A Primer on Large Language Models and their Limitations

The world of artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly penetrating all aspects of our personal and professional lives. This proliferation of AI tools and applications are being met with a mixture of excitement, scepticism and even dread [78]. Excitement at the seemingly endless potential of AI applications such as LLMs, especially when they are integrated "within broader systems" [13], scepticism as the realisation dawns that LLMs are in fact fallible as evidenced by hallucinations and hence not the golden bullet that can solve all problems [19, 21], and a feeling of dread for those who believe that LLMs and AI have the potential to detrimentally impact our lives and make people redundant [78]. The ability of some LLMs to pass Theory of Mind (ToM) [64][32] and Turing Tests [7][42] suggests support for the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM), that cognition may be substrate independent. These findings challenge biological essentialism and open new avenues for creating sophisticated AI systems capable of human-like reasoning and interaction.