On the Unexpected Abilities of Large Language Models

Large language models are capable of displaying a wide range of abilities that are not directly connected with the task for which they are trained: predicting the next words of human-written texts. In this article, I discuss the nature of this indirect acquisition process and its relation to other known indirect processes. I argue that an important side effect of such indirect acquisition is the development of integrated abilities. I discuss the extent to which the abilities developed by large language models are predictable. Finally, I briefly discuss the relation between the cognitive skills acquired by these systems and human cognition.