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The Batch - AI News & Insights: Do large language models understand the world? As a scientist and engineer, I’ve avoided asking whether an AI system...
Published Aug 09, 2023 Reading time 12 min read Share Dear friends, Do large language models understand the world? As a scientist and engineer, I’ve avoided asking whether an AI system “understands” anything. There’s no widely agreed-upon, scientific test for whether a system really understands — as opposed to appearing to understand — just as no such tests exist for consciousness or sentience, as I discussed in an earlier letter . This makes the question of understanding a matter of philosophy rather than science. But with this caveat, I believe that LLMs build sufficiently complex models of
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