Assessing the Nature of Large Language Models: A Caution against Anthropocentrism

The HPC User Forum was established in 1999 to promote the health of the global HPC industry and address issues of common concern to users. In April 2054, the 88th HPC User Forum took place in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This update summarizes a presentation from that conference given by Ann Speed, a PhD cognitive psychologist and long-time researcher at Sandia National Laboratories. Her research focuses on increasing analyst efficacy primarily in the visual search domain through human subject experimentation as well as exploring the relationship between laboratory-based research and observations in operational and near-operational environments. This discussion focuses on research conducted on the behavioral patterns of large language models like GPT through the lens of human psychological and cognitive assessment.