this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2025
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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
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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:

  • 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

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[–] theunknownmuncher@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

There is a distinction between data and an action you perform on data (matrix maths, codec algorithm, etc.). It’s literally completely different.

Incorrect. You might want to take an information theory class before speaking on subjects like this.

I literally cannot be wrong that LLMs cannot think or reason, there’s no room for debate, it’s settled long ago.

Lmao yup totally, it's not like this type of research currently gets huge funding at universities and institutions or anything like that 😂 it's a dead research field because it's already "settled". (You're wrong 🤭)

LLMs are just tools not sentient or verging on sentient

Correct. No one claimed they are "sentient" (you actually mean "sapient", not "sentient", but it's fine because people commonly mix these terms up. Sentience is about the physical senses. If you can respond to stimuli from your environment, you're sentient, if you can "I think, therefore I am", you're sapient). And no, LLMs are not sapient either, and sapience has nothing to do with neural networks' ability to mathematically reason or use logic, you're just moving the goalpost. But at least you moved it far enough to be actually correct?