> I expect the only people who are nonplussed by the power of LLMs are those with a soft spot for occultism of some sort—those who think words are magical. Let me explain.
> Let me repeat: there is so much abstract structure in our language—the patterns are so overwhelmingly clear, consistent, and objective—that by mindlessly figuring out the probability of one symbol following another, a machine can effectively reason better than the average person for a large number of cases.

https://steve-patterson.com/why-language-machines-do-not-have-souls/