Personally I am convinced LLMs do have real understanding, because they seem to respond in interesting and thoughtfull ways to anything I care to talk to them about, well outside of any topic I would expect to be captured statistically! (Indeed, I often find it easier to get LLMs to understand me than many humans. :-)
There's also stuff like the Golden Gate Claude experiment and research @repligate shares on twitter, which again make me think understanding (as I conceive of it) is definitely there.
Now, are the conscious, feeling entities? That is a harder question to answer...
There's also stuff like the Golden Gate Claude experiment and research @repligate shares on twitter, which again make me think understanding (as I conceive of it) is definitely there.
Now, are the conscious, feeling entities? That is a harder question to answer...