Comment by windexh8er
15 hours ago
Do you also think LLMs "think"?
From what you've described an LLM has not invented anything. LLMs that can reason have a bit more slight of hand but they're not coming up with new ideas outside of the bounds of what a lot of words have encompassed in both fiction and non.
Good for you that you've got a fun token of code that's what you've always wanted, I guess. But this type of fantasy take on LLMs seems to be more and more prevalent as of late. A lot of people defending LLMs as if they're owed something because they've built something or maybe people are getting more and more attached to them from the conversational angle. I'm not sure, but I've run across more people in 2025 that are way too far in the deep end of personifying their relationships with LLMs.
Hang on, you're now saying that if something has ever been described in fiction it doesn't count as invention? So if somebody literally developed a working photon torpedo, that isn't new because "Star Trek Did It"?
You seem to be pretty far down the rabbit hole. How about this... You task an LLM to create a photon torpedo. If it can truly think then it should be able to provide you with something tangible. When you've got that in hand let us all know.
Back to the land of reality... Describing something in fiction doesn’t magically make it "not an invention". Fiction can anticipate an idea, but invention is about producing a working, testable implementation and usually involves novel technical methods. "Star Trek did it" is at most prior art for the concept, not a blueprint for the mechanism. If you can't understand that differential then maybe go ask an LLM.
I didn't say anything about an LLM. I said "somebody" not "some predictive text engine."
Is there any danger an LLM is going to create a working photo torpedo?
Well, they can use tools, and tools includes physics simulations, so if it is possible (and FWIW the tool-free "intuition" of ChatGPT is "there will never be an age of antimatter"), then why couldn't LLMs grind those tools to get a solution?
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