Why “predicting” is being discussed
The most recent Hacker News stories and comments contributing to this topic's mentions.
'Prediction' gets overloaded with optimization. Predictions are binary, optimizations are fuzzy. If you're saying it's predicting, then each result should be falsifiable. The re…
by mw888 · Sep 5, 2026
I try to make 3 claims in the post, it was a bit clumsy I'll admit that. 1. At inference time, LLMs emit one token at a time given the prior tokens. This looks like prediction a…
by garrinm · Sep 5, 2026
They aren't predicting the next token. It's quite literally not a prediction.
by danielmarkbruce · Sep 5, 2026
I think you are just litigating the philosophical debate of Bayesian vs frequentist interpretations of probability. Because the weights really are just probabilities. Bayesians…
by wonnage · Sep 5, 2026
It's not simple to do next token prediction. That IS what is going on. You want something 'deep'. Deep things are often very not complicated. The deep realization is that if you…
by ltbarcly3 · Sep 5, 2026
Interest
Proportion of Hacker News items mentioning "predicting" over time.
Mentions
Total number of Hacker News items mentioning "predicting" over time.
A prediction or forecast is a statement about a future event or about future data. Predictions are often, but not always, based upon experience or knowledge of forecasters. There is no universal agreement about the exact difference between "prediction" and "estimation"; different authors and disciplines ascribe different connotations. Read more on Wikipedia