Do we see actual signs of reasoning or is it anthropomorphism? We have an innate tendency to do so as humans.

blooalien 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Do we see signs of reasoning or is it anthropomorphism?

This is the part that so many folks just don't seem to understand (probably because it's been labeled as "thinking" or "reasoning" mode, and people assume that words have meaning). It's not reasoning or thought. It's spewing tokens pretending to "think", but it's actually just generating extra "context" to help the final answer be more coherent. The model isn't doing anything it doesn't already do. It's just doing more of it to improve the quality of the final answer displayed to the user.

▲

Leonard_of_Q 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're describing a process by which a 'thinking' entity uses cognition to refine a solution to a stated problem. That's a lot of words so usually we shorten this to 'reasoning'.

Do LLMs 'think'? I 'think' they do in a way. I don't really know how I think myself but I know I do and therefore I am (thanks, Descartes). I have a somewhat better grasp of the way LLMs 'think'. They do so sequentially, building a chain of descriptors which best fit the problem and the preceding descriptors. I suspect I do something not entirely dissimilar- i.e. I imagine 'worlds' which are like the current one changed in some way so they the problem I'm working on is reduced, then refine those until it is resolved - but in a massively parallel way.

▲

blooalien 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Fine. Whatever. I give up. LLMs think. Believe what you want. I literally no longer care, and this argument is beyond exhausting. Go ask the LLM to explain itself to you. It will happily spew out a pretty solid explanation of the details and math involved if you ask it the right questions in the right way. It'll also happily play along with you if you want to roleplay that it is an actual thinking machine. It's designed that way. But hey, whatever. It's a thinking intelligent machine and we're all doomed. I accept that my many decades of working with and learning about computers was wasted and I know nothing about them at all.

▲

scrollaway an hour ago | parent [-]

Ask any human to explain their own biology to you and they'll also happily spew out whatever crap they learned before, whether that's correct or not.

You're not making the point you think you are.

	▲	blooalien 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> "You're not making the point you think you are." I don't care anymore. I'm not going to bother with this discussion anymore, not with anyone. I realize now that people want to believe what they want to believe and they don't care about facts or reality, so why should I care either? It's not worth my time or stress to give a damn anymore. I'm done. I'm not going to respond any further on any of these threads, and I'm probably done commenting in general. It's just not worth it anymore. I'm gonna go back to doin things I actually enjoy doing now. Y'all folks have fun. I genuinely wish you all the best.

▲

dataflow 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Honestly, people need to get over this debate. It's pretty irrelevant in a lot of cases. When people ask "what is the model thinking?", they're really asking "what caused the model to produce this response (as opposed to a bunch of other plausible ones)?"

Whether it's thinking or word prediction or whatever you want to call it, people are trying to understand the causal chain.

	▲	throw310822 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It's not just a nominalistic debate though, as the people who are vocal against the idea that LLMs might "understand" or "think" also claim that because of this, they are fundamentally limited in what they can achieve, in contrast to human beings. Therefore any possibility of actual intelligence (or even superintelligence) is, according to them, just a fantasy.
	▲	wat10000 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Angry diatribes about whether submarines swim or not.

▲

azakai 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, we do see signs of actual reasoning, see the papers linked in the article. (There are many others too.)

Yes, we have a tendency to anthropomorphize, but (most) researchers are aware of this.

▲

michaelchisari 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The papers linked in the article discuss the mechanical operations that simulate reasoning. Intelligence is data efficiency and I don't see a strong argument that reasoning can exist if it requires a world's worth of data.

That doesn't mean that simulated reasoning isn't useful, it's wildly useful. But a thing is not its simulation.

▲

throw310822 an hour ago | parent [-]

> a thing is not its simulation.

"The King leaned over, looked and saw, yes, the Middle Ages simulated to a T, all digital, binary , and nonlinear, and there was the land of Dandelia, The Icicle Forest, the palace with the Helical Tower, the Aviary That Neighed, and the Treasury with a Hundred Eyes as well, and there was Ineffabelle herself, taking a slow, stochastic stroll through the simulated garden, and her circuits glowed red and gold as she picked simulated daisies, and hummed a simulated song."

(Stanislaw Lem, Cyberiad)

	▲	michaelchisari an hour ago \| parent [-]
		"In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography. "Suarez Miranda,Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV,Cap. XLV, Lerida, 1658" - On Exactitude in Science by Jorge Luis Borges