it has been clear for a long time that there is reasoning and mental modeling going on here
There is not. No one from these products is even claiming that's the case and they're so desperate to make the next big claim to re-ignite investment they'd be shouting it from every rooftop.
It's just breaking out all the reasonable probabilities around what it's been tasked with and structuring them in a way that is designed to actively look human, and then feed it back to itself. Fundamentally that's the easiest way to iterate new features when the underlying architecture of LLMs is largely "fixed" right now. The fact it is output in a way that appears to reason through each is just a technical decision that creates an illusion of reasoning.
What, as precisely as you can say, is the difference between an illusion of reasoning and reasoning?
(I am not claiming that there is none. But I personally would define "reasoning" in terms of its structure and its results, and it looks to me as if the best LLMs' "illusion of reasoning" has enough similarities in structure and results to much human reasoning that I don't see why we shouldn't also call it reasoning; if your opinion differs then I'm curious about where the disagreements lie. E.g., do we have different beliefs about what sort of thing LLMs' schmeasoning is able to accomplish, or does your notion of "reasoning" specifically require that it be done by humans, or what?)
There is not. No one from these products is even claiming that's the case and they're so desperate to make the next big claim to re-ignite investment they'd be shouting it from every rooftop.
It's just breaking out all the reasonable probabilities around what it's been tasked with and structuring them in a way that is designed to actively look human, and then feed it back to itself. Fundamentally that's the easiest way to iterate new features when the underlying architecture of LLMs is largely "fixed" right now. The fact it is output in a way that appears to reason through each is just a technical decision that creates an illusion of reasoning.
(I am not claiming that there is none. But I personally would define "reasoning" in terms of its structure and its results, and it looks to me as if the best LLMs' "illusion of reasoning" has enough similarities in structure and results to much human reasoning that I don't see why we shouldn't also call it reasoning; if your opinion differs then I'm curious about where the disagreements lie. E.g., do we have different beliefs about what sort of thing LLMs' schmeasoning is able to accomplish, or does your notion of "reasoning" specifically require that it be done by humans, or what?)