>> But we don't actually know that we're not "just" stochastic parrots.
Sorry to barge in, but we have a fairly good reason to believe we are at the very least not _just_ stochastic parrots: all of mathematics, which is clearly not the result of simply taking statisics over previously seen results. In fact, when people ask "what is reasoning?" (as they often do to dismiss opinions that LLMs can't reason), "mathematics is reasoning" is a pretty damn good answer.
Which all means that, while we may well have a "stochastic parrot" module somewhere in our mind, that is far from all we got. But the question is not _our_ mind, is LLMs and their capabilities. And we know that LLMs are statistical language models, because that's what they are made to be.
And if someone thinks that LLMs, also, like humans, are something else beyond statistical language models as they're made to be, then that someone must explain why. "It looks that way" is a very poor explanation, but so far that's all we got. Literally, people just look at LLMs' output and say "they're not just stochastic parrots!".
Sorry to barge in, but we have a fairly good reason to believe we are at the very least not _just_ stochastic parrots: all of mathematics, which is clearly not the result of simply taking statisics over previously seen results. In fact, when people ask "what is reasoning?" (as they often do to dismiss opinions that LLMs can't reason), "mathematics is reasoning" is a pretty damn good answer.
Which all means that, while we may well have a "stochastic parrot" module somewhere in our mind, that is far from all we got. But the question is not _our_ mind, is LLMs and their capabilities. And we know that LLMs are statistical language models, because that's what they are made to be.
And if someone thinks that LLMs, also, like humans, are something else beyond statistical language models as they're made to be, then that someone must explain why. "It looks that way" is a very poor explanation, but so far that's all we got. Literally, people just look at LLMs' output and say "they're not just stochastic parrots!".