> Saying "I know how LLMs work because I read a paper about transformer architecture" is about as delusional as saying "I read a paper about transistors, and now I understand how Ryzen 9800X3D works". Maybe more so.
Which is to say, not delusional at all.
Or else we have to accept that basically hardly anyone "understands" anything. You set an unrealistic standard.
Beginners play abstract board games terribly. We don't say that this means they "don't understand" the game until they become experts; nor do we say that the experts "haven't understood" the game because it isn't strongly solved. Knowing the rules, consistently making legal moves and perhaps having some basic tactical ideas is generally considered sufficient.
Similarly, people who took the SICP course and didn't emerge thoroughly confused can reasonably be said to "understand how to program". They don't have to create MLOC-sized systems to prove it.
> It takes actual reverse engineering work to figure out how LLMs can do small bits and tiny slivers of what they do. And here you are - claiming that we actually already know everything there is to know about them.
No; it's a dismissal of the relevance of doing more detailed analysis, specifically to the question of what "understanding" entails.
The fact that a large pile of "transformers" is capable of producing the results we see now, may be surprising; and we may lack the mental resources needed to trace through a given calculation and ascribe aspects of the result to specific outputs from specific parts of the computation. But that just means it's a massive computation. It doesn't fundamentally change how that computation works, and doesn't negate the "understanding" thereof.