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chrisjjyesterday at 8:23 PM1 replyview on HN

> seem to struggle a lot with critical thinking.

It is an illusion arising from anthropomorphisation. They aren't thinking at all. They are just parotting the output of thinking that has long gone.


Replies

alecbzyesterday at 11:47 PM

This feels too strong IMO.

Just focusing on the outputs we can observe, LLMs clearly seem to be able to "think" correctly on some small problems that feel generalized from examples its been trained on (as opposed to pure regurgitation).

Objecting to this on some kind of philosophical grounds of "being able to generalize from existing patterns isn't the same as thinking" feels like a distinction without a difference. If LLMs were better at solving complex problems I would absolutely describe what they're doing as "thinking". They just aren't, in practice.