[TeMPOraL]

> Is this anthropomorphizing? Yep. But that's the best way I've found to reason about them.

My take? It's like a high-schooler being asked a question by the teacher and having to answer on the spot. If they studied the material well, they'll give a good and correct answer. If they (like me, more often than I'd care to admit) only half-listened to the lectures and maaaaybe skimmed some cliff's notes before class, they will give an answer too - one strung together out of few remembered (or misremembered) facts, an overall feel for the problem space (e.g. writing style, historical period, how people behave), with lots and lots of interpolation in between. Delivered confidently, it has more chance of avoiding a bad mark (or even scoring a good one) than flat-out saying, "I don't know".

Add to that some usual mistakes out of carelessness and... whatever it is that makes you forget a minus sign and realize it half a page of equations later - and you get GPT-4. It's giving answers like a person who just blurts out whatever thoughts pop into their head, without making a conscious attempt at shaping or interrogating them.