Can Large Language Models Reason and Plan?

Abstract

While humans sometimes do show the capability of correcting their own erroneous guesses with self-critiquing, there seems to be no basis for that assumption in the case of LLMs.

Figures (3)

• Figure 1: An informal account of viewing LLM as a giant external non-veridical memory that acts as a pseudo System 1
• Figure 2: Claimed reasoning capabilities of LLMs are sometimes due to the subconscious helpful iterative prompting by the humans in the loop (graphic adapted from https://xkcd.com/2347/ under Creative Commons License)
• Figure 3: Viewing LLMs as an approximate knowledge source trained over civilizational knowledge