I used to share that perspective until very recently, but today I think it's an outdated way to think of the cutting-edge LLMs. There is so much more going on, with MOEs, internal loops, guardrails and tools that I suspect we're dealing with something that's a little more than the sum of its parts. Not intelligent in the way we recognize in biological organisms, but certainly something beyond a mere Markov chain.
Make no mistakes.
LLMs are language model, and nowhere in their code you can find actual reasoning. Re-reinforcement is not magical process that builds conscience or emotions.
We are talking about probability built on statistics, with extea steps.
Stop humanizing LLMs.