Comment by guiambros
14 hours ago
> The system is inherently non-deterministic.
The system isn't randomly non-deterministic; it is statistically probabilistic.
The next-token prediction and the attention mechanism is actually a rigorous deterministic mathematical process. The variation in output comes from how we sample from that curve, and the temperature used to calibrate the model. Because the underlying probabilities are mathematically calculated, the system's behavior remains highly predictable within statistical bounds.
Yes, it's a departure from the fully deterministic systems we're used to. But that's not different than the many real world systems: weather, biology, robotics, quantum mechanics. Even the computer you're reading this right now is full of probabilistic processes, abstracted away through sigmoid-like functions that push the extremes to 0s and 1s.
A lot of words to say that for all intents and purposes... it's nondeterministic.
> Yes, it's a departure from the fully deterministic systems we're used to.
A system either produces the same output given the same input[1], or doesn't.
LLMs are nondeterministic by design. Sure, you can configure them with a zero temperature, a static seed, and so on, but they're of no use to anyone in that configuration. The nondeterminism is what gives them the illusion of "creativity", and other useful properties.
Classical computers, compilers, and programming languages are deterministic by design, even if they do contain complex logic that may affect their output in unpredictable ways. There's a world of difference.
[1]: Barring misbehavior due to malfunction, corruption or freak events of nature (cosmic rays, etc.).
Humans are nondeterministic.
So this is a moot point and a futile exercise in arguing semantics.