The part that really bakes my noodle: `/foo/bar/baz.txt` can be a filename that no one has ever typed before, the error inside the file can be a typo that no one has ever typed before, and it will still correctly "predict the next token" to solve your problem.
In the case of the brain, it'd be more akin to the reduction of the brain to just the neuronal dynamics (obviously experience phenomenally is much more than that to us!)
But both views can be useful, depending on what you are trying to understand.
The problem with these arguments is that people pick and choose based on their persons preferences. People who are in love with LLMs will, on the LLM side, argue against reductionism "they are way more than next token predictors!" then they'll turn around and equally try to argue "the substrate doesn't matter! The brain is "just" neurons and digital activity so of course we can replicate it!" (this is also incorrect, btw, the brain is also an analog system, even in its electrical connections and not just in its chemistry)
The on the other side the anti LLM crew will do the opposite (launch into reductionism when it comes to LLMs, resist it when it comes to humans). I'm a human being and I like humans and I think people have adopted a strange view of LLMs, which are a tool and should be treated as such, so I tend to side with the humans. The stalwart defenders of LLM honor that would balk at any attempt to reduce them in stature to what they fundamentally are, mechanistically, are... an odd bunch. I'm confused why people are so passionate about it. If someone told me "well your IDE is just a fancy AST walker" yeah I think that is a dumb take but I wouldn't feel like I had to argue against such a take either saying "no! no! it's so much more!"
A system is not just its little bits.
Where "system" and "little bits" can be just about anything. But people endlessly repeat this mistake, and it has been a go-to misunderstanding/misrepresentation for a lot of people on this forum.
Describing LLMs as next token predictors isn’t incorrect, it’s meaningless. It’s the equivalent of describing brains as “a bunch of atoms”.
The problem with these descriptions is that they say nothing about high-level capabilities. If you can predict the next token in a proof of the Riemann hypothesis, then you can prove the Riemann hypothesis.