🦋 On LLM Popcorn, Collecting Butterflies, and the Sad State of LLM Research

Why We Must Answer Why, Not Just What

The panel discussion with Eduard Hovy, Mirella Lapata, Yue Zhang, and Dan Roth started with a very harsh but incredibly necessary speech by Eduard Hovy.

His speech was interrupted by applause multiple times. The state of current LLM research is indeed disturbing.

We see a flood of papers published on mere observations:

LLMs do this, LLMs do that.
They bene…