this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
261 points (96.1% liked)

Technology

70942 readers
3691 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
L4s@hackingne.ws
261
I'm looking for an article showing that LLMs don't know how they work internally (feddit.it)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by lgsp@feddit.it to c/technology@lemmy.world
72 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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 one

EDIT2: 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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

We don't have the same problems LLMs have.

LLMs have zero fidelity. They have no - none - zero - model of the world to compare their output to.

Humans have biases and problems in our thinking, sure, but we're capable of at least making corrections and working with meaning in context. We can recognise our model of the world and how it relates to the things we are saying.

LLMs cannot do that job, at all, and they won't be able to until they have a model of the world. A model of the world would necessarily include themselves, which is self-awareness, which is AGI. That's a meaning-understander. Developing a world model is the same problem as consciousness.

What I'm saying is that you cannot develop fidelity at all without AGI, so no, LLMs don't have the same problems we do. That is an entirely different class of problem.

Some moon rockets fail, but they don't have that in common with moon cannons. One of those can in theory achieve a moon landing and the other cannot, ever, in any iteration.