Do Language Models' Words Refer?

arXiv:2308.05576v2 Announce Type: replace
Abstract: What do language models (LMs) do with language? Everyone agrees that they can produce sequences of (mostly) coherent strings of English. But do those sentences mean something, or are LMs simply babbling in a convincing simulacrum of language use? Here we will address one aspect of this broad question: whether LMs' words can refer, that is, achieve "word-to-world" connections. There is prima facie reason to think they do not since LMs do not interact with …

abstract arxiv cs.cl english language language models lms mean question something strings type will words