Language models aren't world models for the same reason languages aren't world models. Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing. They are not the same as the thing. The map is not the territory, the description is not the described, you can't get wet in the word "water". They only have meaning to sentient beings, and that meaning is heavily subjective and contextual. But there appear to be some who think that w…
> Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing. They are not the same as the thing First of all, the point isn't about the map becoming the territory, but about whether LLMs can form a map that's similar to the map in our brains. But to your philosophical point, assuming there are only a finite number of things and places in the universe - or at least the part of which we care about - why wouldn't they be represent…
LLMs aren't world models
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Re: LLMs aren't world models
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If we accept the incompleteness theorem And, by various universality theorems, a sufficiently large AGI could approximate any sequence of human neuron firings to an arbitrary precision. So if the incompleteness theorem means that neural nets can never find truth, it also means that the human brain can never find truth. Human neuron firing patterns, after all, only represent a thing; they are not the same as the thi…
> And, by various universality theorems, a sufficiently large AGI could approximate any sequence of human neuron firings to an arbitrary precision. Wouldn't it become harder to simulate a human brain the larger a machine is? I don't know nothing, but I think that peaky speed of light thing might pose a challenge.
Re: LLMs aren't world models
#93I just tried a few things that are simple and a world model would probably get right. Eg Question to GPT5: I am looking straight on to some objects. Looking parallel to the ground. In front of me I have a milk bottle, to the right of that is a Coca-Cola bottle. To the right of that is a glass of water. And to the right of that there’s a cherry. Behind the cherry there’s a cactus and to the left of that there’s a pean…
Re: LLMs aren't world models
#94Language models aren't world models for the same reason languages aren't world models. Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing. They are not the same as the thing. The map is not the territory, the description is not the described, you can't get wet in the word "water". They only have meaning to sentient beings, and that meaning is heavily subjective and contextual. But there appear to be some who think that w…
> Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing. This is missing the lesson of the Yoneda Lemma: symbols are uniquely identified by their relationships with other symbols. If those relationships are represented in text, then in principle they can be inferred and navigated by an LLM. Some relationships are not represented well in text: tacit knowledge like how hard to twist a bottle cap to get it to come off, etc. We…
Re: LLMs aren't world models
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
« autonomously » what happens when subtle updates that are not bugs but change the meaning of some features that might break the workflow on some other external parts of a client’s system ? It happens all the time and, because it’s really hard to have the whole meaning and business rules written and maintained up to date, an LLM might never be able to grasp some meaning. Maybe if instead of developing code and infras…
Those spec sheets exist: they're called software.
Re: LLMs aren't world models
#96One thing I appreciated about this post, unlike a lot of AI-skeptic posts, is that it actually makes a concrete falsifiable prediction; specifically, "LLMs will never manage to deal with large code bases 'autonomously'". So in the future we can look back and see whether it was right. For my part, I'd give 80% confidence that LLMs will be able to do this within two years, without fundamental architectural changes.
"Deal with" and "autonomously" are doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Cursor already does a pretty good job indexing all the files in a code base in a way that lets it ask questions and get answers pretty quickly. It's just a matter of where you set the goalposts.
Re: LLMs aren't world models
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Deal with" and "autonomously" are doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Cursor already does a pretty good job indexing all the files in a code base in a way that lets it ask questions and get answers pretty quickly. It's just a matter of where you set the goalposts.
"LLM" as well, because coding agents are already more than just an LLM. There is very useful context management around it, and tool calling, and ability to run tests/programs, etc. Though they are LLM-based systems, they are not LLMs.
Re: LLMs aren't world models
#98Here's what LLMs remind me of. When I went to uni, we had tutorials several times a week. Two students, one professor, going over whatever was being studied that week. The professor would ask insightful questions, and the students would try to answer. Sometimes, I would answer a question correctly without actually understanding what I was saying. I would be spewing out something that I had read somewhere in the huge…
Even when it was right the first time!
Re: LLMs aren't world models
#99Language models aren't world models for the same reason languages aren't world models. Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing. They are not the same as the thing. The map is not the territory, the description is not the described, you can't get wet in the word "water". They only have meaning to sentient beings, and that meaning is heavily subjective and contextual. But there appear to be some who think that w…
> Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing. They are not the same as the thing First of all, the point isn't about the map becoming the territory, but about whether LLMs can form a map that's similar to the map in our brains. But to your philosophical point, assuming there are only a finite number of things and places in the universe - or at least the part of which we care about - why wouldn't they be represent…
Wouldn't physics still "exist" even if there were an infinite set of laws?
Re: LLMs aren't world models
#100Language models aren't world models for the same reason languages aren't world models. Symbols, by definition, only represent a thing. They are not the same as the thing. The map is not the territory, the description is not the described, you can't get wet in the word "water". They only have meaning to sentient beings, and that meaning is heavily subjective and contextual. But there appear to be some who think that w…
Now, given a program that is supposed to output text that encodes true statements (in some language), one can probably define some sort of inference system that corresponds to the program such that the inference system is considered to “prove” any sentence that the program outputs (and maybe also some others based on some logical principles, to ensure that the inference system satisfies some good properties), and upon defining this, one could (assuming the language allows making the right kinds of statements about arithmetic) show that this inference system is, by Gödel’s theorems, either inconsistent or incomplete.
This wouldn’t mean that the language was unable to express those statements. It would mean that the program either wouldn’t output those statements, or that the system constructed from the program was inconsistent (and, depending on how the inference system is obtained from the program, the inference system being inconsistent would likely imply that the program sometimes outputs false or contradictory statements).
But, this has basically nothing to do with the “placeholders” thing you said. Gödel’s theorem doesn’t say that some propositions are inexpressible in a given language, but that some propositions can’t be proven in certain axiom+inference systems.
Rather than the incompleteness theorems, the “undefinability of truth” result seems more relevant to the kind of point I think you are trying to make.
Still, I don’t think it will show what you want it to, even if the thing you are trying to show is true. Like, perhaps it is impossible to capture qualia with language, sure, makes sense. But logic cannot show that there are things which language cannot in any way (even collectively) refer to, because to show that there is a thing it has to refer to it.
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“Can you write a test suite for it?”
Hm, might depend on what you count as a “suite”, but a test protocol, sure. The one I have in mind would probably be a bit expensive to run if it fails the test though (because it involves offering prize money).