Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
People say: “LLMs learn like humans. We both copy patterns.”
That’s half true and fully misleading.
LLMs don’t learn language to understand it. They learn language to predict it. Token by token. Index by index. Trillions of guesses to minimize error. No intent. No meaning. No mental movie playing in the background.
Humans also predict, sure. But prediction is a side effect, not the goal. When you write, you’re not thinking “what word usually comes next?” You’re thinking about meaning, emotion, intent. Words come after the thought.
That’s why LLMs can sound like they’re reasoning… and still fail in bizarre ways. The words aren’t describing the thinking. The words are the thinking.
Same output sometimes. Completely different process underneath.
If this clicked, I can do a follow-up on reasoning, chain-of-thought, why it works, and why it breaks. Comment “reasoning” if you want that next 👀
I’m Louis-François, PhD dropout, now CTO & co-founder at Towards AI. Follow me for tomorrow’s no-BS AI roundup 🚀
#AIExplained #LLMs #ArtificialIntelligence #short
People say: “LLMs learn like humans. We both copy patterns.”
That’s half true and fully misleading.
LLMs don’t learn language to understand it. They learn language to predict it. Token by token. Index by index. Trillions of guesses to minimize error. No intent. No meaning. No mental movie playing in the background.
Humans also predict, sure. But prediction is a side effect, not the goal. When you write, you’re not thinking “what word usually comes next?” You’re thinking about meaning, emotion, intent. Words come after the thought.
That’s why LLMs can sound like they’re reasoning… and still fail in bizarre ways. The words aren’t describing the thinking. The words are the thinking.
Same output sometimes. Completely different process underneath.
If this clicked, I can do a follow-up on reasoning, chain-of-thought, why it works, and why it breaks. Comment “reasoning” if you want that next 👀
I’m Louis-François, PhD dropout, now CTO & co-founder at Towards AI. Follow me for tomorrow’s no-BS AI roundup 🚀
#AIExplained #LLMs #ArtificialIntelligence #short
