> But language is the input and the vector space within which their knowledge is encoded and stored. The don't have a concept of a duck beyond what others have described the duck as.
I guess if we limit ourselves to "one-modal LLMs" yes, but nowadays we have multimodal ones, who could think of a duck in the way of language, visuals or even audio.
You don’t understand. If humans had no words to describe a duck, they would still know what a duck is. Without words, LLMs would have no way to map an encounter with a duck to anything useful.