The Mercurial Top-Level Ontology of Large Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Köhler, Nele, Neuhaus, Fabian
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Köhler, Nele
Neuhaus, Fabian
author_facet Köhler, Nele
Neuhaus, Fabian
contents In our work, we systematize and analyze implicit ontological commitments in the responses generated by large language models (LLMs), focusing on ChatGPT 3.5 as a case study. We investigate how LLMs, despite having no explicit ontology, exhibit implicit ontological categorizations that are reflected in the texts they generate. The paper proposes an approach to understanding the ontological commitments of LLMs by defining ontology as a theory that provides a systematic account of the ontological commitments of some text. We investigate the ontological assumptions of ChatGPT and present a systematized account, i.e., GPT's top-level ontology. This includes a taxonomy, which is available as an OWL file, as well as a discussion about ontological assumptions (e.g., about its mereology or presentism). We show that in some aspects GPT's top-level ontology is quite similar to existing top-level ontologies. However, there are significant challenges arising from the flexible nature of LLM-generated texts, including ontological overload, ambiguity, and inconsistency.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_01581
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Mercurial Top-Level Ontology of Large Language Models
Köhler, Nele
Neuhaus, Fabian
Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
In our work, we systematize and analyze implicit ontological commitments in the responses generated by large language models (LLMs), focusing on ChatGPT 3.5 as a case study. We investigate how LLMs, despite having no explicit ontology, exhibit implicit ontological categorizations that are reflected in the texts they generate. The paper proposes an approach to understanding the ontological commitments of LLMs by defining ontology as a theory that provides a systematic account of the ontological commitments of some text. We investigate the ontological assumptions of ChatGPT and present a systematized account, i.e., GPT's top-level ontology. This includes a taxonomy, which is available as an OWL file, as well as a discussion about ontological assumptions (e.g., about its mereology or presentism). We show that in some aspects GPT's top-level ontology is quite similar to existing top-level ontologies. However, there are significant challenges arising from the flexible nature of LLM-generated texts, including ontological overload, ambiguity, and inconsistency.
title The Mercurial Top-Level Ontology of Large Language Models
topic Computation and Language
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01581