alt Hacker NewsEven if you could understand human cognition to the level required to say, confidently, that it’s done one word at a time, it’s likely not! Natural language is not a prerequisite for human intelligence, as evidenced by the fact that we went from primates to commenting on HN.
Natural language is, however, a prerequisite for the existence of LLMs. It’s more similar to methods for storing and retrieving information, like the printing press or a database, than it is to a sentient being.
That’s not to say that LLMs can’t do crazy things, because they already have. Our language can encode a whole lot of information, and it’s incredible that we’ve found a way to distill that so effectively.
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Deepseek zero didn’t mix up all languages in something very efficient?
Even if you could understand human cognition to the level required to say, confidently, that it’s done one word at a time, it’s likely not!
I think they’re not talking about cognition, but about output: regardless of what may be happening inside your brain, ultimately one word at a time comes out of your mouth, right? And you can’t then unsay it.
When you put it in those terms, LLMs are in exactly the same boat.