> We know exactly how LLMs work
I think you imply a rather loose standard for "exactly" here. I wouldn't even say this of major deterministic software projects that are orders of magnitude smaller than frontier LLM weight-dumps. In principle we could work our way through these systems eventually, sure, maybe even a single person could do so. But if we really understand exactly how our software works, how have we been tolerating bugs that lay dormant for years before being discovered by AI-assisted processes?
Oh that’s ez, for software we know that has bugs, one reason could be the cost of fixing isn’t worth it.
When we're speaking mechanically, we can ignore the weights and just look at the math. And that math is very simple compared to most software.