Keeping it real: Language models implement algorithms to solve linguistic tasks

Abstract

Futrell & Mahowald argue that language models (LMs) discover linguistic structure as “real patterns.” I contend this framing underplays what mechanistic interpretability uncovers: LMs implement specific algorithms to solve linguistic tasks. Under the framework of causal abstraction, we can rigorously test whether LMs converge on algorithms posited by linguistic theory, which further supports the authors’ conciliatory proposal.