No you "know" what your name is and you retrieve that information. It's infinitely different to rolling a dice and picking a name based on what number comes up

This is two different parts of the system.

> No you "know" what your name is and you retrieve that information.

The LLM has this (literally - most of it is a key value store). It outputs a probability for all possible next tokens.

> It's infinitely different to rolling a dice and picking a name based on what number comes up

The sampling algorithm running the LLM then does this part, and adds randomness to make it more "creative".

So if you want factual information then don't be so random you skip over the right answer.

I feel like I work in similar ways, if you ask my name there's a probability that I'll answer with the shorten version or the longer one pretty much randomly and there's no conscious effort about it.

While the LLMs do have hallucinations, basic stuff like this will never trigger any.

Where I feel the most differences are aren't in the token concept but rather on the deep reasoning (which we don't use as much in my opinion)

Sometimes I'm tempted to think that my brain is as fuzzy if not more than an LLM

If asked repeatedly, are you gonna answer that question with a different name, depending on which "memory" you randomly pick from?

Somebody with MPD might.

That's an interesting example, since an LLM has no concept of a "self" and literally does not know who it is. It can only answer it "correctly" if you prefix it with a prompt telling it who and what it is.

You also have been told your name, most likely by your parents. It also had to be explained to you what you are, at some point in your life.

It's really not though, generally maybe but you also give it a split second to think about if it's a good time to lie, make a joke or maybe just not reveal your name.

And any of those choices will be your best guess at the next tokens in the text of the conversation respecting not only the conversation but also your self image and surroundings.

what if you're the only john in a world of steves? What would happen then?

I'd say, hi I'm john