Memory, Consciousness and Large Language Model
This work addresses theoretical connections between cognitive science and AI for researchers, but it is incremental as it builds on existing ideas without new empirical results.
The paper proposes a duality between Large Language Models (LLMs) and Tulving's theory of memory, suggesting that LLMs' emergent abilities correspond to memory retrieval processes and speculating that consciousness might be an emergent ability based on this connection.
With the development in cognitive science and Large Language Models (LLMs), increasing connections have come to light between these two distinct fields. Building upon these connections, we propose a conjecture suggesting the existence of a duality between LLMs and Tulving's theory of memory. We identify a potential correspondence between Tulving's synergistic ecphory model (SEM) of retrieval and the emergent abilities observed in LLMs, serving as supporting evidence for our conjecture. Furthermore, we speculate that consciousness may be considered a form of emergent ability based on this duality. We also discuss how other theories of consciousness intersect with our research.