  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 generate novel text. We begin with a
defense of bibliotechnism, showing how even novel text may inherit its meaning
from original human-generated text. We then argue that bibliotechnism faces an
independent challenge from examples in which LLMs generate novel reference,
using new names to refer to new entities. Such examples could be explained if
LLMs were not cultural technologies but had beliefs, desires, and intentions.
According to interpretationism in the philosophy of mind, a system has such
attitudes if and only if its behavior is well explained by the hypothesis that
it does. Interpretationists may hold that LLMs have attitudes, and thus have a
simple solution to the novel reference problem. We emphasize, however, that
interpretationism is compatible with very simple creatures having attitudes and
differs sharply from views that presuppose these attitudes require
consciousness, sentience, or intelligence (topics about which we make no
claims).
