Science & technology| AI think, therefore AI am
Researchers lift the lid on how reasoning models actually “think”
They plan sentences far in advance. They also bullshit themselves when reasoning out loud
A thoughtful robot sitting on a rock, resembling The Thinker, with a question mark above its head
Illustration: Travis Constantine
As all scribblersof doggerel know, rhymes must be paired up before you start a new line. Otherwise you may write yourself into a dead end with an ill-placed “purple” or “orange”. It is an insight that is shared by artificial intelligence (AI), new research shows. When Claude, a large language model (LLM), is asked to write a rhyming couplet, it begins thinking of the second part of the rhyme as soon as the first word is written. Give it the first line “he saw a carrot and had to grab it”, and the AI begins contemplating rabbits at once, writing the next sentence to end at the appropriate rhyme.