> No, they are deliberately designed to mimic human communication via language, not human thought.

My opinion is that language is communicated thought. Thus, to mimic language, at least really well, you have to mimic thought. At some level.

I want to be clear here, as I do see a distinction: I don't think we can say these things are "thinking", despite marketing pushes to the contrary. But I do think that they are powerful enough to "fake it" at a rudimentary level. And I think that the way we train them forces them to develop this thought-mimicry ability.

If you look hard enough, the illusion of course vanishes. Because it is (relatively poor) mimcry, not the real thing. I'd bet we are still a research breakthrough or two away from being able to simulate "human thought" well.