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The LLMentalist Effect (2023)

235 points · 309 comments · jalev

  1. rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
    > LLMs are not brains and do not meaningfully share any of the mechanisms that animals or people use to reason or think

    LLMs are a type of neural network. We know that’s how the human brain works, at least directionally. It’s going to be very upsetting to a lot of people when we figure out that the brain is just a neural network. Akin to when we found out that humans and apes evolved from a common ancestor.

    Which I don’t understand—most of the people having this cognitive dissonance presumably do not have a theological worldview. And there’s not exactly a direct theological conflict here anyway. Nothing in any major religion I’m aware of ascribes any supernatural explanation to cognition. It’s a biological computational process, just like using ATP to power muscle fibers to move your limbs is a biological mechanical process.

    1. chrisjj · · focus · HN ↗
      > LLMs are a type of neural network. We know that’s how the human brain works, at least directionally.

      The so-called neural network of LLMs contains nothing like genuine neurons. And you won't find any brain that operates solely on anything like an LLM's crude language tokens.

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