Let's change this game a bit. Spell "understanding" in your head in reverse order without spending twice more time than forward mode. Can you? I can't. Does that mean we don't really understand even simple spelling? It is a fun activity to dunk on LLMs, but let's have some perspective here.
It sees tokens not letters like us. And has to recite tokens in reverse order, and their letters in reverse order, over a set of 200K tokens. Token codes are arbitrary numbers associated with word fragments, they convey no letters.
This is true but not as impacting as you think. Ask GPT to rewrite ANY text with spaces between lettres and he will do it. He DOES know how to spell and read letters
