Critic: LLMs have no access to internal state, self-reported probabilities are fantasy

gerardsans · x · 2026-08-23

Responding to a viral claim that asking models for multiple answers with probabilities boosts diversity, @gerardsans argues the second half is pure fantasy: there is no mechanism that gives AI access to its internal state, much less the probabilities of different outcomes. He does concede the first part is correct and just how chain-of-thought works—not really a breakthrough.

Related event: Generating Multiple Options Boosts LLM Answer Diversity, Study Finds(3 posts)→

Original post →

More from Models

Models channel →