Monday, January 15, 2024

Contra Chomsky: LLMs cannot learn (at least some) languages that are impossible for humans to learn.

That Chomsky should make such a claim is not terribly surprising. The actual (physical) process by language strings are produced and comprehended is of no interest to him. For all practical purposes Chomsky treats language as existing in a timeless realm of Platonic ideals. Thus it wouldn't occur to him to think that the nature of the process by which LLMs produce language strings places restrictions on the nature of the languages they can deal with.

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