It is an important distinction - they do not 'understand' at all.
Input tokens map to output tokens. The illusion of comprehension is a byproduct.
Input tokens map to output tokens. The illusion of comprehension is a byproduct.
Whether someone/thing has understood you is more a practical matter than a question of what substrate is used.
It’s a mapping, yes, but a very large, complex mapping. It’s clear LLMs do understand some things and can reason. How that’s done we don’t know, it’s emergent. It’s not like you can pin it down to a specific mapping.
It becomes a problem when sufficient number of people suffer from this, or those in important decision making places.
If every living creature on earth ended tomorrow there would be no individual realities, yet actual reality would continue.
Our priors shape how we perceive the things around us.
I think a lot of people just haven’t seen good quality math proofs or code from an LLM. When I say it’s indistinguishable from the real deal, I mean it. If you haven’t seen it that’s valid, most devs use LLMs like monsters. But when it’s done right, it’s very high quality.