One of the decisive moments in my understanding of #LLMs and their limitations was when, last autumn, @emilymbender walked me through her Thai Library thought experiment.
She's now written it up as a Medium post, and you can read it here. The value comes from really pondering the question she poses, so take the time to think about it. What would YOU do in the situation she outlines?
If i understand correctly, pictures are removed because the notional participant has previous knowledge of how objects in the world look like. If that's correct, then a newborn baby in a library with pictures kept would be faced with a similar problem. Which are then the important differences between that notional newborn and an actual newborn in a normal family? I can think of (a) having physical objects to manipulate (b) feedback from other humans. Am i missing some obvious difference?
