[fasterik]

This doesn't seem that weird to me. Talk to any human and you'll find that their ability to recall specific names and facts is very context-dependent. Phrasing a question in one way can make it hard to answer, while providing certain words or cues can instantly "jog" the memory.

[nozzlegear]

The LLM is a machine though, and the human is not. They don't think like us. Any similarities that you see are just coincidence, not purposeful design.

[fasterik]

I still don't see why it's surprising, though. Humans and machines are subject to the same laws of physics. While we wouldn't expect LLMs to think exactly like humans, we should expect some degree of convergent evolution. There are always tradeoffs between storage capacity, accuracy, latency, relevance, fluency, etc.

Expecting LLMs to be magically perfect information retrieval machines is never going to be realistic.