LLM’s are a rather fascinating subject with lots of high level stuff that can be very daunting to understand. My laymans understanding is that generative systems such as Chat GPT are almost entirely probability based.
If I gave a LLM the following prompt: “in 2023 the current president of the United states is _____” fill in the blank. It would compare the prompt to its database of text and return Joe Biden with a 95% probability, Donald Trump with 4%, and some other random stuff for the remaining 1. It doesn’t actually KNOW what the prompt is and it doesn’t reason the answer. It’s only comparing what is in its database vs what’s been given to it.
This is why the larger the database it has the better answers it can return. True AI would be able to give you responses to anything having only been fed the contents of the dictionary. It could then reason what each word means and creatively form them into legible responses.
If you are interested in a very cool semi-interactive explanation of how generative systems work check out this website. I found it very fascinating.