In memoriam of Daniel C. Dennett.

tldr; I sketch out what it means to apply Dennett's Intentional Stance to LLMs. I argue that the intentional vocabulary is already ubiquitous in experimentation with these systems therefore what is missing is the theoretical framework to justify this usage. I aim to make up for that and explain why the intentional stance is the best available explanatory tool for LLM behavior.

Choosing Between Stances

Why choose the intentional stance?

It seems natural to employ or ascribe cognitive states to AI models starting from the field's terminology, most prominently by calling it “machine learning” (Hagendorff 2023). This is very much unlike how other computer programs are treated. When programmers write software, they typically understand it in terms of what they designed it to execute (design stance) or simply make sense of it considering its physical properties, such [...]

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Outline:

(00:32) Choosing Between Stances

(03:36) Folk Psychology for LLMs

(05:45) Human-Level Performance

(06:38) Machine Psychology

(08:05) The Analogy of Alien Minds

(09:45) Advantages of the Intentional Stance Approach

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First published:
April 30th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/zjGh93nzTTMkHL2uY/the-intentional-stance-llms-edition

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“The Intentional Stance, LLMs Edition” by Eleni Angelou

LessWrong (30+ Karma)