I mean, among people who are proficient with IPA, they still struggle to read whole sentences written entirely in IPA. Similarly, people who speak and read chinese struggle to read entire sentences written in pinyin. I’m not saying people can’t do it, just that it’s much less natural for us (even though it doesn’t really seem like it ought to be.)
I agree that LLMs are not as bright as they look, but my point here is that this particular thing – their strange inconsistency understanding what letters correspond to the tokens they produce – specifically shouldn’t be taken as evidence for or against LLMs being capable in any other context.
Similarly, people who speak and read chinese struggle to read entire sentences written in pinyin.
Because pinyin was implemented by the Russians to teach Chinese to people who use Cyrillic characters. Would make as much sense to call out people who can’t use Katakana.
More like calling out people who can’t read romaji, I think. It’s just not a natural encoding for most Japanese people, even if they can work it out if you give them time.
I mean, among people who are proficient with IPA, they still struggle to read whole sentences written entirely in IPA. Similarly, people who speak and read chinese struggle to read entire sentences written in pinyin. I’m not saying people can’t do it, just that it’s much less natural for us (even though it doesn’t really seem like it ought to be.)
I agree that LLMs are not as bright as they look, but my point here is that this particular thing – their strange inconsistency understanding what letters correspond to the tokens they produce – specifically shouldn’t be taken as evidence for or against LLMs being capable in any other context.
Because pinyin was implemented by the Russians to teach Chinese to people who use Cyrillic characters. Would make as much sense to call out people who can’t use Katakana.
More like calling out people who can’t read romaji, I think. It’s just not a natural encoding for most Japanese people, even if they can work it out if you give them time.