Some hypotheses on how chatbots work in problem-solving-driven conversations. Large Language Models as confirmation of the Innovation Illusion

arXiv:2606.07722v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: This article offers a perspective on the nature of chatbots as genuine conversation partners when discussing problems in relation to their solutions. What can chatbots do and what can’t they do, and how can this be explained? Our argument draws on Aggregation Dynamics, Cognitive Linguistics, Neuropsychology and Psychology.
Our argument focuses on basic chatbots in the hope of thereby making statements about the core functionality of more advanced chatbots. Basic chatbots are assumed to consist of a Large Language Model (LLM) with a simple interface.
The main results are: a description of human understanding and thinking based on so-called metaphorical problem propagations; the hypothesis that text dataset used for training LLMs have specific characteristics and that these text datasets only partially imitate human thinking and understanding; the hypothesis that the LLM training process encodes artificial metaphorical problem propagations into an LLM from these datasets; our conclusion that a basic chatbot cannot be a thinking partner capable of matching humans; our conclusion that further development of the Large Language Model will not lead to this either.
Yann LeCun states: “Animals and humans exhibit learning abilities and understandings of the world that are far beyond the capabilities of current AI and machine learning (ML) systems.” Our conclusions are in line with this. LeCun’s vision and ours are at odds with the optimism of Big Tech. That does not alter the fact that chatbots exist, that they are being used on a massive scale, by both individuals and organisations, and that it is therefore socially and politically important to understand them. Our article aims to contribute to the discussion on the functioning, benefits and drawbacks of chatbots.
We have not yet encountered the approach we used to arrive at our conclusions in our research into how chatbots work.