if we have steps for understanding any author's english and creative process (generally not specific to an author) would you agree then it is possible for an llm to do it?

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Talanes 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The real sticking point for me is I don't even believe that authors themselves FULLY understand their process. The idea that anybody could achieve such full introspection as to understand and articulate every little thing that influences their output seems astoundingly improbable.

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mysterydip 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Repeating a process, yes for sure, even (pseudorandom?) variations on a process. Understanding a process is a different question, and I’m not sure how you would measure that.

In school we would have a test with various questions to show you understand the concept of addition, for example. But while my calculator can perfectly add any numbers up to its memory limit, it has no understanding of addition.

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netdevphoenix 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> while my calculator can perfectly add any numbers up to its memory limit, it has no understanding of addition.

"my calculator can perfectly add any numbers up to its memory limit" This kind of anthropomorphic language is misleading in these conversations. Your calculator isn't an agent so it should not be expected to be capable of any cognition.

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simianwords 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It’s the degree of generalisability. And LLMs do have understanding. You can ask it how it came up with the process in natural language and it can help - something a calculator can’t do.

	▲	bigfishrunning 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> And LLMs do have understanding. They absolutely do not. If you "ask it how it came up with the process in natural language" with some input, it will produce an output that follows, because of the statistics encoded in the model. That output may or may not be helpful, but it is likely to be stylistically plausible. An LLM does not think or understand; it is merely a statistical model (that's what the M stands for!)