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chrisjjyesterday at 12:35 PM2 repliesview on HN

> diminishing these things as 'Next token predictors' seems absurdly reductive.

This shows a deep misunderstanding of the paper's claims, which in no way challenge the established view that these bots are next-token predictors.

Regardless, if all you want is a next-token selector, save your money and roll a die.


Replies

squidbeakyesterday at 2:36 PM

> This shows a deep misunderstanding of the paper's claims, which in no way challenge the established view that these bots are next-token predictors.

No, this shows an appreciation of the symbolic richness behind that token 'prediction' which the paper leads on.

> Regardless, if all you want is a next-token selector, save your money and roll a die.

Tell me, where is the emergent symbology guiding that dice?

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xg15yesterday at 10:23 PM

> which in no way challenge the established view that these bots are next-token predictors.

I mean, of course they are, that's literally what the inference loop does. You can look at the source of your favorite model runner and you'll see exactly that.

What I find misleading about this term is that it focuses attention on the "next token" part and glosses over the "prediction" part as some sort of unspecified "statistical algorithm" - even though this is where most of the work happens and where the interesting questions are.