Mechanistic interpretability researchers applying causality theory to LLMs

To calculate +/- 3/6/9 months I shift by seasons. 3rd month of summer becomes 3rd month of winter.

That works well cause all months live in a primitive memory palace in my head: an analogue clock face with July at 12 and January at 6. So shifting by 6 means rotating the clock hand from 11 to 5 and immediately visualising what month it falls on.

This might sound inefficient to an LLM but human brains had image processing before language.

I've read a bit through your comment history which gives me the impression of a mostly rational individual with whom I agree on some things while disagreeing on others. You don't seem to be a raving anti-LLM crusader nor come across as a starry-eyed LLM fanboi. I therefore conclude that these last rants were, to speak with Ebenezer, the result of an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato rather than a farewell.

Assuming this to be the case my real question is: what makes you so sure these things don't "think"? This question can only be answered if we first know what "thinking" actually entails. Sure, LLMs are mechanistic and deterministic, feed them the same quote and seed and they'll produce the same output, token for token. If what they do is "thinking" - albeit mechanistically - then it seems to give lie to the concept of free will since the output for a given input only depends on the seed value. Surely humans don't 'think' like that? Well... who knows? The 'neural network' in human brains is far more complex than the ones used to run LLMs while LLMs can have access to more 'factoids' than the average human. What comprises 'thinking' as we do it? What would happen if you give, say, the neural circuitry in a rat brain access to enough storage to contain the training data used in current LLMs? Can a machine ever be made to 'think' or is that something which will always be limited to living organisms? If the answer is 'yes' we're back at the definitional question of what 'thinking' entails, if it is 'no' we're entering more in the realm of metaphysics and religion.

I don't know what 'thinking' entails, I just know I do it. I therefore can not definitely state whether LLMs 'think' or 'reason' but I can apply reason to what I observe and know about how these things work. Those observations and that knowledge lead me to conclude that, absent some metaphysical or religious veto these models can be made to 'think' and might already be doing so.

Here is Yuji Tachikawa from Japan (Mathematical Physics, String Theory, QFT) on recent progress in his own work using Fable 5 :

"I've been trying out Claude Fable recently, and last night, on a whim, I showed it my research notes about a collaborative project that's seen no progress in the past six months or so and asked for its thoughts. To my surprise, it made a non-trivial observation and essentially solved it."

"I was also surprised that it was using sympy to automatically write code and verify his own predictions."

"Fable probably seems like it properly understands string theory and has intuition too—that's my impression"

To be 100% honest, I really don't want to have this (or any other) conversation with you (or anyone else) right now (or possibly ever; I'm just sick and tired of people and their hateful bullshit), but purely out of respect for your fair and balanced reply I'll try to respond here in a civil and honest way to the best of my ability. This really is the last response I intend to make to anything anyone says on the topic, so I'll try to be thorough. If you want to respond to anything I say here, feel free, but don't expect a reply after this one (I may possibly, but probably not) . That having been said, here goes...

> ... "impression of a mostly rational individual with whom I agree on some things while disagreeing on others."

I try, really I do. It's gotten really hard these days. You're welcome to agree or disagree; Totally normal and expected. I just get tired of getting shut-down on every little thing I say by so many people who have sometimes less than zero experience in the topic they claim absolute certainty about, no matter if I can trot out a parade of facts proving my points. This inevitably leads to stress that is no longer as easy to just "brush off" as it used to be. Sorry for that.

> "You don't seem to be a raving anti-LLM crusader nor come across as a starry-eyed LLM fanboi."

You're right. I'm neither. I am actually quite impressed and amazed with what LLMs are capable of (especially in the hands of skilled and knowledgable users) but I also understand fully that there are tradeoffs involved and responsibilities involved in the usage of such tools. I do believe they (and other "AI" related technologies) have huge potential for both good and bad (largely dependent upon the user and their intent) and like any new tool, I genuinely do hope this one finds more of the good use than the bad, but more and more I'm feeling like it's just gonna get weaponized against society at large. Sad, but nothing I can say or do will change it. I'm fully convinced of that at this point.

> "what makes you so sure these things don't "think"?" ... ... "If the answer is 'yes' we're back at the definitional question of what 'thinking' entails, if it is 'no' we're entering more in the realm of metaphysics and religion."

So, in my mind, "thinking" is a much more "active" process than the "calculation" done by a machine just mechanistically working through a bunch of math. Does a desktop calculator "think"? Does a mechanical device like an Abacus or anything else that can "do math" without electronics? Calculation isn't necessarily "thinking", even though thinking can (and often does) result in calculation.

Now, where I'm coming from with my assertion that LLMs don't actually think is due to a few factors. First off, I've been learning the mathematics involved in how these things work for a very long time (decades now actually; as "neural network" technology and ideas is truly not a new thing), and while it's really amazing stuff, it's not magic. It's just math. Really fancy and complex math, but still just math. As soon as the math stops being done, the "thinking" stops. Does a brain ever stop thinking? I get the impression that until death it's kinda always active, even when you sleep. Not so with an LLM. You give it input, a buncha fancy math gets done by a really powerful "calculator" (computer), it responds with output, then it stops until it gets another "trigger" to start calculating some more.

There's some very real flaws in seeing that process as thinking however, even if you're only talking about that time during which the calculations are taking place. The problem I see there is that the LLM cannot "second guess" itself or worry about whether it might be incorrect about something. It just forges ahead with the calculations and gives the end result to the user, right or wrong, as it was designed to do. It has no "skin in the game" or reason to care (even if it had the ability to care) and it's got no real sense of "self" or the world or anything. It's just doing some really amazing math that results in an illusion of a thought process.

That having been said, I'm firmly convinced that even as these things stand now, they can absolutely assist humans in their thought processes if used properly and judiciously with full understanding of their limitations and weaknesses taken into account. I just don't believe that "more of the same" will somehow magically become "sentient" someday without a huge advance in both the hardware and software technologies it's built upon (on the level of the "positronic brain" or some kinda hand-wavy "quantum technology" science fiction concept). Pretty darn certain that more massive "AI data centers" aren't gonna lead to a "magical thinking machine" with the current forms of "AI" we're working with.

> "Those observations and that knowledge lead me to conclude that, absent some metaphysical or religious veto these models can be made to 'think' and might already be doing so."

Now, this here I can actually agree with, other than the "might already be doing so" part. They're not (yet). I'm really quite sure of that, knowing what I know about how these things work. They really are fantastic at faking it these days though, as evidenced by how many people truly are buying into the AI company CEO hype about AGI/ASI. I think that LLMs can absolutely be one part of a machine that's capable of a simulation of "thought" that could really be good enough to qualify as some form of "the real thing" on some level, and that may even someday (soon even?) surpass the capabilities of humans in that regard. It'll require some different ways of doing things though, and some combinations of classic traditional computing with a wide range of related "AI" technologies including LLMs, neural nets, vision models, etc, etc, and it'll have to be put in some sort of active state of operation where it's capable of doing the "thinking" and "learning" process continuously the way an actual brain does. I think it'll also help to give it access to a continuous input stream similar to how a brain has access to near constant input as well.

Anyone that wants to really know how this stuff works "under the hood" is welcome to ask an LLM about it. Many of 'em are actually quite good at explaining themselves, starting from "first principles" if you ask 'em to "keep it simple" all the way down through the deep mathematics involved. I encourage folks to have that discussion with several of their favorite LLMs if for no other reason than more knowledge about the topic is a good thing. Just be aware that they can at times say things that are actively incorrect and they will often say such things with great certainty (and sometimes even try to argue with you about it if you call them out on it). Always check your own (and the LLM's) knowledge against known verifiable provable facts. This stuff is all heavily documented and readily available "out there" on the Web with not too terribly much heavy searching required.

To summarize; I don't think it's impossible to create a "thinking machine" using these technologies. I just don't believe we're even remotely nearly as close to it as the AI mega-corporations would have us all believe. I might be wrong about everything I've said here, or I could be 100% correct. Dunno; No longer care either way really. I've said my piece and I'm done now. Bring on our AI overlords, for better or worse. I can't stop it either way.

Because there’s no evidentiary reason to deny the existence of my own phenomenal experience. I appear to experience, and the simplest conclusion to draw from that appearance is that I truly do experience.