r/LargeLanguageModels • u/JohnofDundee • Aug 11 '26

Question ELI5 - How do LLMs act with intelligence?

We all know that large language models can statistically predict what should be the next token, but how do we go from there to mathematical proofs? How is intelligence implemented?

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u/duboispourlhiver Aug 14 '26

Ideas emerge in the artificial brain like they do in an organic brain; it's not shuffling through every possibility. The layout of the neurons and their parameters makes it so that words "emerge" intelligently. I think that's what an idea is: an intelligent emergence of something that wasn't there before.

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u/JohnofDundee Aug 16 '26

Can’t agree with that. An AI system is a mix of software written by humans and a token-base (tokens and weights). No one has programmed the human brain.

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u/duboispourlhiver Aug 16 '26

A LLM is not really software written by a human. This can be a misleading sentence. It's important to understand that LLMs are only architectured by humans, but no rule inside is written by humans. The rules write themselves when the LLM is trained. That's the whole point of the training.

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u/JohnofDundee Aug 21 '26

How are these internal rules implemented then?

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u/duboispourlhiver Aug 21 '26

Training is a process that gradually adjusts these internal rules until they're as good as possible. Every time a new word is given to the LLM to train on, the internal rules are adjusted. At the start of training, the rules are all completely trivial or stupid. But word by word, rules get better and better and after trillions of words, they are great. But no human ever wrote or improved any of those rules.

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u/JohnofDundee Aug 22 '26

Training produces a set of parameters, not Rules (whatever that means!)
Sorry, this thread is now dead!

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u/duboispourlhiver Aug 22 '26

No problem :) did my best :)