alt Hacker NewsIf you interpret “interpolate” in the literal sense, and apply it to the mechanisms behind LLMs, then the claim that they only interpolate, is straightforwardly false.
Taking it instead as a metaphorical claim may be more valid, but in that case it doesn’t depend on our understanding of how LLMs work.
LLMs are statistical models by construction, so depending on how liberal you want to be with terminology, "interpolate" is not so bad. Might make a statistician upset.