logoalt Hacker News

measurablefuncyesterday at 10:19 PM1 replyview on HN

Because they encode statistical properties of the training corpus. You might not know why they work but plenty of people know why they work & understand the mechanics of approximating probability distributions w/ parametrized functions to sell it as a panacea for stupidity & the path to an automated & luxurious communist utopia.


Replies

threethirtytwotoday at 3:00 AM

No this is false. No one understands. Using big words doesn’t change the fact that you cannot explain for any given input output pair how the LLM arrived at the answer.

Every single academic expert who knows what they are talking about can confirm that we do not understand LLMs. We understand atoms and we know the human brain is made 100 percent out of atoms.we may know how atoms interact and bond and how a neuron works but none of this allows us to understand the brain. In the same way we do not understand LLMs.

Characterizing ML as some statistical approximation or best fit curve is just using an analogy to cover up something we don’t understand. Heck the human brain can practically be characterized by the same analogies. We. Do. Not. Understand. LLMs. Stop pretending that you do.

show 1 reply