Simon Willison's frame on LLMs: imitation intelligence.

I love this frame!

Both in terms of Imitation meat.

Not quite the real thing, a bit off in a way that makes you a bit queasy

But also the process that it follows--imitating what it's seen before.

Intelligence entirely through imitation

Lots of people do imitation intelligence in general.

Not real reasoning, the facsimile of it.

"Why do you think that?" / "I don't know, that's what other people have always said!"