The Vector Grounding Problem

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Mollo, Dimitri Coelho, Millière, Raphaël
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2023
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author Mollo, Dimitri Coelho
Millière, Raphaël
author_facet Mollo, Dimitri Coelho
Millière, Raphaël
contents Large language models (LLMs) produce seemingly meaningful outputs, yet they are trained on text alone without direct interaction with the world. This leads to a modern variant of the classical symbol grounding problem in AI: can LLMs' internal states and outputs be about extra-linguistic reality, independently of the meaning human interpreters project onto them? We argue that they can. We first distinguish referential grounding -- the connection between a representation and its worldly referent -- from other forms of grounding and argue it is the only kind essential to solving the problem. We contend that referential grounding is achieved when a system's internal states satisfy two conditions derived from teleosemantic theories of representation: (1) they stand in appropriate causal-informational relations to the world, and (2) they have a history of selection that has endowed them with the function of carrying this information. We argue that LLMs can meet both conditions, even without multimodality or embodiment.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2304_01481
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Vector Grounding Problem
Mollo, Dimitri Coelho
Millière, Raphaël
Computation and Language
Large language models (LLMs) produce seemingly meaningful outputs, yet they are trained on text alone without direct interaction with the world. This leads to a modern variant of the classical symbol grounding problem in AI: can LLMs' internal states and outputs be about extra-linguistic reality, independently of the meaning human interpreters project onto them? We argue that they can. We first distinguish referential grounding -- the connection between a representation and its worldly referent -- from other forms of grounding and argue it is the only kind essential to solving the problem. We contend that referential grounding is achieved when a system's internal states satisfy two conditions derived from teleosemantic theories of representation: (1) they stand in appropriate causal-informational relations to the world, and (2) they have a history of selection that has endowed them with the function of carrying this information. We argue that LLMs can meet both conditions, even without multimodality or embodiment.
title The Vector Grounding Problem
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.01481