect of their operation is understood so thoroughly that we can capture it in code.

If you achieved an understanding of how the human brain works at that level of detail, completeness and certainty, a Nobel prize wouldn't be anywhere near enough. They'd have to invent some sort of Giganobel prize and erect a giant golden statue of you in every neuroscience department in the world.

But if you feel happier treating LLMs as fairy magic, I've better things to do than argue.

	▲	recursive 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Inherent means implicit or automatic as far as I understand it. I have an inherent understanding of my own need for oxygen and food. I don't have an inherent understanding of English, although I use it regularly. Treating LLMs as fairy magic doesn't make me feel any happier, for whatever it's worth. But I'm not interested in arguing either. I never intended to make any claims about how well the principles of LLMs can be understood. Just that none of that understanding is inherent. I don't know why they used that word, as it seems to weaken the post.