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Can We Understand How Large Language Models Reason?

20 points2 hourscacm.acm.org
chrisjj14 minutes ago

[delayed]

analog3143 minutes ago

Do LLMs have Qualia?

JackSlateur49 minutes ago

Do they ?

arcanemachiner23 minutes ago

Yes, there is an LLM feature that we have anthropomorphized as "reasoning" or "thinking", where an LLM has a scratch space where it can dump tokens that help to improve the final output.

azakai33 minutes ago

The article answers this question, at least to the extent it can be answered, at this time.

We see some signs of reasoning, but also we understand little about how they work.

michaelchisari19 minutes ago

Do we see actual signs of reasoning or is it anthropomorphism? We have an innate tendency to do so as humans.

blooalien13 minutes ago

> Do we see signs of reasoning or is it anthropomorphism?

This is the part that so many folks just don't seem to understand (probably because it's been labeled as "thinking" or "reasoning" mode, and people assume that words have meaning). It's not reasoning or thought. It's spewing tokens pretending to "think", but it's actually just generating extra "context" to help the final answer be more coherent. The model isn't doing anything it doesn't already do. It's just doing more of it to improve the quality of the final answer displayed to the user.

throw31082239 minutes ago

Of course they do, how else do you think they manage to implement new features in large codebases, or to prove new theorems? But you don't even have to assume they do because of the results- you can read their chain of thought.