[antonvs]

Functionally, i.e. focusing only input and output, a model can certainly discover an idea. That’s not anthropomorphism.

Similarly, people often object to using words like “reasoning” and “understanding” in relation to models, but again, functionally, models observably demonstrate both of those qualities - you can test for them and measure their proficiency.

The fact that this discovery, training, and understanding is implemented in terms of a statistical model isn’t really relevant. If it were, you could similarly argue that humans don’t discover, reason, or understand, we just process chemical and electrical signals through our biological neural network.