Large Language Models as Markov Chains · HackerPapers discussions

Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by chrisjj

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:12:57 GMT

No misunderstanding at all. "In machine learning, the term stochastic parrot is a metaphor that frames large language models as systems that statistically mimic text without real understanding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_parrot "Large Language Models as Markov Chains" https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02724

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by Borealid

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 03:50:08 GMT

No, not nonsense. Both are a lookup table whose key is the entire context window and whose value is a probability distribution for what the next token should be. You can say the choice of probability distribution in the value is "leveraging the internal structure of the context" or not, but the same tokens in two different orders are two different lookup keys and saying it's impossible to achieve some result with a Markov chain is factually incorrect. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.02724 describes the equivalence formally.

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by thesz

Fri, 05 Jun 2026 20:51:41 GMT

> doesn't that mean we're approaching optimality? No. Transformers are Markov chains [1]. Somewhere around this fascinating site [2] I read that stateful models have an advantage. Author provided an example, a state machine with two states A and B, where at state A transitions are to state A (output 0) and to state B (output 1) with equal probability and at state B the transition is always to state A and output is always 1. For this state machine just one bit of memory can make an optimal prediction that ones always go in pairs, whereas Markov chain will approximate this prediction and never…

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by thesz

Wed, 27 May 2026 14:50:09 GMT

LLMs are Markov Chains [1]. "Emergent abilities" of LLMs can be explained by decrease of perplexity in text prediction [2]. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02724 [2] https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.15004

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by bgwalter

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 17:34:25 GMT

Regarding the stochastic parrots: It is easy to see that LLMs exclusively parrot by asking them about current political topics [1], because they cannot plagiarize settled history from Wikipedia and Britannica. But of course there also is the equivalence between LLMs and Markov chains. As far as I can see, it does not rely on absurd equivalences like encoding all possible output states in an infinite Markov chain: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02724 Then there is stochastic parrot research: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08946 "The stochastic parrot phenomenon is present in LLMs, as they fail on our…

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by Anon84

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 19:50:49 GMT

Not that different. In fact, you can use Markov Chain theory as an analytical tool to study LLMs: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02724 You could probably point your code to Google Books N-grams (https://storage.googleapis.com/books/ngrams/books/datasetsv3...) and get something that sounds (somewhat) reasonable.

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by bgwalter

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 04:42:31 GMT

If you want to steal code, you can take it from GitHub and strip the license. That is what the Markov chains (https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02724) do. It's a code laundering machine. Software engineering has a higher number of people who have never created anything by themselves and have no issues with copyright infringement. Other professions still tend to take a broader view. Even unproductive people in other professions may have compunctions about stealing other people's work.

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by sailingparrot

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 02:49:51 GMT

At no point have I argued that LLMs aren’t autoregressive, I am merely talking about LLMs ability to reason across time steps, so it seems we are talking past each other which won’t lead anywhere. And yes, LLM can be studied under the lens of Markov processes: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2410.02724 Have a good day

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by godelski

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 08:23:56 GMT

Calf isn't making an appeal to authority. They are saying "I'm not the idiot you think I am." Two very different things. Likely also a request to talk more mathy to them. I read your link btw and I just don't know how someone can do all that work and not establish the Markov Property. That's like the first step. Speaking of which, I'm not sure I even understand the first definition of your link. I've never heard the phrase "computably countable" before, but I have head "computable number," which these numbers are countable. This does seem to be what it is referring to? So I'll assume that?…

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by Anon84

Wed, 03 Sep 2025 21:31:44 GMT

There definitely is, but Marcus is not the only one talking about it. For example, we covered this paper in one of our internal journal clubs a few weeks ago: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02724

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — mentioned by magicalhippo

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 18:01:13 GMT

> LLMs are Markov Chains on steroids? Might be a reference to this[1] blog post which was posted here[2] a year ago. There has also been some academic work linking the two, like this[3] paper. [1]: https://elijahpotter.dev/articles/markov_chains_are_the_orig... [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39213410 [3]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02724

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Large Language Models as Markov Chains — HN submission

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 23:57:53 GMT

Large Language Models as Markov Chains

75 points; 54 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Large Language Models as Markov Chains — HN submission

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 22:12:48 GMT

LLMs as Markov Chains

5 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Large Language Models as Markov Chains — HN submission

Tue, 08 Oct 2024 13:50:37 GMT

Large Language Models as Markov Chains

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.