Honestly, I think it’s somewhere in between. LLMs are great at spotting patterns in data and using that to make predictions, so you could say they build a sort of "world model" for the data they see. But it’s not the same as truly understanding or reasoning about the world, it’s more like theyre really good at connecting the dots we give them.

They dont do science or causality theyre just working with the shadows on the wall, not the actual objects casting them. So yeah, they’re impressive, but let’s not overhype what they’re doing. It’s pattern matching at scale, not magic. Correct me if I am wrong.