Do LLMs “think” in a similar way to humans? Or is it totally different?
Maybe it’s a good idea to listen to someone who publishes papers on this very subject, and is a professor of both philosophy and psychiatry and directs an Institute for Cognitive Science. That person is Dr. Chandra Sripada and his insights are fascinating.
Sean Carroll (interviewer, scientist and science communicator) says this interview made him lean towards the answer being “yes, they think like humans” whereas previously he favored the opposite view.


You should really listen to the podcast. Not going to summarize it here, but it looks like human reasoning including semantic activation patterns, use of productions, and dozens of other things that cognitive psychologists have known about for decades but for which they have not been able to come up with a mechanism.
Thanks that sounds interesting, will have a listen. Mapping human cognition to what’s likely represented with the stuff stored in neurons is very tricky but also quite intriguing.