alt Hacker NewsAre you a stream of words or are your words the “simplistic” projection of your abstract thoughts? I don’t at all discount the importance of language in so many things, but the question that matters is whether statistical models of language can ever “learn” abstract thought, or become part of a system which uses them as a tool.
My personal assessment is that LLMs can do neither.
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Even if they are "simplistic projections", which I don't think is the correct way to think about it, there's no reason that more LLM thoughts in middle layers can't also exist and project down at the end. Though there might be efficency issues because the latent thoughts have to be recomputed a lot.
Though I do think in human brains it's also an interplay where what we write/say also loops back into the thinking as well. Which is something which is efficient for LLMs.
I'm definitely a stream of words.
My "abstract thoughts" are a stream of words too, they just don't get sounded out.
Tbf I'd rather they weren't there in the first place.
But bodies which refuse to harbor an "interiority" are fast-tracked to destruction because they can't suf^W^W^W be productive.
Funny movie scene from somewhere. The sergeant is drilling the troops: "You, private! What do you live for!", and expects an answer along the lines of dying for one's nation or some shit. Instead, the soldier replies: "Well, to see what happens next!"
LLMs and human brains are both just mechanisms. Why would one mechanism a priori be capable of "learning abstract thought", but no others?
If it turns out that LLMs don't model human brains well enough to qualify as "learning abstract thought" the way humans do, some future technology will do so. Human brains aren't magic, special or different.
Words are the "simplistic" projection of an LLM's abstract thoughts.
An LLM has: words in its input plane, words in its output plane, and A LOT of cross-linked internals between the two.
Those internals aren't "words" at all - and it's where most of the "action" happens. It's how LLMs can do things like translate from language to language, or recall knowledge they only encountered in English in the training data while speaking German.