News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Tracing the thoughts of a large language model by danielbln on Sunday March 30, 2025 @11:02AM (#43524729)
Planes fly, birds fly. They use related, but ultimately quite different mechanisms to do so. Yet we call both flying.
Re:Tracing the thoughts of a large language model by miraculixx on Monday March 31, 2025 @04:41PM (#43539722)
To fly means "to soar through air; move through the air with wings" (etymonline)

That is pretty much an accurate discription of what planes and birds do.

To plan means "to reason with intent".

That is very much not what LLMs do, and the paper does not provide evidence to the contrary. Yet it uses the term to give credence to it's rather speculative interpretation of observed correlation as causation.

Interestingly enough there is no definition of the term, which at least would help to understand what the authors actually mean.

I would be more inclined to take a more positive stance to the paper if it used more appropriate terms, such as call observed correlations just that. Granted that would possibly make for much less of a fancy title.