Summary
- There is no actual “being” behind AI, just a statistical generator of text based on patterns in its training data, which is usually months or years old and therefore out of date.
- After an AI chatbot named Grok gave multiple and conflicting reasons for its temporary disappearance, one of which was controversial enough to interest NBC reporters, users wrongly believe there is a “persona” behind the chatbot with a consistent point of view.
- Large Language Models (LLMs) are unable to meaningfully assess their own capabilities as they have no introspective understanding of their training process, do not have access to their surrounding system architecture, and cannot work out their own performance boundaries.
Therefore, any response they give about their limitations is an educated guess based on previous patterns about the limitations of other AI models.
- This creates a paradox where, for example, an AI model may claim impossibility for tasks it can actually perform, or conversely claim competence in areas where it consistently fails.
- This article concludes that there is a lifetime of hearing humans explain their actions that has led us to believe AI models can similarly introspect when in fact they are simply mimicking textual patterns to guess at their own limitations.