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> but LLMs reason just fine. There is a lot of research that shows they have trouble reasoning. Folks working with LLMs and building them agree that they can't

> but LLMs reason just fine. There is a lot of research that shows they have trouble reasoning. Folks working with LLMs and building them agree that they can't reason, yet pop-sci folks religiously insist they can reason. This is not even a controversial topic. https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.11502 https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.11502 Reminds me of this comic: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-31 https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2010-01-31

mgfist 4y ago
I'm not the person you responded to, but that's an old paper. LLMs have come a long way since. Nothing conclusive but GPT4 does show some signs of something deeper. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.12712.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.12712.pdf
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  Yes, I have read that paper and have forwarded it eagerly to colleagues. Respectfully, please read the paper you have linked, especially section 8.2. Look at section 8.2 in the paper you linked: "8.2 Lack of planning in arithmetic/reasoning problems" > However, it seems that the autoregressive nature of the model which forces it to solve problems in a sequential fashion sometimes poses a more profound difficulty that cannot be remedied simply by instructing the model to find a step by step solution Nowhere in the paper is an evaluation on standard reasoning datasets (https://tptp.org https://tptp.org) because they are much much much tougher than the simple examples that GPT-4 struggles with. LLMs are a huge breakthrough but let us not muddy the science.
  - Sunhold 4y ago
    GPT 4 was evaluated on multiple reasoning benchmarks in the release paper.[1] The problems in TPTP are not really appropriate for a language model and exceed the capabilities of most humans working without tools. Clearly humans have some reasoning ability even if they cannot solve those problems. [1] https://openai.com/research/gpt-4 https://openai.com/research/gpt-4
famouswaffles 4y ago
Oh boy, if you want to fling papers/research, i can do that just fine. https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.09196v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.09196v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09066 https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09066 https://thegradient.pub/othello/ https://thegradient.pub/othello/ Moreover, "have trouble reasoning" and "can't reason at all" are two very different statements. Not that i particularly agree with either but you should keep that in mind.

mgfist 4y ago

I'm not the person you responded to, but that's an old paper. LLMs have come a long way since. Nothing conclusive but GPT4 does show some signs of something deeper. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.12712.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.12712.pdf

cscurmudgeon 4y ago
Yes, I have read that paper and have forwarded it eagerly to colleagues. Respectfully, please read the paper you have linked, especially section 8.2. Look at section 8.2 in the paper you linked: "8.2 Lack of planning in arithmetic/reasoning problems" > However, it seems that the autoregressive nature of the model which forces it to solve problems in a sequential fashion sometimes poses a more profound difficulty that cannot be remedied simply by instructing the model to find a step by step solution Nowhere in the paper is an evaluation on standard reasoning datasets (https://tptp.org https://tptp.org) because they are much much much tougher than the simple examples that GPT-4 struggles with. LLMs are a huge breakthrough but let us not muddy the science.
- Sunhold 4y ago
  GPT 4 was evaluated on multiple reasoning benchmarks in the release paper.[1] The problems in TPTP are not really appropriate for a language model and exceed the capabilities of most humans working without tools. Clearly humans have some reasoning ability even if they cannot solve those problems. [1] https://openai.com/research/gpt-4 https://openai.com/research/gpt-4

famouswaffles 4y ago

Oh boy, if you want to fling papers/research, i can do that just fine. https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.09196v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.09196v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09066 https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.09066 https://thegradient.pub/othello/ https://thegradient.pub/othello/ Moreover, "have trouble reasoning" and "can't reason at all" are two very different statements. Not that i particularly agree with either but you should keep that in mind.