From the Editor's Desk

Does AI Know What an Apple Is? She Aims to Find Out. | Quanta Magazine

Ellie Pavlick stands in Brown University's Computer History Museum. Her work on how large language models understand concepts often merges philosophy with science.

Start talking to Ellie Pavlick about her work — looking for evidence of understanding within large language models (LLMs) — and she might sound as if she's poking fun at it. The phrase "hand-wavy" is a favorite, and if she mentions "meaning" or "reasoning," it'll often come with conspicuous air quotes. This is just Pavlick's way of keeping herself honest. As a computer scientist studying language models at Brown University and Google DeepMind, she knows that embracing natural language's inherent mushiness is the only way to take it seriously. "This is a scientific discipline — and it's a little squishy," she said.

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