korrents

What Richard Sutton thinks about LLMs

@richard-sutton · 25 positions · 0 changes of mind

Computer scientist who founded the field of reinforcement learning, co-author of the standard textbook, and winner of the 2024 Turing Award.

Richard Sutton did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

5 dated positions, 2025, in their own words. Our reading of what Richard Sutton has said — not written or endorsed by them.

  1. Our readingLarge language models mimic what people say to do rather than work out what to do, which is why they are not about understanding the world.

    Their wordsreinforcement learning is about understanding your world whereas large language models are about mimicking people doing what people say you should do. They're not about figuring out what to do.

    ↗Richard Sutton – Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead endyoutube.com 2nd of 25 in this recording

    reinforcement learning

  3. Our readingA language model can predict what a person would say but not what will happen, and only the second of those is a model of the world.

    Their wordsthey have the ability to predict what a person would say they don't have the ability to predict what will happen

    ↗Richard Sutton – Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead endyoutube.com 3rd of 25 in this recording

  5. Our readingLanguage models cannot be a prior for learning from experience, because a prior needs a ground truth to be a prior about and they have none.

    Their wordsSo there's no ground truth. You can't have prior knowledge if you don't have ground truth because the prior knowledge is supposed to be a hint or an initial belief about what the truth is.

    ↗Richard Sutton – Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead endyoutube.com 4th of 25 in this recording

  7. Our readingLarge language models start in exactly the wrong place, because they try to get by without a goal and therefore without any sense of better or worse.

    Their wordsThe scalable method is you learn from experience. Um you uh you you try things, you see what you see what works. No one no one has to tell you. First of all, you have a goal. So without a goal, uh there's no sense of right or wrong or better or worse. So large language models are trying to get by without having a goal or a sense of better or worse. That's just, you know, it's exactly starting in the wrong place.

    ↗Richard Sutton – Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead endyoutube.com 7th of 25 in this recording

  9. Our readingLarge language models are a bad way to do science, because they have been fed so much that nobody knows what they already knew.

    Their wordsWe don't we don't really know what information they had prior. We are we have to guess because they've been fed so much. This is one reason why they're not a good way to do science. Uh it's just so uncontrolled, so unknown.

    ↗Richard Sutton – Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead endyoutube.com 16th of 25 in this recording