alt Hacker NewsYou've misunderstood what I'm saying. Regardless of whether LLMs think or not, the sentence "LLMs don't think because they predict the next token" is logically as wrong as "fleas can't jump because they have short legs".
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stevenhuang • today at 7:56 AM
> not at all what humans do when they think.
Parent commentator should probably square with the fact we know little about our own cognition, and it's really an open question how is it we think.
In fact it's theorized humans think by modeling reality, with a lot of parallels to modern ML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding
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> the sentence "LLMs don't think because they predict the next token" is logically as wrong
it isn't, depending on the deifinition of "THINK".
If you believe that thought is the process for where an agent with a world model, takes in input, analysies the circumstances and predicts an outcome and models their beaviour due to that prediction. Then the sentence of "LLMs dont think because they predict a token" is entirely correct.
They cannot have a world model, they could in some way be said to receive a sensory input through the prompt. But they are neither analysing that prompt against its own subjectivity, nor predicting outcomes, coming up with a plan or changing its action/response/behaviour due to it.
Any definition of "Think" that requieres agency or a world model (which as far as I know are all of them) would exclude an LLM by definition.