A Person who memorizes something by rote, can pass many tests. From a test and verifiability perspective, they cannot be distinguished from someone who understands a subject.
An LLM can pass many tests, it is indistinguishable from someone who understands the subject.
Indistinguishable does not imply that the processes followed match what a human is doing when it understands a subject.
I use this when I think of humans learning - humans learn the most when they are playing. They try new things, explore ideas and build a mental model of what they are playing with.
To understand something, is to have a mental model of that thing in ones head.
LLMs have models of symbol frequency, and with their compute, are able to pass most tests, simply because they are able to produce chains of symbols that build on each other.
However, similar to rote learning, they are able to pass tests. Not understand. The war is over the utilitarian point “LLMs are capable of passing most tests”, and the factual point “LLMs dont actually understand anything”.
This articulation of the utilitarian point is better than the lazier version which says “LLMs understand”, and this ends up anthropomorphizing a tool, and creating incorrect intuitions of how LLMs work, amongst other citizens and users.
An LLM can pass many tests, it is indistinguishable from someone who understands the subject.
Indistinguishable does not imply that the processes followed match what a human is doing when it understands a subject.
I use this when I think of humans learning - humans learn the most when they are playing. They try new things, explore ideas and build a mental model of what they are playing with.
To understand something, is to have a mental model of that thing in ones head.
LLMs have models of symbol frequency, and with their compute, are able to pass most tests, simply because they are able to produce chains of symbols that build on each other.
However, similar to rote learning, they are able to pass tests. Not understand. The war is over the utilitarian point “LLMs are capable of passing most tests”, and the factual point “LLMs dont actually understand anything”.
This articulation of the utilitarian point is better than the lazier version which says “LLMs understand”, and this ends up anthropomorphizing a tool, and creating incorrect intuitions of how LLMs work, amongst other citizens and users.