Incorrect. Vertebrate animal brains update their neural connections when interacting with the environment. LLMs don't do that. Their model weights are frozen for every release.

But why can’t I then just say, actually, you need to relocate the analogy components; activations are their neural connections, the text is their environment, the weights are fixed just like our DNA is, etc.

As I understand it, octopuses have their reasoning and intelligence essentially baked into them at birth, shaped by evolution, and do relatively little learning during life because their lives are so short. Very intelligent, obviously, but very unlike people.