alt Hacker NewsI think you're arguing a different thing than determinism.
If I ask an llm to "add 2 and 2" is and it replies corectly, then I ask for "the sum of 2 and 2" and it replies "banana" that is a lack of predictability and consistency but not a lack of determinism.
As long as it produces the same output for a given input, unhinged or not, it is deterministic.
Your example at the end of different systems feeding data to each other is non-deterministic only at the system level, not the individual llm level.
>only at the system level, not the individual llm level.
Which is why llms aren't agents and depend on harnesses. The llm itself doesn't have a continual loop built in, that would be very power hungry. The harness works as the orchestrator of memory and action. Now, I can't think of a reason why an LLM couldn't bootstrap its own harness, but in general it sounds like a very dumb idea to actually build that from an AI safety perspective.
This discussion falls under the idea and refutation of the Chinese Room. The room may have no idea what Chinese characters are, but the system does.