[juhanima]

ChatGPT works by cumulating the prompt. You didn't ask the same question three times. In stead you asked question q, then qq and finally qqq. Those are three different questions, which explains why you got different answers.

I'm not sure if ChatGPT also cumulates its previous answers in the context. It might do that as well. In that case the prompts would be q, qaq and qaqaq where 'q' is your question and 'a' the earlier reaction from the LLM.

The illusion of sentience comes from this. The new answers reflected what you said because the prompt was different and included the previous discussion.

This is a feature of the user interface, not the language model. The only reason why the language model would respond differently to the same input is the artificial randomness mixed with the input. Without it it would be totally deterministic and not appear sentient at all. It would still be as knowledgeable as before. Like a parrot trained to be very good at combining key words to key responses.

[therealdrag0]

Everything you said applies to humans doesn’t it?