Partial Regurgitation and how LLMs really work
We recorded 5 claims from this post. 2 were checked against evidence. 3 can’t be checked. 2 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (5)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Neural nets do store weights, but that doesn’t mean that they know what they are talking about”
What we tested: Storing weights does not mean neural nets know what they are talking about.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
“What the LLM does is more akin to what some high school students do when they plagiarize: change a few words here or there, while still sticking close to the original.”
What we tested: What the LLM in the glue-pizza example does is more akin to what some high school students do when they plagiarize: changing a few words while still sticking close to the original.
What happened: The article dates the shared screenshot to May 23 and transcribes the generated sentence. Compared with the reproduced source in e8, it retains the quantity, glue-in-sauce recommendation, and adhesive purpose with changed wording. (Hindustan Times, )
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
“By clustering piles of similar things together in a giant n-dimensional space, they pretty much automatically become synonym and pastische machines, regurgitating a lot of words with slight paraphrases while adding conceptually little, and understanding even less.”
What we tested: Because LLMs cluster similar things in a high-dimensional space, they become synonym and pastiche machines that regurgitate with slight paraphrase, adding little and understanding less.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Partial regurgitation, no matter how fluent, does not, and will not ever, constitute genuine comprehension.”
What we tested: Partial regurgitation, no matter how fluent, does not and will not ever constitute genuine comprehension.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Getting to real AI will require a different approach.”
What we tested: Getting to real AI will require a different approach from the partial-regurgitation approach of current LLMs.
Held from this post (2)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.