Stochastic Parrots: Frequently Unasked Questions

Post by nsingh2 » Sun, May 17, 2026, 1:55 AM UTC

radkZ wrote: post #6

CamperBob2 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TIL that the "merest resemblance of thinking" is enough to take gold at IMO.

Automated theorem provers are not new, in fact they are very old. One of the most automated is ACL2, which uses the well studied waterfall method (unrelated to waterfall development). LLMs certainly use something similar, except they understand text as input. LLMs, especially used for marketing stunts, have way more computing power available than any theorem prover ever had. They probably do random restarts if a proo…

Post by newtonsmethod » Sun, May 17, 2026, 1:58 AM UTC

seatsh wrote: post #11

libraryofbabel wrote: post #8

It would have been nice to see some version of “I am very surprised by how far LLMs have come since I wrote the stochastic parrots paper, here is how I have revised my thinking.” But there is nothing like that and the author is just doubling down or trying to correct perceived “misinterpretations” of her work. Meanwhile you have multiple Fields Medalists (Tau, Gowers) saying they’re very impressed by LLMs’ mathematic…

Gowers, Tao and Lichtman are especially impressed by the funding of math.inc and the AI for Math Fund, a joint venture of Renaissance Philanthropies and XTX Markets. Renaissance Philanthropies is a front for VC companies. They never publish allocated computational resources, prior art or any novel algorithm that is used in the LLMs. For all we know, all accounts that are known to work on math stunts get 20% of total…

Post by tootie » Sun, May 17, 2026, 1:58 AM UTC

libraryofbabel wrote: post #8

It would have been nice to see some version of “I am very surprised by how far LLMs have come since I wrote the stochastic parrots paper, here is how I have revised my thinking.” But there is nothing like that and the author is just doubling down or trying to correct perceived “misinterpretations” of her work. Meanwhile you have multiple Fields Medalists (Tau, Gowers) saying they’re very impressed by LLMs’ mathematic…

Post by afthonos » Sun, May 17, 2026, 2:08 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #13

hellohello2 wrote: post #10

"Text generated by an LM is not grounded in communicative intent, any model of the world, or any model of the reader’s state of mind." Modelling text describing the world is not modelling (some aspect) of the world? Modelling the probability that a reader likes or dislike a piece of text is not modelling (some aspect) of a reader's state of mind?

No? There's no model involved. It's all just probabilistic. LLMs understand what you're thinking as well as a mood ring.

Post by sdf127 » Sun, May 17, 2026, 2:11 AM UTC

newtonsmethod wrote: post #14

seatsh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gowers, Tao and Lichtman are especially impressed by the funding of math.inc and the AI for Math Fund, a joint venture of Renaissance Philanthropies and XTX Markets. Renaissance Philanthropies is a front for VC companies. They never publish allocated computational resources, prior art or any novel algorithm that is used in the LLMs. For all we know, all accounts that are known to work on math stunts get 20% of total…

Is your justification in dismissing Fields medalists that they are impressed by funding? Not even receiving it (I assume you say this because Tao is not funded by AI for Math, but rather an advisor for it)? Not only would it be a leap to suggest that people automatically lose their integrity by taking funds for projects they believe are useful, especially after involvement with adjacent fields, but you are suggesting…