> LLMs are much easier to understand when you think of them in terms of human psychology

Are they? You can reasonably expect from a human that they will learn from their mistake, and be genuinely sorry about it which will motivate them to not repeat the same mistake in the future. You can't have the same expectation from an LLM.

The only thing you should expect from an LLM is that its output is non-deterministic. You can expect the same from a human, of course, but you can fire a human if they keep making (the same) mistake(s).

I'm genuinely wondering if your parent comment is correct and the only reason we don't see the behaviour you describe, IE, learning and growth is because of how we do context windows, they're functionally equivalent to someone who has short term memory loss, think Drew Barrymore's character or one of the people in that facility she ends up in in the film 50 first dates.

Their internal state moves them to a place where they "really intend" to help or change their behaviour, a lot of what I see is really consistent with that, and then they just, forget.