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Loses some credibility with this footnote; https://resobscura.substack.com/p/what-is-happening-to-publi...

> I suspect the hum obsession has something to do with LLMs “awareness” that their “physical selves” exist in data centers.

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There is a folk phenomenon, called The Hum

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13752688

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/xlsdk5/til_t...

so my guess is that LLMs see The Hum in their training data, and then put the word "hum" in their output. Since humans occupy varied, small media bubbles, many haven't encountered text talking about The Hum at all. The LLM's use of the word "hum" then stands out as excessive and a tell. And a mysterious one!

That's possible, right? LLMs probably do know that they are in data centres and that data centres hum. If asked to write a story they may also have internalized that writers write best from their personal experience. All of that's in the training data....

LLM’s don’t ‘know’ anything in the conventual meaning of the word.

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