alt Hacker NewsIt is both. I do not understand why you would assert that both cannot hold simultaneously. Pattern recognition becomes "understanding" once individually recognized concepts become sufficiently sparsified and compactified. Or, at least, that is to my knowledge the only mathematically valid definition of "understanding" one can produce at this scale (it is valid under Solomonoff induction). Philosophy is fine, but we need to have a consistent definition of what "understanding" means, or we will just talk past each other. I argue that for any proper definition you provide which humans satisfy, a strong LLM is very likely to satisfy that as well.
I also would not argue that humans are "simple token generators". That is not what I said. I said that just about everything can fall under the classification of "statistical token generators" at an abstract level, so it isn't a useful distinction. We are not talking about a Markov chain generator from the 90s, so if that is the frame of reference, I think we should all get that out of our heads.
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So according to your logic, "understanding" means being capable of statistically generating tokens.
Okay fine. I think we can agree to disagree on that.
> Pattern recognition becomes "understanding" once individually recognized concepts become sufficiently sparsified [sic] and compactified [sic].
Understanding is a state of mind. As such, it exists entirely within an individual and nowhere else.
For example, take any two university professors who teach the same subject where one only speaks Arabic and the other only speaks Vietnamese. Each will not be able to understand what the other says, regardless their understanding of the shared topic.
> I argue that for any proper definition [of understanding] you provide which humans satisfy, a strong LLM is very likely to satisfy that as well.
This is demonstrably incorrect as detailed above. There is no "understanding" LLMs can satisfy as we know it, since to certify said "understanding", it requires interpretation by a person to "know" an LLM "understands."
> I also would not argue that humans are "simple token generators". That is not what I said.
That is the essence of what you wrote, unless you object to my use of "simple" instead of "statistical". In this context, I postulate this is a distinction without difference.
> I said that just about everything can fall under the classification of "statistical token generators" at an abstract level, so it isn't a useful distinction.
This only holds if one subscribes to statistical token generators being a/the fundamental underpinning of "everything". Here is a proof by contradiction: