Are LLMs cultural technologies like photocopiers or printing presses, which transmit information but cannot create new content? A challenge for this idea, which we call bibliotechnism, is that LLMs often do generate entirely novel text. We begin by defending bibliotechnism against this challenge, showing how novel text may be meaningful only in a derivative sense, so that the content of this generated text depends in an important sense on the content of original human text. We go on to present a different, novel challenge for bibliotechnism, stemming from examples in which LLMs generate "novel reference", using novel names to refer to novel entities. Such examples could be smoothly explained if LLMs were not cultural technologies but possessed a limited form of agency (beliefs, desires, and intentions). According to interpretationism in the philosophy of mind, a system has beliefs, desires and intentions if and only if its behavior is well-explained by the hypothesis that it has such states. In line with this view, we argue that cases of novel reference provide evidence that LLMs do in fact have beliefs, desires, and intentions, and thus have a limited form of agency.

翻译：大语言模型是否像复印机或印刷机这样的文化技术——能够传递信息却无法创造新内容？我们称之为"文献技术主义"的这一观点面临一个挑战：大语言模型确实经常生成全新的文本。我们首先为文献技术主义辩护，论证新文本可能仅在衍生意义上具有意义，因此所生成文本的内容在重要意义上依赖于原始人类文本的内容。接着，我们针对文献技术主义提出一个不同的新挑战，其根源在于大语言模型生成"新指称"的案例——使用新名称指称新实体。若大语言模型并非文化技术，而是具有有限能动性（信念、欲望和意图），此类案例便能得到顺畅解释。根据心灵哲学中的解释主义，一个系统拥有信念、欲望和意图，当且仅当其行为能被"该系统具有此类状态"的假说所充分解释。基于这一观点，我们论证新指称案例提供了证据，表明大语言模型确实具有信念、欲望和意图，因而拥有有限的能动性。