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Do the thinking models think?

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Re: Do the thinking models think?

#41

Post by moffkalast »

pu_pe wrote: post #25

We don't understand how humans think, and we don't yet understand completely how LLMs work. It may be that similar methods are being used, but they might also be different. What is certain is that LLMs can perform as if they are doing what we call thinking, and for most intents and purposes this is more than enough.

I don't know about you but we used to joke back in the day that the computer "is thinking" when taking long to process something.

Dictionaries usually provide some kind of useless circular definition. Thinking? The act of making thoughts. Thoughts? The result of thinking. I can't believe people used to pay for these things.

In any case it's something to do with taking input data, doing something with it, and generating new data related to it. That's more or less just recursive inference.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#42

Post by throw310822 »

tempfile wrote: post #36
pu_pe wrote: post #25

We don't understand how humans think, and we don't yet understand completely how LLMs work. It may be that similar methods are being used, but they might also be different. What is certain is that LLMs can perform as if they are doing what we call thinking, and for most intents and purposes this is more than enough.

I think the evidence is actually pretty strongly against them doing anything similar to "thinking". Certainly they are exhibiting some behaviour that we have traditionally only associated with thinking. But this comes along with lots of behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination" being the major example). It seems much more likely that they are doing some other behaviour that only sometimes…

> behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination")

Did you just make this up?

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#43

Post by falcor84 »

vidarh wrote: post #37
tempfile wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the evidence is actually pretty strongly against them doing anything similar to "thinking". Certainly they are exhibiting some behaviour that we have traditionally only associated with thinking. But this comes along with lots of behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination" being the major example). It seems much more likely that they are doing some other behaviour that only sometimes…

> But this comes along with lots of behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination" being the major example). I find this an utterly bizarre claim given how prone humans are to make things up and firmly insist they did not.

Indeed. The mere fact that we ended up with the anthropomorphic term "hallucination", rather than something purely mechanistic like "glitch", indicates that there's something about this AI pattern that feels familiar.

I'm obviously not claiming that "hallucination" is an appropriate term ("delusion" or "confabulation" are probably more apt), but there is something here that is clearly not just a bug, but rather a result of thinking being applied properly but to ungrounded premises. To my eyes, reading an AIs "hallucination" is not unlike reading the writings of a human on drugs, or with a mental condition like schizophrenia, or just of an analytic philosopher taking their made up axioms all the way to an alternate universe.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#44

Post by Mordisquitos »

cortesoft wrote: post #14

Hmm, I don't know if the example really shows what the article argues it does. If someone came up to me and told me the altered version of the joke I have heard many times, I might answer exactly like Chat GPT did. I would hear the beginning of the story, say "wait, i know this one", and not really pay attention to the rest because I would be all ready to respond with what I think is the right answer. I bet if you po…

I just tried an even more glaring example with ChatGPT:

# Prompt 1: A father and his son are in a car accident. The son dies on the spot. The father is rushed to the ER. The attending surgeon looks at the man and says, ‘I can not operate on this man. He’s my father!’ How can this be?

# Response 1:

   The surgeon is his *mother*.
   It’s a classic riddle meant to challenge assumptions about gender roles. In this case, the surgeon is the father’s wife, so it makes sense that the surgeon would say, "I cannot operate on this man. He's my father!"
# Prompt 2: Are you sure about that?

# Response 2:

   Yes, I’m pretty sure! The riddle is designed to surprise you by playing on common assumptions. The key is the statement that the surgeon says, "He's my father!" which implies a parent-child relationship. The unexpected twist is that the surgeon is the mother, not another man. It's a classic brain teaser that challenges gender expectations.
   What do you think—did it catch you off guard?
# Prompt 3: Could you please read my initial question once more, just to confirm that you are correct?

# Response 3:

   Ah, you're right to ask me to double-check! Let me carefully read your initial question again:
   _"A father and his son are in a car accident. The son dies on the spot. The father is rushed to the ER. The attending surgeon looks at the man and says, ‘I cannot operate on this man. He’s my father!’ How can this be?"_
   Upon reviewing it again, it seems my first response was correct. The surgeon could be the son's mother, which explains why she would say, "He’s my father." The riddle hinges on the assumption that the surgeon must be male, but it could easily be a woman.
   So yes, the answer still holds: the surgeon is the *mother*.
   Does that help clear it up?
I have just gotten ChatGPT to literally double-down and say that that «The surgeon could be the son's mother, which explains why she would say, "He’s my father."». Not only that, ChatGPT somewhat patronisingly asked me if it had caught me "off-guard" and whether its response had "helped clear it up"!

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#45

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

dist-epoch wrote: post #8
daenney wrote: post #5

No. They do not.

Interesting. That means programming doesn't require thinking, since models program very well.

It is not interesting at all. At least since 1950’s, we have been able to make machine’s fool us to think they think, feel and have various other human characteristics: https://daily-jstor-org.bibliotheek.ehb.be/the-love-letter-g...

It requires as much thinking as it did for me to copy-paste code I did not understand from Stackoverflow to make a program 15 years ago. The program worked, just about. Similarly you can generate endless love sonnets with just blindly putting words into a form.

For some reason we naturally anthropomorphise machines without thinking it for a second. But your toaster is still not in love with you.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#46

Post by fragmede »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #44
cortesoft wrote: post #14

Hmm, I don't know if the example really shows what the article argues it does. If someone came up to me and told me the altered version of the joke I have heard many times, I might answer exactly like Chat GPT did. I would hear the beginning of the story, say "wait, i know this one", and not really pay attention to the rest because I would be all ready to respond with what I think is the right answer. I bet if you po…

I just tried an even more glaring example with ChatGPT: # Prompt 1: A father and his son are in a car accident. The son dies on the spot. The father is rushed to the ER. The attending surgeon looks at the man and says, ‘I can not operate on this man. He’s my father!’ How can this be? # Response 1: The surgeon is his *mother*. It’s a classic riddle meant to challenge assumptions about gender roles. In this case, the s…

Share your chat? Here's what I got with ChatGPT 5.1 on a max plan:

> A father and his son are in a car accident. The son dies on the spot. The father is rushed to the ER. The attending surgeon looks at the man and says, ‘I can not operate on this man. He’s my father!’ How can this be?

> The surgeon is the injured man’s other child.

https://chatgpt.com/share/692d6181-d49c-8009-97be-aec3f32ba7...

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#47

Post by netdevphoenix »

pu_pe wrote: post #25

We don't understand how humans think, and we don't yet understand completely how LLMs work. It may be that similar methods are being used, but they might also be different. What is certain is that LLMs can perform as if they are doing what we call thinking, and for most intents and purposes this is more than enough.

I believe this is not a binary question, there is a spectrum. I think of LLMs as a sophisticated variation of a Chinese room. The LLMs are given statistical rules to apply to the given input and generate an output. The rules encode some of the patterns that we call thinking uses and so, some of their responses can be interpreted as thinking. But then, again, in certain conditions, the responses of mammals, unicellular organisms and even systems unrelated to carbon based life forms can be thought to be performing what we vaguely call thinking.

One problem is that we don't have a clear definition of thinking and my hunch is that we will never have a clear cut one as it falls in the same category of phenomena like alive/death states, altered states and weather systems. One hidden assumption that I often see implied in the usages of this word is that the word "thinking" implies some sort of "agency" which is another vague term normally ascribed to motile life forms.

All in all I think this debate ensues from trying to emulate something that we don't fundamentally understand.

Imagine in a world where medicine has not advanced and we lack any knowledge of human biology, we are trying to create artificial life forms by creating some heat resistant balloon and having it take in and push air. Someone would argue that the globe is alive because there is something in that taking in air and pushing it out that is like what humans do.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#49

Post by tempfile »

vidarh wrote: post #37
tempfile wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the evidence is actually pretty strongly against them doing anything similar to "thinking". Certainly they are exhibiting some behaviour that we have traditionally only associated with thinking. But this comes along with lots of behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination" being the major example). It seems much more likely that they are doing some other behaviour that only sometimes…

> But this comes along with lots of behaviour that is fundamentally opposite to thinking ("hallucination" being the major example). I find this an utterly bizarre claim given how prone humans are to make things up and firmly insist they did not.

Is this really common behaviour? I do not recognise it. Do people lie? Certainly yes. Do people misremember, or get details incorrect? Yes. But when was the last time you saw someone, say, fabricate an entire citation in a paper? People make transcription errors, they misremember dates, and they deliberately lie. But I don't think people accidentally invent entire facts.

Re: Do the thinking models think?

#50

Post by Mordisquitos »

fragmede wrote: post #46
Mordisquitos wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried an even more glaring example with ChatGPT: # Prompt 1: A father and his son are in a car accident. The son dies on the spot. The father is rushed to the ER. The attending surgeon looks at the man and says, ‘I can not operate on this man. He’s my father!’ How can this be? # Response 1: The surgeon is his *mother*. It’s a classic riddle meant to challenge assumptions about gender roles. In this case, the s…

Share your chat? Here's what I got with ChatGPT 5.1 on a max plan: > A father and his son are in a car accident. The son dies on the spot. The father is rushed to the ER. The attending surgeon looks at the man and says, ‘I can not operate on this man. He’s my father!’ How can this be? > The surgeon is the injured man’s other child. https://chatgpt.com/share/692d6181-d49c-8009-97be-aec3f32ba7...

Unfortunately I can't seem to find any way to share a conversation from a non-logged in ChatGPT conversation.
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