Worth separating “the algorithm” from “the trained model.” Humans write the architecture + training loop (the recipe), but most of the actual capability ends up in the learned weights after training on a ton of data.

Inference is mostly matrix math + a few standard ops, and the behavior isn’t hand-coded rule-by-rule. The “algorithm” part is more like instincts in animals: it sets up the learning dynamics and some biases, but it doesn’t get you very far without what’s learned from experience/data.

Also, most “knowledge” comes from pretraining; RL-style fine-tuning mostly nudges behavior (helpfulness/safety/preferences) rather than creating the base capabilities.