yeah that distinction is pretty important, and in general that guy I believe IS making the point - if you can not control it with guaranteed outcomes - you cannot control it.

You can't control it any more than you can control a draw from a deck of cards, but you can absolutely control the deck of cards that you choose to draw from.

That's silly. My car is not absolutely guaranteed to turn left when I turn the steering wheel left, but you wouldn't say I can't control my car on that basis.

Steering an LLM with a prompt is way less reliable than steering a car with a steering wheel, but there's still control. It's just not absolute.