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Re:A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs by Timwi on Monday July 07, 2025 @05:21AM (#44488337)
The author seems to want to label any discourse as “anthropomorphizing”. The word “goal” stood out to me: the author wants us to assume that we're anthropomorphizing as soon as we even so much as use the word “goal”. A simple breadth-first search that evaluates all chess boards and legal moves, but stops when it finds a checkmate for white and outputs the full decision tree, has a “goal”. There is no anthropomorphizing here, it's just using the word “goal” as a technical term. A hypothetical AGI with a goal like paperclip maximization is just a logical extension of the breadth-first search algorithm. Imagining such an AGI and describing it as having a goal isn't anthropomorphizing.
Re:A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs by tdullien on Monday July 07, 2025 @09:18AM (#44490093)
Author here. I am entirely ok with using "goal" in the context of an RL algorithm. If you read my article carefully, you'll find that I object to the use of "goal" in the context of LLMs.
Re:A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs by Timwi on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @08:43AM (#44499429)
If you read the literature on AI safety carefully (which uses the word “goal”), you'll find they're not talking about LLMs either.
Re:A non-anthropomorphized view of LLMs by tdullien on Tuesday July 08, 2025 @10:30AM (#44500347)
I think the Anthropic "omg blackmail" article clearly talks about both LLMs and their "goals".