{"ID":2877853,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18598","arxiv_id":"2508.18598","title":"What do language models model? Transformers, automata, and the format of thought","abstract":"What do large language models actually model? Do they tell us something about human capacities, or are they models of the corpus we've trained them on? I give a non-deflationary defence of the latter position. Cognitive science tells us that linguistic capabilities in humans rely supralinear formats for computation. The transformer architecture, by contrast, supports at best a linear formats for processing. This argument will rely primarily on certain invariants of the computational architecture of transformers. I then suggest a positive story about what transformers are doing, focusing on Liu et al. (2022)'s intriguing speculations about shortcut automata. I conclude with why I don't think this is a terribly deflationary story. Language is not (just) a means for expressing inner state but also a kind of 'discourse machine' that lets us make new language given appropriate context. We have learned to use this technology in one way; LLMs have also learned to use it too, but via very different means.","short_abstract":"What do large language models actually model? Do they tell us something about human capacities, or are they models of the corpus we've trained them on? I give a non-deflationary defence of the latter position. Cognitive science tells us that linguistic capabilities in humans rely supralinear formats for computation. Th...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.18598","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2508.18598v1","authors":"[\"Colin Klein\"]","published":"2025-08-26T02:01:56Z","proceeding":"cs.CL","tasks":"[\"cs.CL\",\"cs.AI\"]","methods":"[\"Transformer\",\"Large Language Model\",\"Language Model\"]","has_code":false}