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You can call it reasoning if you like, but what is going on underneath is clearly not the same process that humans use. Both can produce a useful answer, to be

You can call it reasoning if you like, but what is going on underneath is clearly not the same process that humans use. Both can produce a useful answer, to be sure. Its also not a great example of reasoning, as it is so simple. It's matching the context to an answer in some high dimensional space. But there is no real deduction or inference going on, where new ideas are derived from the proposition.

astrange 2y ago
There's a confusion between training and inference time here. Even if LLMs can't reason during inference time, they may be able to do it during pretraining and then you can query the existing reasoning during inference. Inference is more like running an algorithm - in fact it is that (Church-Turing equivalence) - so it's up to you if that is reasoning or not.
krisoft 2y ago
> Its also not a great example of reasoning, as it is so simple. I agree with that. Admitedly this was the simplest thing i could think of. But it feels we are just moving the goal post here. “Any reasoning” is what was asked. Now you are asking “a bit more complicated reasoning”. > there is no real deduction It does in my opinion correctly deducts that the commenter is skeptical. That is a deduction. What does a “real deduction” mean? Is there a sufficiently complicated prompt where you could test if an AI is reasoning according to your definition?
- MattPalmer1086 2y ago
  I guess what is missing for me is that there is no verification of the truth of it's responses. When a human "reasons" they are trying to take some information and find an answer that apparently fits. We don't just blurt out something that may or may not fit. Or at least, if we did we wouldn't call it reasoning. That an LLM can still produce answers which are correct some of the time is amazing. I just think without the ability to step back and assess it's response, it doesn't hit the bar of reasoning for me.

astrange 2y ago

There's a confusion between training and inference time here. Even if LLMs can't reason during inference time, they may be able to do it during pretraining and then you can query the existing reasoning during inference. Inference is more like running an algorithm - in fact it is that (Church-Turing equivalence) - so it's up to you if that is reasoning or not.

krisoft 2y ago

> Its also not a great example of reasoning, as it is so simple. I agree with that. Admitedly this was the simplest thing i could think of. But it feels we are just moving the goal post here. “Any reasoning” is what was asked. Now you are asking “a bit more complicated reasoning”. > there is no real deduction It does in my opinion correctly deducts that the commenter is skeptical. That is a deduction. What does a “real deduction” mean? Is there a sufficiently complicated prompt where you could test if an AI is reasoning according to your definition?

MattPalmer1086 2y ago
I guess what is missing for me is that there is no verification of the truth of it's responses. When a human "reasons" they are trying to take some information and find an answer that apparently fits. We don't just blurt out something that may or may not fit. Or at least, if we did we wouldn't call it reasoning. That an LLM can still produce answers which are correct some of the time is amazing. I just think without the ability to step back and assess it's response, it doesn't hit the bar of reasoning for me.