I'm looking for an article showing that LLMs don't know how they work internally
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Who has claimed that LLMs have the capacity to reason?
The study being referenced explains in detail why they can’t. So I’d say it’s Anthropic who stated LLMs don’t have the capacity to reason, and that’s what we’re discussing.
The popular media tends to go on and on about conflating AI with AGI and synthetic reasoning.
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People don't understand what "model" means. That's the unfortunate reality.
They walk down runways and pose for magazines. Do they reason? Sometimes.
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It's true that LLMs aren't "aware" of what internal steps they are taking, so asking an LLM how they reasoned out an answer will just output text that statistically sounds right based on its training set, but to say something like "they can never reason" is provably false.
Its obvious that you have a bias and desperately want reality to confirm it, but there's been significant research and progress in tracing internals of LLMs, that show logic, planning, and reasoning.
EDIT: lol you can downvote me but it doesn't change evidence based research
It’d be impressive if the environmental toll making the matrices and using them wasn’t critically bad.
Developing a AAA video game has a higher carbon footprint than training an LLM, and running inference uses significantly less power than playing that same video game.
but there's been significant research and progress in tracing internals of LLMs, that show logic, planning, and reasoning.
would there be a source for such research?
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I found the aeticle in a post on the fediverse, and I can't find it anymore.
The reaserchers asked a simple mathematical question to an LLM ( like 7+4) and then could see how internally it worked by finding similar paths, but nothing like performing mathematical reasoning, even if the final answer was correct.
Then they asked the LLM to explain how it found the result, what was it's internal reasoning. The answer was detailed step by step mathematical logic, like a human explaining how to perform an addition.
This showed 2 things:
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LLM don't "know" how they work
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the second answer was a rephrasing of original text used for training that explain how math works, so LLM just used that as an explanation
I think it was a very interesting an meaningful analysis
Can anyone help me find this?
EDIT: thanks to @theunknownmuncher
@lemmy.world
https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language-model its this oneEDIT2: I'm aware LLM dont "know" anything and don't reason, and it's exactly why I wanted to find the article. Some more details here: https://feddit.it/post/18191686/13815095
I don't know how I work. I couldn't tell you much about neuroscience beyond "neurons are linked together and somehow that creates thoughts". And even when it comes to complex thoughts, I sometimes can't explain why. At my job, I often lean on intuition I've developed over a decade. I can look at a system and get an immediate sense if it's going to work well, but actually explaining why or why not takes a lot more time and energy. Am I an LLM?
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Who has claimed that LLMs have the capacity to reason?
More than enough people who claim to know how it works think it might be "evolving" into a sentient being inside it's little black box. Example from a conversation I gave up on...
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18759960 -
I found the aeticle in a post on the fediverse, and I can't find it anymore.
The reaserchers asked a simple mathematical question to an LLM ( like 7+4) and then could see how internally it worked by finding similar paths, but nothing like performing mathematical reasoning, even if the final answer was correct.
Then they asked the LLM to explain how it found the result, what was it's internal reasoning. The answer was detailed step by step mathematical logic, like a human explaining how to perform an addition.
This showed 2 things:
-
LLM don't "know" how they work
-
the second answer was a rephrasing of original text used for training that explain how math works, so LLM just used that as an explanation
I think it was a very interesting an meaningful analysis
Can anyone help me find this?
EDIT: thanks to @theunknownmuncher
@lemmy.world
https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language-model its this oneEDIT2: I'm aware LLM dont "know" anything and don't reason, and it's exactly why I wanted to find the article. Some more details here: https://feddit.it/post/18191686/13815095
"Researchers" did a thing I did the first day I was actually able to ChatGPT and came to a conclusion that is in the disclaimers on the ChatGPT website. Can I get paid to do this kind of "research?" If you've even read a cursory article about how LLMs work you'd know that asking them what their reasoning is for anything doesn't work because the answer would just always be an explanation of how LLMs work generally.
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How would you prove that someone or something is capable of reasoning or thinking?
You can prove it’s not by doing some matrix multiplication and seeing its matrix multiplication. Much easier way to go about it
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it's completing the next word.
Facts disagree, but you've decided to live in a reality that matches your biases despite real evidence, so whatever
It’s literally tokens. Doesn’t matter if it completes the next word or next phrase, still completing the next most likely token
can’t think can’t reason can witch’s brew facsimile of something done before
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but there's been significant research and progress in tracing internals of LLMs, that show logic, planning, and reasoning.
would there be a source for such research?
https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language-model for one, the exact article OP was asking for
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https://www.anthropic.com/research/tracing-thoughts-language-model for one, the exact article OP was asking for
but this article espouses that llms do the opposite of logic, planning, and reasoning?
quoting:
Claude, on occasion, will give a plausible-sounding argument designed to agree with the user rather than to follow logical steps. We show this by asking it for help on a hard math problem while giving it an incorrect hint. We are able to “catch it in the act” as it makes up its fake reasoning,
are there any sources which show that llms use logic, conduct planning, and reason (as was asserted in the 2nd level comment)?
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They walk down runways and pose for magazines. Do they reason? Sometimes.
But why male models?
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but this article espouses that llms do the opposite of logic, planning, and reasoning?
quoting:
Claude, on occasion, will give a plausible-sounding argument designed to agree with the user rather than to follow logical steps. We show this by asking it for help on a hard math problem while giving it an incorrect hint. We are able to “catch it in the act” as it makes up its fake reasoning,
are there any sources which show that llms use logic, conduct planning, and reason (as was asserted in the 2nd level comment)?
No, you're misunderstanding the findings. It does show that LLMs do not explain their reasoning when asked, which makes sense and is expected. They do not have access to their inner-workings and generate a response that "sounds" right, but tracing their internal logic shows they operate differently than what they claim, when asked. You can't ask an LLM to explain its own reasoning. But the article shows how they've made progress with tracing under-the-hood, and the surprising results they found about how it is able to do things like plan ahead, which defeats the misconception that it is just "autocomplete"
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People don't understand what "model" means. That's the unfortunate reality.
Yeah. That's because peoples unfortunate reality is a "model".
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More than enough people who claim to know how it works think it might be "evolving" into a sentient being inside it's little black box. Example from a conversation I gave up on...
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18759960I don't want to brigade, so I'll put my thoughts here. The linked comment is making the same mistake about self preservation that people make when they ask an LLM to "show it's work" or explain it's reasoning. The text response of an LLM cannot be taken at it's word or used to confirm that kind of theory. It requires tracing the logic under the hood.
Just like how it's not actually an AI assistant, but trained and prompted to output text that is expected to be what an AI assistant would respond with, if it is expected that it would pursue self preservation, then it will output text that matches that. It's output is always "fake"
That doesn't mean there isn't a real potential element of self preservation, though, but you'd need to dig and trace through the network to show it, not use the text output.
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The study being referenced explains in detail why they can’t. So I’d say it’s Anthropic who stated LLMs don’t have the capacity to reason, and that’s what we’re discussing.
The popular media tends to go on and on about conflating AI with AGI and synthetic reasoning.
You're confusing the confirmation that the LLM cannot explain it's under-the-hood reasoning as text output, with a confirmation of not being able to reason at all. Anthropic is not claiming that it cannot reason. They actually find that it performs complex logic and behavior like planning ahead.
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I don't know how I work. I couldn't tell you much about neuroscience beyond "neurons are linked together and somehow that creates thoughts". And even when it comes to complex thoughts, I sometimes can't explain why. At my job, I often lean on intuition I've developed over a decade. I can look at a system and get an immediate sense if it's going to work well, but actually explaining why or why not takes a lot more time and energy. Am I an LLM?
I agree. This is the exact problem I think people need to face with nural network AIs. They work the exact same way we do. Even if we analysed the human brain it would look like wires connected to wires with different resistances all over the place with some other chemical influences.
I think everyone forgets that nural networks were used in AI to replicate how animal brains work, and clearly if it worked for us to get smart then it should work for something synthetic. Well we've certainly answered that now.
Everyone being like "oh it's just a predictive model and it's all math and math can't be intelligent" are questioning exactly how their own brains work. We are just prediction machines, the brain releases dopamine when it correctly predicts things, it self learns from correctly assuming how things work. We modelled AI off of ourselves. And if we don't understand how we work, of course we're not gonna understand how it works.
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You can prove it’s not by doing some matrix multiplication and seeing its matrix multiplication. Much easier way to go about it
Yes, neural networks can be implemented with matrix operations. What does that have to do with proving or disproving the ability to reason? You didn't post a relevant or complete thought
Your comment is like saying an audio file isn't really music because it's just a series of numbers.
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You're confusing the confirmation that the LLM cannot explain it's under-the-hood reasoning as text output, with a confirmation of not being able to reason at all. Anthropic is not claiming that it cannot reason. They actually find that it performs complex logic and behavior like planning ahead.
No, they really don’t. It’s a large language model. Input cues instruct it as to which weighted path through the matrix to take. Those paths are complex enough that the human mind can’t hold all the branches and weights at the same time. But there’s no planning going on; the model can’t backtrack a few steps, consider different outcomes and run a meta analysis. Other reasoning models can do that, but not language models; language models are complex predictive translators.
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No, they really don’t. It’s a large language model. Input cues instruct it as to which weighted path through the matrix to take. Those paths are complex enough that the human mind can’t hold all the branches and weights at the same time. But there’s no planning going on; the model can’t backtrack a few steps, consider different outcomes and run a meta analysis. Other reasoning models can do that, but not language models; language models are complex predictive translators.
To write the second line, the model had to satisfy two constraints at the same time: the need to rhyme (with "grab it"), and the need to make sense (why did he grab the carrot?). Our guess was that Claude was writing word-by-word without much forethought until the end of the line, where it would make sure to pick a word that rhymes. We therefore expected to see a circuit with parallel paths, one for ensuring the final word made sense, and one for ensuring it rhymes.
Instead, we found that Claude plans ahead. Before starting the second line, it began "thinking" of potential on-topic words that would rhyme with "grab it". Then, with these plans in mind, it writes a line to end with the planned word.
actually read the research?
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I've read that article. They used something they called an "MRI for AIs", and checked e.g. how an AI handled math questions, and then asked the AI how it came to that answer, and the pathways actually differed. While the AI talked about using a textbook answer, it actually did a different approach. That's what I remember of that article.
But yes, it exists, and it is science, not TicTok
Thank you. I found the article, linkin the OP
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The State of Consumer AI: AI’s Consumer Tipping Point Has Arrived - Only 3%* of US AI users are willing to pay for it.
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Keep the Future Human: How Unchecked Development of Smarter-Than-Human, Autonomous, General-Purpose AI Systems Will Almost Inevitably Lead to Human Replacement. But it Doesn't Have to.
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